Sunday, June 14, 2009

Final Thoughts

Our last event here was the Bundesliga Cup race in Albstabt. The course was, again, very steep and very short. 7 laps, 4.5km lap, 600ft of climbing per lap. The climbing was broken into two seperate sections. One was right off the start, lasted for about 2.5 minutes and had me pushing my granny at 4mph. The second was a bit longer, not quite as steep, but finished offf with a nice kicker to throw you into the red zone. U23 and Elites were seperated this time so the playing field was a bit more even. From the start I tried as hard as I could not to red-line during the prologue loops but put in a nice little surge just before the singletrack to get a couple more spots on the opening climb. The rest of the race was a blur and the next 7 laps flew by. In the end, I finished 29th out of somewhere around 80 U23's and smoked the kid with the ugly mullet in the sprint. I was pumped.

Saturday evening were the Albstadt City Sprints. We all assumed it would likely be a short track event. Turns out it was even shorter. The format was totally different than anything else but was interesting and made for a cool event. It started with a qualifying ITT, one lap around a normal ST length course. Lap times were less than a minute and a half. I qualified 9th, one spot and half a second behind Jose Hermida. The top 30 of the 70 or so qualifiers were randomly placed in 5 heats. Each heat ran two laps on a shorter tighter course but total race time was still less than two minutes. Top 2 from each heat advanced and so on until there was a winner. I got shoved out quick at the start line and failed to make in past the first heat, but it turned out to be a good opener workout for Sunday.

Now I'm killing time until we head to the airport. My bike is packed and sitting in the van outside. I'm ready to go, but i don't want to. I wish I could stay here. I like it here. It's only been 18 days since we were unpacking our bikes, but it feels like months. My last ride in town on Friday I spun out to the Rosskopf downhill. Its a 25 min fireroad climb to the top, and 10 minutes bombing straight down the bermed descent. I got the bottom after one run which was all I planned on doing. I had to ride the whole thing again. I will probably never have the chance to come back.






I've had the time of my life

3 comments:

Lester said...

That's sweet man. Congrates on the result.

You're making me want to go to Europe.

cableguy46 said...

AWESOME job Aaron...we're all proud of ya back here...glad you had the chance to experience Europe, I'm sure with your hard work (and of course the magazine article, ha) you'll make it back soon! See ya at one of the races this summer, wont be racing myself till maybe Sept. (broken wrist).

Ed

Harlan Price said...

Yipeee!! Glad your coming back, but I'm scared!