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!