Bike the Rock @Huebach

Last weekend we made the trip north a couple of hours to Huebach for a German National race. We travelled through Stuttgard which was a rather large city, it is also the home of a lot of major European car companies; Mercedes, Porsche, Volvo, so was interesting to see the massive factories and showrooms on the way through.

The Huebach race is a Hors category race which means that there are heaps of UCI (International Ranking Points) points up for grabs for the top positions. This attracts a world class field, pretty much of the same quality that you would see lining up for a World Cup. So for us Aussies it was another weekend of trying to not lose too much time to World Champions!!

The course was pretty challenging and quite different to other cross country tracks. From the start line it was a relentless grovel of a climb in your easiest gear (and sometimes that wasn’t enough) for up to 15min, then from the top it really only took perhaps under 5 min to get back down to the start/finish. The decent was quite fun though, it had been super wet and slippery the days leading up to the race so it felt quite good to get to the bottom in one piece!!

So it was a tough day, almost seemed not to be racing but just trying to get myself up that hill each lap without blowing a gasket! I ended up being one of the last riders to get though on the ‘lead lap’. That is finishing my last lap on the same lap as the winner, although the winner was a good 15min quicker!!

The Men’s race was hard, they would have had about 80+ riders start and there were only 30 that got to finish the entire race, the rest were pulled of as they were in danger of being lapped by the race leaders!

So Huebach was a good training and a solid hit out before the last World Cup for this trip which is coming up this weekend in Offenburg!

Ski Jumps and Monasteries

Andy and Rosie lashed out and hired a car for a few days, so having ticked off the training for the day we thought we would make the most of possibly the best weather we have had yet in Germany and hit the road to have a look beyond our regular training routes!

We took one of the main tourist roads that climbs to the top of one of the main ridgelines, all the peaks were around 1000m high. A couple of days ago when we had quite cold weather and heaps of rain they must have had quite a bit of snow as there was patches of snow on the sides of the road. Having had so much bad weather it was a nice change to be up high and actually have a view visibility has been limited due to all the low cloud and fog lately.

One of the highlights of the day trip was the massive ski jump we came across, it was up among one of the ski villages and we were blown away by the sheer size and steepness of it.

Recently watching the winter Olympics I thought I had a fair idea of how big these athletes jump, but seeing it in the flesh was a whole different story, the steepness and length was amazing.

This is the ramp they jump off at this point they can’t even see their landing 80m down the slope, scary!

This is at about the 80m mark where they land it is so so steep!!
Just down the road we came across some ruins of a very old monastery.

Further down the road we came accros some old ruins of a manastery. The Allerheiligen monastery was built in 1191 and is of gothic architecture….. pretty old!!

Further down from the monastery was a nice walk through some cascading waterfalls or wassenfalle.

Apparently they are the largest waterfalls in the Black Forest, cascading for 83m

A Coffee Shop Ride Across the Border.

So I had a flat ride scheduled for today and thought I would venture across the border into France and go check out Strassbourg.
From where we are staying in Durbach it took me about 1.5 hrs to ride across the farmland between us and the city, the bike tracks are great, you can pretty much get everywhere without using busy roads and being worried about traffic.
I eventually came to Kehl which is the German town right on the border. The border is the Rhine River and once you cross this you are in France.

Crossing the border into France.

The centre of Strassbourg is actually an island as it is surrounded by a network of canals.

The Cathedral is definitely one of the more prominent highlights in the city, towering 143m high above the surrounding city.

The streets and buildings were amazing, and a lot of these were only accessible by foot, or of course by bike!!

Doing all this touristy stuff can be quite tiring so I found a coffee shop and settle in for a much needed coffee and some lunch!

Schwarzwaldverein

Schwarzwaldverein is the famous ‘Black Forrest’, we are based right on the edge of it and it stretches for 100’s of km north and quite a way also south. It is the perfect training ground, it is really well signed, letting you know how far surrounding villages are so you can never really get lost! They also hold quite a few marathon events in the forest so there are multiple circuts you can ride ranging from okm to 80km+

The forest is beautiful, it is incredibly lush and green and the trails seem to go on forever!

There are also plenty of interesting things along the way, I came across these old ruins in the middle of the nowhere. I couldn’t read the sign as it was all in German but it must have been pretty old as some of the dates mentioned were right back to 1123!

I climbed to the top of one of the higher hills (973m) and found this tower.

It was just like a light house, I was able to climb to the top and appreciate the view. Shame the weather was not so good that day!

The view from the top! It was incredibly windy!!!

The Germans are amazing wood stackers, it seems to be almost an art form! These are everywhere in the middle of the forest, quite strange really, obviously no threat of bushfire here!

Durbach

We are now in Germany where we will be based for the next 3 weeks. The Offenburg World Cup will be held here in 3 weeks time and it is a great place to be based to get some quality training in.

Durbach is a small quaint village that is surrounded by vineyards, and apple orchards.

The quaint main street of Durbach

We are staying in a small apartment at the bottom of a big German house, this seems to be a very common set up. As it is quite a touristy area, most of the families in the area have a guest house on their property.

This is the families home and farm, quite the set up!

The family we are staying with has 3 generations living on the same property, they have been making wine and schnapps here since 1782! The owner gave us a tour of his distillery, where they make the wine and schnapps, we also had a tasting, the schnapps sure does take your breath away!

About 2km up the road there is Durbach’s ver y own castle, now days they have functions and wine tastings here. It is quite a spectacular view down into Durbach.

Houffalize World Cup # 2

Wouldn’t you know it, for the entire week we had beautiful warm sunny weather and come race day it had dropped to about 8 degrees was pouring with rain, not the most appealing race weather! I find racing in cold wet weather itself not so bad it’s just the time you need to take warming up getting saturated then sitting around and getting cold waiting for the race to start. It also makes for a huge clea up job after the race, soaking clothing, getting all the grit and mud out of the bikes drive train etc.

As predicted the start loop was absolute mayhem, the 19% street climb was real hard, I pretty much died about half way up and fell back through the field, then the decent down to the course was incredible, at some points I was at a complete stand still as the entire field tried to fit single file into the narrow single track, meanwhile the riders at the front of the race were half way round the course, such is world cup racing!

This is the view from the start loop over to the main climbing sections of the course. The track went up this slope on two different tracks and also down on two different tracks, The organisers like to have it all in a compact area as it is good for the spectators!

Due to the amount of steep climbing the course (290m each lap x 4) it was always going to be tough in the dry but the rain just took it to another level. The steady rain that we had overnight and prior to the race had really changed the way I raced the course, cornering was tricky and quite hard to stay on the bike without loosing traction, the gears I were using were totally different as there was so much more drag due to the mud.

So I ended up being pulled off the course 1 lap down, due to my lap times falling below 80% of the leaders lap time. This is always a frustrating result, not having the opportunity to finish the race can be quite disheartening, but out of 125 starters only 70 odd managed to get through to finish the race.

Having finished my race I always look forward to watching the men’s race, perhaps it’s because I know how much it hurts!! The men have an even tougher fight on their hands, they had 250 on the start line, it was pretty impressive to watch them come up the start climb!

On the Road to Belgium

After the race at Dalby we had to head home and start the task of packing as we were heading off at 6 in the morning to start the long trip to Belgium. Our long trip turned into a very very long trip indeed! On the drive down to London we had some van troubles. Ian our driver decided it was best to call into his place at Nottingham where he knew a mechanic who could look at it for us, this wasn’t too far out of our way but the van was blowing thick blue smoke and moving at about 50k an hour!

As it turns out it was a quick fix but with the time taken for this diversion we were no longer going to make our original ferry booking. The next ferry from Dover left at 7pm that night so we had a bit of time to kill…. By the time we got over and into France it was a 4.5 hr drive to Houffalize where our accommodation was, so this trip to Belgium was almost as long as the time it took to get from Australia to the UK!

We finally arrived at 4.30 I the morning absolutely ragged, needless to say we had a huge sleep in in the morning!!

Dalby Forest World Cup # 1

It all came about pretty quickly, having had a pretty disjointed start to the trip. Having only been in the UK for 2 days I found myself lining up on the start grid for the first World Cup, it was quite a surreal feeling. On one hand I was worried with the lack of quality preparation and on the other hand the adrenalin was still pumping having actually made it and it seemed a real novelty to be lining up for this race at all!

Race day threatened with some early rain, but it didn’t eventuate into anything, it was really only a sprinkle, enough to just slightly wet down the course. The women’s race had about 120 entries we are all seeded on our international ranking, being pretty low I was in the last few lines on the grid. I was quite surprised to be lining up right next to many times over World Champion and also Olympic Champion, Gunn-Rita Dahl! She has since taken a break from the sport to start a family and have some time away from professional mountain biking. She was great, we had a bit of a chat, and discussed the predicament of starting this far back from the front, definitely not a position she would have been accustomed to!

Apart from a bit of a pile up due to a crash on the start line, my race went very smoothly, I felt really good and was pleasantly surprised with the fact that I was in pretty good nick considering the lead up! I felt like I was getting quicker on each lap, once I managed to work my way forward and pass a few of the slower girls I was able to gain some momentum and settle into the race. I just managed to finish on the lead lap (You get pulled of the course if your lap times fall below 80% of the leaders lap time.) and crossed the line in 71st position, it is a long way off where I need to be for World Championship selection, but I was happy with how I felt and the form that I’m in, things can only get better from here surely!!