Last Winter I went regularly to the cycle track in Öschelbronn. Although it was quite cold at times, I really love it, its a lot of fun. The cycling is quite intensive and a good power and endurance training.

Mallorca was great again , well over 1550 km was good ground-work and building up endurance.

We continued with our regular bike tours, that I usually organize, and as this went fine, I wanted to start again at “Alb-Extrem” …  did that and finished !

After that came a short vacation in the Allgäu with a couple of quite nice tours, but after that I did only shorter tracks alone, left my buddies to do their own training this year. Certainly I would like to change that for next year and start more regularly.

Statistics:

• Road-bike:
  • 7.692 km total, 91 tours, average 84,5km per tour
  • Total of 291 hours training time; 27,57km/h average overall
  • 91.746 meters of altitude
  • 65 tours < 100km (Ø 65,1 km; with 638HM, 28,6 km/h)
  • 26 tours > 100km (Ø 133,1 km; with 1933HM, 24,99 km/h)
• Mountainbike / Crosser:
  • 6 tours, mostly on the Allroad/Cross
  • 305 km total
  • 4.256 altitude
  • ca. 14 h cycling time
  • 21,4 km/h average speed over all
• Tacx Trainer
  • 18 Trainings
  • 672 km
  • 26,5 hours cycling time
• All in all again a good biking year
  • 7.692 km on the road-bike
  • 7.997 km outside including road-bike and Cross
  • 8.668 km in total

This year there will again be a non-biking vacation… lets see how the winter goes and what will come next year.

Link to my biking page

It’s time for a summary of this past season…

The Winter-Saison 2017 started with a long break, from beginning of December until end of January. I don’t remember why I did almost no cycling in the first two weeks of December, but then I left for a 5 week vacation in Patagonia, South America. When I came back in January, it snowed for the first time and I only did a few very short trips, as long as it wasn’t too icy, so until almost mid February.

But then it continued obviously quite well, I can see 420km in February in the statistic. The temperature was not very cold, and at the same time there was a lot of wood harvesting going on so that the tracks in the forest were dirty up to level of destroyed. So I used my All-Road bike mostly on paved side ways and smaller roads and only short pieces of dirt-tracks. I have a second pair of wheels for my All-Road with 28mm road-tyres, so I can change quickly. So basically end of February already the road-bike season had started.

Although the cycling form had gone down a bit, due to the long break, I could train quite well … for Mallorca. As the Easter weekend was very late, we went first time already before Easter, end of March. It was a bit cooler, but quite OK for cycling. We had almost no daytime rain, only in the nights, so that we didn’t “have to” do any breaks.

Well, after so many years, should know better … but that actually meant that I did indeed cycle all 15 days, without a real break. The first planned “recovery day” first had 60 slow kilometers to Petra and back… but as there was the Road-Bike Festival, Peter and I went there, and lent two bikes for a test-ride… so the day ended with 95km finally. Not a real break I’d say. The second break-day then was indeed only 60km Petra and back. When I came home I realized what I had done. The first weekend later, 6 days of doing nothing… my legs still felt like pudding, no power, just tired. It took almost 2 weeks to recover from Mallorca … but the training was still effective, the good form was back afterwards.

The sprint time this year passed without catching a cold, a bit unusual for me, I get it every year, normally. But … being too happy about it… it happened finally in July. I did catch quite a bad cold, which caused a set-back. One week of complete break, and two more weekends going just slowly and short. Then we did one somewhat longer tour into the black forest… and that proved a point: not being fit enough to do the long marathon in Magstadt (the one with 250km and 4000m altitude), but we would do the shorter marathon with 200km and 3000m altitude. Good choice, as this tour was then quite fun!

For the seasons ending, I went for a week into the Allgäu, Nesselwang, as almost every year, this year a bit late, early September. It was already a bit cool, but good enough for 4 really, really nice, but quite touch tours. I really like it there (the blog articles might get translated later, not done yet).

Statistics:

• Road-bike:
  • 8.284,6 km total, 93 counted tours, avg. 89,1km per tour;
    a few less than last year, but 2016 was the record year
  • Total of 320 hours of cycling time; 26,19km/h overall average speed
  • 83.933 m altitude
  • 58 Tours < 100km (Ø 66,2 km; with 578m alt, 26,63 km/h)
  • 35 Tours > 100km (Ø 127,0 km; with 1441m alt, 25,47 km/h)
• Mountainbike / All-Road:
  • 21 Tours, mostly All-Road
  • 1.173km total
  • 12.810m altitude
  • approx. 56h cycling time
  • 21,7 km/h average speed overall
• Tacx Trainer
  • 10 Trainings
  • 333 km
  • 12h cycling time
• Looking at the long vacation break, that’s still a super year
  • 8.285 km Road-bike
  • 9.458 km “outside” with Road-Bike and All-Road
  • 9.791 km total including indoors on Tacx

Now it’s autumn already. The weather was quite mixed this year, changing almost daily, unfortunately this continues into fall right now. I still hope for a “golden October” … let’s see. In any case, everything from now on counts to season 2018.

Link to my biking page

Yes, there are of course several more climbs, but I selected 5 really nice ones and some of the steepest. The first was just to warm up, from Dätzingen towards Calw. But then first bummer, the “Öländerle”, with 15-18% steep sections. But actually quite good to climb, as there are several steep sections followed by slightly less steep parts, followed with another ramp… several times. Reaching Stammheim for a quick flat part, the climb continues towards Holzbronn to complete hill number 2.

First downhill again into the valley, and now up from Seitzental towards Altbulach. This is really nice to go, not quite so steep, I guess up to 12%. Once up, continuing in direction towards Wildberg, there is a fantastic view into the valley and over Wildberg. From here it’s already possible to see hill 4 (although not on the picture).

Downhill to Wildberg we quickly cross the town on the bikeway along the Nagold river… but only shortly, as directly after the town the next hill starts left-hand of the regular bike-path: Hill 4 “Kühlenberg”. This is another bummer, starting with a normal climb, quite suddenly the steepness increases to 18% for several long ramps. Nice!

Reaching Oberjettingen via the farms (the “Höhenhöfe”), we continue down via Emmingen towards Nagold. Here we have earned a break with nice cakes and coffee. No cowards today, we take on the last one, Hill 5: directly out of Nagold we climb up the “Eisbergsteige”. Starting with the end of the houses in Nagold, this climb provides a constant climb of 15-18%… no breaks or relaxing parts. Well, I chose it that way, so no complaining… and we did it

The pure statistics doesn’t sound spectacular: 110km, approx. 1400-1600m altitude with average speed of 24 km/h, but the number of ultra-steep climbs makes this a really special one. I guess we should be well prepared for the “RTF” in Magstadt next week.

Tour on GPSies:

Only around 4 o’clock I managed get onto the bike. But still the temperature was rather low, just around 14°C … I’d call that cold while riding. Only between Deckenpfronn and Kuppingen finally the sun came out. View in direction Affstätt and Herrenberg:

Finally a nice little evening-tour, around ~50km.

Steinheim/ Mallorca: Urlauberin stirbt bei Unfall mit betrunkenem Polizisten – SWR.de.

(short version: a woman was killed in an accident caused by a drunken police-men)

The last time I was on Mallorca, I had less “dangerous situations” during two weeks than I generally have here around Böblingen on a typical weekend.

Very sad!