New Uniforms are here!

So… after waiting for awhile, the new uniforms are here. Done fantastically by our friend and sponsor Biciclista.it they look great!

I’ll try to add a couple more photos tonight when I have time. I’ll also be starting to pack them up and ship them off to all the members.

Follow Phil at the Divide!

For all people interested in the wanderings of Phil in the new world, here some links:

http://tourdivide.org/

The tracklogs:

http://trackleaders.com/tourdivide

A forum thread with some pics and the start vid:

http://www.bikepacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,836.80.html

That for a starter, later more on his position in the race!

IXS SWISS BIKE CLASSIC #2 – Estavayer

Rider: Mat Haussener, Switzerland
1 big Loop, 60 km, Average Speed: 23.66 km/h
3th Place, 50sec behind winner of age category
31th Place overall, 16min 47sec behind winner Christoph Sauser

Hey, I was glad to be on the podium!

The first two guys were always in reach, but I was not able to close the gap alone on this superfast course.

After a poor start I was always in a group racing for 3rd. I felt so good and my legs where turning pretty well.
Not like Monte Generoso Marathon last weekend where I reached 7. place after 3 flat tires I had absolutely no problems with the bike here.
About 20km before we reached the finish line a thunderstorm made us wet and of course the downhill sections very slippery.
The last view kilometers were the fastest of all. With my Superfly and good legs I could break away from the group and reached the finishline alone.

24 Hours of Finale 2010, my report… Michael

The Freaks come out at night

So, there’s this race…. it’s called the 24 Hours of Finale. For me, it’s about a 7-9 hour drive from München/Munich to the shores of the Mediterranean a few short kilometers from France and worth every second of it. The region is called Ligure and the town is called Finale Ligure. If you ever want to see a beautiful part of the world and ride on a really great course, this one is for you. On the way there you go through a beautiful mountainous region of Switzerland where they speak Switzer Deutsch on one side of the tunnel and Italian on the other side. A rather bizarre thing that harkens back to the days when people couldn’t go through a tunnel to go from one side of the mountain to the other.

Most of the Los Lobos

We put together a 4 person team made up of two current BWR Europe members (Andre’ & myself) and two non-BWR Europe members (Theran & Christian). Unfortunately, a week or so before the race, Christian ended up in the hospital with some sort of infection and couldn’t race, of course. When we hit Finale, in fact, up until the rest of the team finished registering on Saturday morning, we didn’t know that we were going to have a replacement for Christian. Lucky us though, Steffan joined us to be our fourth man. As it turned out, he was a great addition to the four-some!

Man.... this is steep!

The race for us team folks started in the Plaza of Finale. For the solos, it was the now well-known LeMans run. However, that also had a twist (it was extra long). I was the ‘Start’ guy for our team, maybe not the best of ideas, but it happened. I’d been fighting my rear tire to keep it aired up as tubeless for a couple of weeks and it haunted me. I had to finish the short lap instead of doing the long version and seemingly lost a lap or two instead of getting the 2 that we were supposed to have been given for doing the climb and a lap.

After that, Andre, Steffan & Theran went in succession. The heat took it’s toll quickly as we’re all from Germany and Switzerland where it’s been nearly winter temps and raining for months. The 30 C temps wore me out for sure and I know that the other guys were feeling it as well. So, we went from doing two laps each to one until it cooled down. After that, everything went smoothly until both Steffan and Theran managed to break their light mounts (both repaired with the help of duct tape & zip-ties). The good times continued throughout after that.

I loved my night laps as did everyone else. It was cool and beautiful out. Plus, as the hours wore on, fewer and fewer people were on the course. In the middle of the night you could nearly go a whole lap without seeing anyone. Strange as there were, in theory, up to 500 people on the course at any given time.

In the end, we somehow lost a couple of laps due to scoring errors and what I have now figured out…. I had 414A while the rest of my team had 415B-D. Odd that none of us noticed it the entire time that we were racing either.

Steffen riding through

Thanks to the guys for helping me have a great weekend! Unfortunately, I never caught Theran on film. I might have to see if I can steal a photo from elsewhere to add to this post.

The course is not easy but at the same time I wouldn’t classify it as easy by any means either. Our gear might say otherwise though. I broke my frame on the last lap and Andre’ realized a couple of days after the race that something was wrong with his frame as well. Turns out his was broken as well. Mine is on it’s way back to Black Sheep to be fixed or replaced and I believe that Andre’s Niner will be heading in to be warrantied too.

Right behind the head tube is a big crack

Oops

Next year, I am considering doing this race solo. We’ll see how this turns out as it comes closer to being reality.
Thanks to Supernova for the lights, Geax for the tires, Carbo Rocket, Biciclista, FRM, Chris King, Specialized, Sock Guy, Singlespeed.nl, Independent Fabrications, Crema Cycles as they all made the racing that much thought free and fun.

Lowlands Racing

June will be racing month here in Holland, at least, for me!

After the Euros in the UK (sorry, ‘forgot’ to do a proper write up for that, but I wasn’t first and there were lots of sheep involved) it was a little slow at the racing front, very busy doing what I like second best, and also less riding as I hoped..

After a nice tour ride last Saturday, topped of with a Alley cat in hilly Arnhem, last Wednesday was the first race in our annual local pre-summer competition, and it was fun as always. I got in third of the non licence riders, after a steady first place in the last years races. To bad, but still it was a great race. Short lap, but some nice technical parts, steady climbing (ask Singular Sam, Holland is not flat 🙂 ).

This Sunday we will have one of our Bergraces again, the course that was used for the 2005 Euros singlespeed, with lots of climbing, some very nice stairs (one walking up, one flying down!!) and lots of enthousiastic people cheering the riders. Weather looks like a friendly 23 degree sunny day, so perfect for some biking fun!