5 Days of Great Riding

So now that I found the Havel Park and its glorious folds and mixed coniferus and deciduous rolls I have been trekking the 45 mins west to ride it (image). The route is quite nice, gently rolling along a well wooded autobahn so the affect is wind tunnel that easily drags me there with my top gear spun out. I have been riding a 42x19 single speed so top gear isnt exactly the same as with a 12 in the back (image). There is lots of water (image) on the route and it makes me want to get this floating boat I saw at a bike shop that you can mount your bike on and turn an underwater propeller with the cranks. The actual Havel park loop is 23 kilometers and its all double, single track or gravel (image). Today I ended up at Seeburg where there was a castle ruin made of big glacial till boulders that housed a gated old well. So i put in back to back 3 hour days at tempo and above riding out there, felt great. Sat and sunday i went to the nearer gruhn wald (images on former posts) and did some hill repeats sunday that I think set me up to feel good today and tomorrow...going to try and push a third day tomorrow of equal length but lower intensity if I can recover and eat enough tonight! I am stoked to be heading down to the hills next weekend and am going to try and taper off starting early next week, ride into the event Friday and have a night preride, recover saturday and eat, then throw down.

2 weeks of Great Rides...alone

Yep, I have had a busy schedule so been working rides in by commute and had a few long days. Posted a few rural pics and urban ones. One urban commute was back and fourth to Mauerpark to make music with some friends, so i was carrying my bizouki and bag. The urban rides tend to be fast-paced, so a 1 hour commute ride to maure park is like a 180 average speedplay ride. I took one over to Frankfurter Tor on the old east side to meet up with my buddy Alejandro and his wife Anja. It was a great ride and i drank so much coffee that I hardly recall the ride back! Had another ride out to the 1936 Olympic Village, which is now derrilict. On that ride I discovered a 20 or 30 kilometer dirt loop around a large hilly tract of land. Not bad for Berlin which is 90m above sea level.

100 km um den Hafensee

Had a beautiful solo ride this week around the havelsee, about 100km in all, right at 6 hours. felt great for 3.5 hours then had to go overland pace and grab some food. i brought a sandwich and ate it at 2 hours, but at 4 hours i had to hit up a little bakery for a 30 cent brotchen and was so tired that i could hardly chew my bread without my jaw cramping. it was great. i did drink plent of water, just got nicely fatigued.

this ride was my weekly long ride buildup to the 12 hour team event i am doing wih big wheel racing europe in western central germany, near france, in earlu august. i hit a high hr of 190 several times and held steady at 170 for three hours till dropping down to overland pace to finish up with a six hour average hr of 160. honestly, a little low, but next week will be better. Of course this was all 29er miles. cant imagine what it will be like when i finally get a road bike again!