The race went well until the end, where it didn’t go as planned. Lined up with 350+ racers for the 87km race inside the Munich Olympic stadium. The pace from the gun was high, indicative of the flat race ahead. We raced through the city for a few kilometers until we hit the dirt/gravel bike path following a river. At one point in the city, a polizei car in front of us just stopped in the middle, giving riders only a few meters on either side to pass. This almost caused serious carnage, and as guys went around, they would slap the car, knocked the side mirrors in, and cursed, shocking how little respected the polizei seem to be.
I worked my way up through the field, pulling sometimes more than I should have, but once I yelled at a few of the BMW team guys who had found a home on my wheel, they seemed more than happy to continue the pace setting. Only one short climb before we made it back to Olympia Park, where a number of short punchy climbs awaited. We finished a maze around the park, utilizing I think every sidewalk/bike path in the area, then shot us back into the stadium. This is where things went wrong.
Apparently at that point, we were around 82 kilometers, with 5 or so to go. At the entrance stood a post with a little sign indicating left blahblahblah, and right something “runde”, or lap. I figured right meant for the second lap, or second time, and to back up my belief, I followed a guy I had been working with to the left. WRONG! Around the track we went as 400m sprinters through the finish line. Within seconds kids were cutting off the transponder from the bike, time had stopped, end of the race, disqualified.
Originally I wasn’t mentioned in the results, but yesterday I magically appeared in 95th with a time of 2:50. Based on my calculations of distance left, other people’s results who I had been working with, I would say my finish time would be closer to 2:44ish, just inside the top 50, about 14 minutes off the winner’s time. Cramps were starting to set in, and you had to carry your bike up the stairs and out of the stadium for the last 5k, so that might have changed things as well.
The food spread at the end was remarkable, from giant pretzels, sandwiches, cobbler, Weizen beer (alcohol free), crumb cake, fruits and so on. This is the first time I had to pay for parking at a race, 3.50 euro.
I mounted a set of Geax Barro Race’s (foldables) on my yellow taped Stan’s 355 rims the day before the race. They mounted very easily, and they performed flawlessly in the race. Great rolling resistance for hard-packed/gravel and cornered suprisingly well on sketchy brick paths. Traction was good on the one grassy windmill climb, never slipping. I see myself racing these even in the mountains. Very light, on par with the Crows, but better cornering. And they did not roll off the rim.
Weekend looks like a front end ride, 10k running race, back end ride on sat, then something long with hills on sunday. Temps in the 70’s for the weekend.
We should put this up on the BWR site. If you want to copy the HTML and send it to me, I can post it for you. Nice writeup.
[...] Here’s a link to Justin Koppas post about CBM too. [...]