Murphy´s law.
Submitted by Christian on Thu, 04/12/2012 - 19:32
„Anything that can go wrong will go wrong“. Normally I do not believe in such small minded phrases, but after my last 3 weeks I am not quite sure anymore. The happenings of the last three weeks finally lead to my first race cancellation ever. I will not be able to start my season with the half Challenge Fuerteventura race this weekend.
It began with a weak phase after a really good block of training about three weeks ago. I felt powerless and had some easy day´s to get going again. It did not made me especially nervous because I thought it was just the result of the good and hard training during the last weeks. But then I got a really nasty influenza in the beginning of last week which explained the weakness the days before. I had some days off because of fever but felt much better at the end of last week. I had quite a good block of training during the Easter weekend but everything culminated in a surgery on Monday because of an ugly abscess. I thought I was rid of that problems but apparently I was wrong. I hope that it heals fast and that I can catch up with the training really soon, but my season kick of has to wait some weeks.
Right now my wife and my daughter have a nice time with a stomach flu. It´s going to be interesting to see what the next couple of days will bring…
But after all I am an optimist and sure that I´m back racing quite soon!
Gran Canaria Training Camp
Submitted by Christian on Sun, 02/05/2012 - 21:18
I had some weeks off after Ironman Arizona which I mostly spend with my family, I started to built into the training again. The conditions were great at home in Rostock all winter long, so far. It has been between 5 °C and 10 °C all December and most of January. But last week it suddenly started to get really cold. That was about the right time to leave the sinking ship and take a flight somewhere warmer. Team TBB has been training on the Island of Gran Canaria all winter long. So I booked my flight and here I am now. I arrived on Monday and it has been 22-24° and sunny every day. Just perfect conditions to collect some miles on the bike in the middle of the European winter. The island is much greener than the most popular training Islands Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, but for sure as windy and anything but flat. I´m a fan of statistics: just in the first 4 days I had more than 5500m of elevation, which is about the same I had in camp in Switzerland in the first week! Some champions already have been made here. Natascha Badman prepared for all of her Hawaii wins here and we´ve seen Fabian Cancelara the other day. So it´s just perfect for team TBB training! I´m looking forward to some more weeks of excellent training on Gran Canaria and hopefully the ice age is over in Germany when I´m flying back home ;-). Some pictures coming soon.
Cobb saddles and 2XU bike pants, truly the best combination ever!
Submitted by Christian on Sat, 01/21/2012 - 20:53
Now after I have been riding this combination for nearly one year and much more than 15000km I´m absolutely sure, that I´ve never had a better combination of bike pants and saddle. I can say that because I had some serious seat issues during the last 3years. Tried uncountable different saddles and different bike pants but it got worse and worse. The only advantage of that seat issues were that my surgeon and me became good friends and I´m an expert concerning the different kind of saddles and bike pants now…
I´m not quite sure, but I think I´ve seen the operating table at least 5 times beginning in summer 2009, when I firstly had that issues, to the end of 2010. It destroyed a lot of races for me and I am really happy that it´s over now!
Thank you so much! John Cobb for building these great saddles and 2XU for that extraordinary bike pants!
Happy new year!
Submitted by Christian on Sun, 01/01/2012 - 21:14
I hope that everyone had a great start into the new year 2012 which will be another challenging and for sure successful season.
Thanks a lot to my sponsors who made this fantastic season possible. My 7th place at Lanzarote, 3rd place at aronamen, second victory at Ostseeman, 3rd place in cologne and last but not least the Ironman Arizona were I learned a lot more than in every other race. Not everything went perfect last year and therefore I´m more than motivated to improve that in the coming season!
Christmas in Norway
Submitted by Christian on Wed, 12/21/2011 - 21:59
This year I spend the time before Christmas with my family in Norway. We´ve been doing a lot of cross country skiing in the wonderful mountain area near beitostölen. And it is really great to play and sled with my childs in the 1m high snow! And extremely exhausting too ;-). Today we invented a new sport we called “childcurling” where there is a child on a sled which you have to push as far as possible over the ice ;-). Big fun for everyone!
And concerning the training I can just say that cross country skiing is a fantastic alternative to the swimming biking and running we all are used to! It´s very exhausting and challenges every single muscle!
I wish everyone a merry Christmas and a happy new year!
Darß relay Marathon
Submitted by Christian on Mon, 10/31/2011 - 21:21
Last weekend besides Hawaii ;-) another fantastic sports event took place quite close to my home town Rostock, the Darß relay marathon. Up to eight people can run the 42,2km on the 5,25k loops. The trail is a challenging one with for example a some hundred metre beach passage in very soft sand and the rest is a typpically north german trail in the coastal forest. It has become a tradition that I´m running with the team of my father in law and some of his friends. Since we are just seven persons one has to run twice and that is normally me. This time I could integrate the team marathon very good in my training since the programe at sunday was a long run with a hard beginning and hard last 5k. So ran in 3rd position in the team, did a 20k easy run right after my first finish and had to be back in time to do the last of 8 loops for my team fast again. It was a little bit of a surprise that my second run was much better than my first one even though it was already km 25 to 30. With a 2:59 Marathon we took the 6th place overall behind amongst others two teams of my triathlon club “TC FiKo Rostock” who took the first and second place with impressive 2:33/2:38 on that hard course! Its always a nice experience to participate at the relay marathon, because it’s a real team event in contrast to the very “egoistic” triathlon sport ;-). So the preparation is running very well and I´m looking forward to my next race which will be Ironman Arizona in November!
Podium in Cologne
Submitted by Christian on Mon, 09/12/2011 - 20:16
I recovered much faster from Ostseeman than expected. Therefor I decided just 10 days before the race to do the German Iron Distance Champs in Cologne only 4 weeks after my victory in Glücksburg. It turned out to be the best decission I made in that week J!
It was a wonderfull weekend with my team mates Diana, Georg, Per and our coach/supporter/man for everything Jo Spindler.
Now about one week after the race I sit in front of my PC with some head ache and a nice little cold and try to type a race report. Not that easy when the thou ghts vanish before I´m able to write them down…
One could say we had kind of a teamTBB Germany Familymeeting in Cologne, since all the german members of the team showed up there. Georg Diana and me did live in the same apartement in Leysin training camp. It was really nice to see both of them again after some weeks and when you feel good it´s easyer to push yourself to the limits in a competition.
Therefore I´m not going to give a boring d etailed race report this time. Once again I learned some lessons for the future. The most important is as easy as: the race is over at the finish line! I had a really hard time from km 17 to 28 in the marathon and was just before quiting the race (which would have been my first DNF) since I was dizzy and feelt nausea. After thinking about the reasons I realized that the aid stations were very close to each other. Actually nearly every km and I just had to much nutrition in my stomach! After I droped some aid stations I feelt so much better and I made my way to the podium with the fastest run split of the day on a wonderful weekend in cologne! Thank´s so much!
Thanks for the fotos (www.dah-foto.de)
