2012 Munich City Bike Marathon is in the bag

Just after the neutral start

As in every year for the last 5 or so, I went and participated in the Munich City Bike Marathon. It’s always my first race of the season and even though I usually end the race wondering why in the world I go, come January of each year I start chomping at the bit to sign up again.

The map for 2012

“Normally” (there’s nothing normal about this race), it’s in the 90 km range and it only has 120 vertical meters or so of climbing but this years due to tree work and an event following the race they shortened the course by 25 km down to 65 km. Well, that is until it started raining anyway.

The race starts and ends at the Munich Olympic Park and the last 5 km or so are run inside the park grounds. Some of that, mostly climbing and descending is done on cobblestones. If you’ve never ridden cobblestones, you should. They’re bumpy as hell and when wet, you might as well be on ice, especially if there’s any hint of mud in the county. In any case, they knocked off another 3.5 km because of the rain. Therefore, the race ended up being 61 km and change. Also, they not only shortened the race but they moved the start to 7:15 in the morning. Ugh. Nothing like having to get up at 5:00 and try to get to a race which starts early but to also start without a warmup and to have it raining…. needless to say, it didn’t start well.

Topping the little hill

Unfortunately for me, I could have used the extra 30 km this year. I’ve been training for the Tour Divide Race so I’ve got a lot of miles in my legs for 2012. In face, I checked today and I’ve already hit 1600 km (not counting the 2-4 times a week we hit spin class in the Winter too) for 2012. Anyway, the distance wasn’t the problem by any means.

The race starts with a “neutral” start which takes the racers across town to the Isar River. It’s really anything but neutral as most people are already jockeying for position to keep from getting stuck behind the slow riders. I got stuck behind a bunch of the riders from the 2nd start and ended up one of the last to leave from my group. I made it to the river, and about 2 km up the river before the motorcycles from the 2nd start group caught and passed me.

I spent the rest of the race pretty much riding alone. For the next 25 km I felt terrible. My heart rate was all over the place and my stomach and legs were anything but happy. It wasn’t until we hit the mid-point of the race by the Alliance Arena (where Bayern München plays soccer) that I started to feel civil again. Suddenly, I started to feel like I had some power in my legs and felt semi-civil again. Coincidentally, that’s about the same time that a lot of the people that had passed me previously started to slow down. I started passing people left and right from there to the finish. Like I said… I wish that I’d had the extra kilometers as I’d have probably managed a much better finish than I had.

This year was the first year that the weather has ever been anything but nice. It was probably part of my early issues both because of being chilly at the start with no warm up but also because I had to wear a rain jacket which then cause me to overheat a bit (for me, that’s usually worse than the cold). In the end I finished 25th in my class at 2:10:04. The winner of my class finished almost a half an hour ahead of of me and he’s 8 years older (58 years old!).

Tegernseer Marathon ’08

The only photos of the event where I look like I’m moving more than about 4 km/hour. The above were taken by Sportograf.de and the ones below were taken by Kera. A few other photos can be found here and here.

Last Sunday I ‘participated’ in the Tegernseer Marathon 2008 version and did the C route. That means 65 kilometers with 2.483 meters (8,146′) of climbing. I say participating because my performance didn’t warrant the term racing.

I hadn’t signed up in advance so I missed out on the really cool ClimaCool Adidas running shirt that they give the other racers or ‘participants’. I did get a few goodies in my bag though. I got 2 Powergels and a Chocolate Harvestbar (the only Powerbar that I can bear to put in my mouth) and one of the regular extruded (Soylent Green-like bar). The regular ones are just too similar to 10 year old toothpaste or Soylent Green to me.

After riding (mostly) a well laid-out course with a lot of up and the only down being sloppy-rugged singletrack, I was pretty beaten up. Quite a few riders would come up to me after the long 30 minute downhills and congratulate me on doing it with a rigid fork. It was kind of funny. On the last downhill I’d finally decided that this wasn’t either A) fun anymore or B) funny at all. Luckily, just past that, I hit what amounted to the last few kilomoters of the course. The back side of Walburg will look familiar to some of you as you saw photos of it when we went sledding with our friends back in the winter. See below or here or here. Oh… as a side note, there are a lot of rocks under that snow which I found on the way down in the race.

In the end, I finished 73rd in my category and 241st overall for the ‘C’ course in 5:20:06.02. It probably goes down as one of my worst races in recent memory even considering my abysmal performance thus far this year. I’m not really sure what’s going on with me other than not enough training. I just can’t seem to get jump-started at the beginning of each race. It’s actually becoming fairly frustrating in spite of the fact that I feel stronger each week but I just seem to keep falling further and further behind in results.

On a lighter note: one thing that I can often say about events here in Europe is how well organized they are. I suppose when you’ve got the population of a small American city racing (think between 1500 and 2500 racers) you kind of have to be well prepared. At the Start/Finish area this past weekend there was a small expo area, food, beer, etc. There’s almost always an official MC to announce incoming riders and keep the crowd entertained throughout the day. Along with that there is music and sometimes a DJ. Out on the course, there are a lot of volunteers at key places with food (bananas, Powerbars and chocolate) along with water, Coke and some sort of sport drink. At one point on the course, they actually had a bike wash where, while I was drinking and eating a bit, a young girl was washing my bike to remove of the massive amounts of mud that had collected.

So… I just want to thanks to Ergon for making great gloves, one of these days I’ll get around to putting some Ergon grips on my Curtlo.. It’d sure help. I’ve got the GP1’s on my Black Sheep and they’ve become one of my best riding buddies. Also, I was running Maxxis Ignitor tires which never ever slipped on even the muddiest and wettest of rocks and as soon as I was out of the mud shed it quickly. Hopefully, one day I’ll be able to get ahold of some of the other sponsors products, but I’m happy with what I’ve got at this point. Thanks again to our team sponsors.