all along the river danube….

last Saturday (July 11), 2 friends of mine and myself cycled from Passau (Germany) to Vienna.
It’s a very popular tour among hobby cyclists, as it follows the river Danube all along the way, and there are quite a few places that are worth visiting along the route – like the Abbey of Melf, the Wachau Valley with Dürnstein, and of course Vienna.

Normally, riders take 4-5 days to get from Passau to Vienna, not only because they are visiting some sights along the river, but simply because most don’t want to cycle more than 60-70km per day.

But as we are a bit crazy, we decided to do the ride in approx. 12hrs – just for the fun of it.

so here’s the details:
Passau – Vienna: 321km
time in the saddle: 10h31min
time Passau > Vienna (incl. 2 breaks): 12h7min
avg. speed (net): 30.6km/h

VDO Z3 data:

route:

yes it’s summer, the only problem – so far the weather in Austria doesn’t act like summer.

it’s been raining almost all week, most of the rivers are flooded, some parts of Austria are hit by floodings and the weather forcast for the next days doesn’t really sound any better.

so this week has been a very lazy cycling week > no cycling at all so far.

on Saturday I am going to Kärnten for one week, for my summer vacations.
on Sunday I am starting at the “Kärtner Seenradmarathon” an do the 103km tour > some 3hrs of cycling.

the rest of the week I’ll probaby leave the bike in the garage…it’s vaction time after all.

next cycling plans:
July 11: Passau – Vienna (approx. 320km)
start aroung 6am and hope to arrive in Vienna some 12hrs later (together with two friends)

and I’ve just signed up for the 24hrs race in Fohnsdorf on August 15/16

for the rest of the year – no plans yet….

I am using my SE Xperia X1 for quite some time now and always try to get some useful software.

As I am using twitter quite often to keep up to date with friend and colleagues, I now tried to find an application for my X1 (running on windows mobile 6.1)as well.

With Twikini from TrinketSoftware I think I found what I was looking for. As far as I could test it for the last couple of days, twikini seems to be ideal for using twitter on the go.

some screenshots:

images by TrinketSoftware

Last saturday the Kraftwerktrophy 2009 was staged in Vienna – a 12h bicycle race for solo riders and 3-man teams.

My personal goal was to hit the 300km mark which i reached – I cycled 325km. actually i could have cycled more, but after 240km I became a bit lazy…

The event itself was amazing – perfectly organized, perfect weather, not too hot, sun all day but a bit too much wind.

With Jure Robic (4 times Race Across America winner), probably the best Ultra-Cyclist in the world at the moment, the event also had a very prominent starter and a well deserved winner.
Jure, who took the Kraftwerktrophy as a good training unit for the RAAM which is starting in 3 weeks, cycled some amazing 498km and was oly beat by a 3-man team, which cycled 504km, one round more than Jure.
all other teams, and of course solo starters, finished behind Jure Robic – simply amazing…

For me personally, the race started pretty badly – I went to the start-line and saw that my rear tyre was punctured. not a good start with 5minutes to the actual start.
so i went to the official race mechanic, and Robert (thanks again, even though you won’t read it here), fixed my tyre in an astounding sub-4-minutes.
the start flag was just lifted when I jumped over the fences and hit the road with only 200m behind the big peleton.

the rest of the race went pretty well – the first 240km were amazingly easy and i was very positive on going more than 300km. then, however, i started to get cramps in my left leg and i had to take it a bit easy. another problem was that i was there alone, so i dind’t have anybody to hand my fresh water bottles or anything to eat.
so i had to get off the bike myself, which also meant that i was losing the group i was cycling in…

with 75 minutes still to go, i had cycled 293km and i knew that the 300km wouldn’t be a problem. at the finish line my odometer showed 327,8km, the official report states 324,8km.

it was a fantastic weekend and a perfect event – looking forward to my next 12h race in 2 1/2 weeks, this time in Salzburg on the Salzburgring.

The first race is over – I wasn’t the last man standing, but neither was I the first one down…

April 25, 2009 – Vienna, Cyclodrom
the weather was great, the sun was shining the sky was blue, but the wind was a devil with up to 50km/h.
The race started at 09.10am and the goal was to cycle as many kilimeters as possible within the next 12hrs.
the course was fairly easy, 1.5km with no climbs.

my goal was set at a minimum of 250km, but i hoped for close to 300km.
pretty soon i realized that the wind will be a main player and that 300km will be pretty hard to achieve. even more so as I was riding 44:16 fixed, which was too slow for the tail-wind section and almost too hard for the head-wind.
also, most of the other rides rode on singlespeed bikes, so they were able to rest there legs at least for a couple of meters…

so most of the time i rode alone, which worked pretty well for me. after about 5 hrs i had some 130kms and I knew that 250km is going to be no problem.
after 10h40min I had 251.35km on my speedometer. this was what I had hoped for…
so I decided to let it be, and headed back home, and sepnt the rest of the eveneing with my family…

my guess is taht 275 to 280km would have been possible if i had continued to the end.
251.35km is ok, but compared to the 404km the winner had on his odometer, I guess it’s a poor performance.

still, now I know that the next race, the Kraftwerktrophy, should go pretty well – 300km shouldn’t be a problem then. now I only have to decide if i do the Kraftwerktrophy with my roadbie or with the Singlespeed once again….

just going up a bit

catch me, if you can (actually the could and did quite often…)

just me…

the “new” year is already an old one, and with the winter we’ve had here in Austria, it’s a wonder people are already thinking about cycling….when i look outta my office window i can see the Nordkette (mountain range) and it’s still covered by snow – so it would almost be more fun to take the skis out again and head for the mountain tops…

anyway, next week i’ll start at the first “race” of the year – a 12h Fixie & Singlespeed race in Vienna. It’s gonna be fun, or as much fun as you can get when 65 Singlespeeders are curving around a 1.5km round. But i take it as a training, at the very best. The Last man Standing 09 will show me where i stand and if it makes any sense to start with the singlespeed also at the Kraftwerktrophy 2009 which will be held in late May, also in Vienna.

h2o shirt design

Originally uploaded by stetre76
for sale

feel thirst….

the cycling season is over, at least for me…

2008 started off pretty good, the Kraftwerktrophy in May was fun, even though I couldn’t reach my personal goal of 500km.

the next 24h race was less fun – in Grieskirchen we were supposed as a 2-men team – the problem was that my colleague had to cancel the night before the race >>> I “had to” cycle on my own. As Grieskirchen is not the easiest 24h race (at least in my eyes), my expectations were pretty low. so was I was pretty happy that after 24hrs I wasn’t last in the Team category (2-men team), but that there was another team still behind me, and they did cycle as a team…

the last 24h race for the year was the Kainachtal Trophy in Styria. I was really looking forward to this one, and I thought that I was in good shape. Well, for the first 200km I really was in good shape – but then my pulse dropped below 130, even on the short climb. As I normally ride with a quite hight pulse I was afraid that something was wrong. I quit the race and went back home the very night (Saturday) – and it was the right decision. On Sunday I was lying in bed, with a ore thraot an a fever…

For the last 2 weeks I haven’t doneanything – except eat and enjoy life

next week I am on a business trip, but after my return i plan to start to train again (i am on my fixie everyday anyway, but start on the Ergo again). well, at least what I call training…

May 24/25, Donnerskirchen, Austria – the Kraftwerktrophy, a 24h cycling race is taking place.

my personal goal was to cycle 500km, in the end I did 453km – not the best result, but considering that I was cycling on my own for more than 85% of the race, I think that’s ok.
I finished 18th (out of 24), so not the most spectacular result, but still not last…

a cool summary with plenty of photos can be found here

bad weather, but still cycling….

this was taken during the T-Mobile Mountain Challenge in (August) 2005. It was a cycling-race for amateurs during one of the stages of the Deutschland-Tour
the route brought us up to Kühtai (Tyrol, Austria) at 2.020m and as you can see, the weather was really bad (2°C and rain/snow)
during the interview they told me that the Pro-riders weren’t coming up to Kühtai, because it was too cold for them – well at least we had to cycle up there….