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

Here is the Relive-Video as overview on the tour:

Relive ‘Nagold Tal 6’

Here is our tour into the black forest form May 6th:

Relive ‘Nordschwarzwald Tour RSG’

This year the training camp was as early as never before (for me). Due to the Easter vacation in Germany and other appointments of my friends, we already went in the beginning of March from Fr. 2nd to Sun 18th of March. A good 2 weeks during which I did 16 tours. Almond-cake is one of my favourites on Mallorca, but so far we could only eat it. This time we were early enough to see almond blossom, which is usually during February, until early March.

The weather was really nice. It was clear that so early we would not get real summer temperatures. But we reached 15°C minimum during the days and on the warmest day even about 20°C (a little less with about 10-14°C starting in the morning). So we had to wear long shirts or at least leg and arm warmers and always a wind-proof jacket with us. We didn’t have a rain day, there were two or three days with rain during night or early morning, but it went away so that we could start around mid-day latest.

The tours were mean to train the base fitness. So we did relatively slower tours, which was also good for me. Although I had done a number of tours on my gravel bike over winter, some home-training and several rides on the track in Öschelbronn, all those trips were short. In Mallorca we did almost always more than 4 hours. This year I didn’t make that mistake from last year to not doing a pause day. I paused on 2 days with “active regeneration”, i.e. going only 30km very, very slowly. That paid off.

Although we did not do anything really extreme, we did one quite long and flat tour to Cala Figuera (picture below), where I haven’t been in the last 2 years… that’s a very nice place to go to. And of course the obligatory tours to Randa and Orient.

Towards end of second week, we did two “top tours” in the mountains. The first was via Caimari to the Col dels Reis down towards Sa Calobra runter (but finally not to Calobra but the neighbour gay Cala Tuent) … and then back via monastery Lluc and Pollenca – 130km and aprox. 2300Hm. Then one shorter day to recover (aprox. 80km), and then another big one: via Bunyola to Soller and then over the Puig Mayor and back again via monastery Lluc and Pollenca – 142,5km and aprox. 2000Hm.

Statistics:

• ~1550km, with 16 individual tours (the two breaks included)
• About 18.000 m of accumulated altitude (GPS measured, in reality might be some 10% less)
• Total riding time (excl. breaks): about 63 hours
• Total average speed across all tours: 23,8 km/h

This year I didn’t create manual tour entries on GSPies. As I have a GPS watch since last year, I recorded all tours and uploaded to Strava… yes, modern technology.

The first big tour: Cala Tuent (Calobra) on Strava.
The second big tour via Puig Mayor on Strava.

A few days ago was winter solstice and in a  German road-bike forum someone published an article about interesting events taking place at summer solstice in June. Something to look forward to, and possibly plan for.

Unfortunately such large events are quite in fashion nowadays and often too many people there, prices up and you have to book tickets long time in advance. But to join such an event may be something nice for a change? Well, we’ll see what time will bring and at least I’d like to manage riding another 10.000km also in 2018 

On the other side, you have to get the bike from the Garage each time, mount the pedals, adjust the saddle height and also the saddle doesn’t really fit to your own “back side”. All not really very good reasons to spend money, for a few training rides of 2 hours each, per year.

After 2 years and 3 days, my resistance was broken. My Cinelli Tipo Pista

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

Nevertheless, please don’t do this at home… this is crazy dangerous!