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My trip to Deutschland started with a heart starting practical joke  from Reuben, upon crossing the border and pulling into a petrol station he said to me,

“you remembered to change your money to Deutschmarks didn’t you”
“No, should I have?” I replied.
“Oh no you stupid guy, how could you forget”

Needless to say much laughter was had at my expense, I now know they’re called Euros for a reason….

Anyway, after what I considered a short trip of 2hrs, compared to the other boys who considered a car trip of 2hr a horrible injustice and harldy worth it for a race, (and they want to come to Australia)

We stepped out into the car park in the town ship of Munster, a few tasteless Nazi jokes and a scolding from Mark our team manager later, we sat down to eat lunch.

As we ate we watched other teams pull up, there were teams from Denmark, Belgium, Serbia, Poland, Luxemburg, and Norway, despite all being in the same car park, each team seemed to keep to themselves, there was no mingling whatsoever, the dutch talked to the dutch, the german to the german, the serbs to the serbs.

That is until the Turkish national team pulled up, the natter of 5 different languages was broken when two Taragos pulled in, middle eastern music blaring, packed to the hilt with stuff, bikes tied on precariously on the back and on the roof, I watched in amazement as what looked to me to be 15 or so turks pile out of each car and walked around to each group and shake everyones hand individually, The arrival of the turks had certainly lightened up the place and sobered a few of the Belgians and Germans, who sat there in a fold out chair while their Mother or father ran around after them.

The course was a 4km loop, mostly flat, narrow, with a number of  tight turns and one hairpin turn after you came hurtling down from the highway overpass which hosted the days only KOM sprint, After the team presentation we had a team briefing, in Dutch, AND for me, English, Rollouts were checked by the tour officials and it was time to line up.

Lining up at a race like this is important, the situation needs to be  carefully be weighed up, warm up (which no dutch rider does anyway) or line up for at least 40 minutes beforehand, There will always be someone sitting waiting there at least an hour before hand, warm up well before hand and get as close to the front as possible to start. You may have done the most thorough warm up of your life, but if you start at the back, there is no hope for you, these races start fast and finish faster.

I managed to secure myself a good position mid pack, and surely enough, by the first turn we had already hit 50kms/h, although there were riders strung out for 300ms behind me, I still had 200ms of riders to contemplate in front of me, after 10 or soo laps, avoiding some crashes and some tricky manouvering involving cutting underneath riders through corners and cutting corners through front yards I was at the front, not to try and break away, as on a course like this I knew it was pointless, just to stay out of trouble… ive had enough crashes on this trip.

The Finish was fast, and with the slight downhill we were hitting 60+ every time, I finished in the bunch, happy to be upright, but a couple of my team mates had not been soo fortunate, Ruben, our team sprinter had broken his look 595 clean through the top tube, and Wouter had been given a leaking spare wheel and ended up loosing 7minutes.

We showered, ate, and left, everyone except me seemed to be in a bad mood, so kept to myself.

The next morning was the time trial, I knew I would struggle as I  havn’t really felt right and have been struggling a little for form since my crashes at Antwerp, between Antwerp and now I had managed to get a new bike through a friend in de-bilt, he has helped me out a lot, and for that im very thankful, The new bike was great, but as all new bikes do, needed a bit of tuning, the safety lips on the fork came off and after a few rides was riding great, The time trial was an interesting experience, from my interrupted warm up (due to a spoilt little dutch rider wanting his trainer back after I had made an agreement that I could warm up on it), to the time trial itself, I was riding my normal bike with no aero extensions and normal wheels, nevertheless I only lost 57 seconds on the leader which, considering the less than optimal circumstances, was ok.

Stage 3 had the first hill I had ridden in 2.5months, a cat 2 climb up through a forest and then a very fast open road descent down the other side, with 18 laps making up a total of 95kms, the opening laps presented some problems as the riders were hitting the narrow opening to the hill at full speed and as people tried to push past each other, they were becoming tangled at low speed and falling over, causing hold ups further on in the pack.

I knew one way to remedy this and moved up asap, with a few tricky manouvers and a little off roading I was at the front, unfortunately for me though, a couple of laps later I managed to get a german tangled in my handlebars and the resulting hold-up lost me about 80 positions in the pack, The break went and I was clawing my way back to the front, with 3 laps to go a Turkish rider crashed off the road on the open descent on the other side and I had one of those “I just saw someone die moments”.

Coming into the last lap the pack was chasing hard and by the finish had brought the break back to 10 seconds, I had a team-mate (jarno) claim 3rd on the line in the sprint and finished myself in the peleton, after that day we were down 2 riders and had only four left in the race, Ruben and Rutger had abandoned leaving just Jarno, Rogier, Wouter and myself, Jarno has had some good fortune and a bout of good form following his return from his trip to Canada with the dutch national team and was the highest ranked, in 11th followed by me in 48th.

Stage four was the mother of all stages, I know I keep saying this about every race I do here but I honestly believe I have now found the hardest race I have ever done, with 8 laps of 15kms making up a total distance of 120kms, this was the longest of the 3 road stages, not to mention the 2 category 1 climbs each lap we had to contend with, we started, at the usual pace of “fast as you can possibly go”, with riders drag racing each other to each corner, the first climb shook off about 1/3 of the peleton and each climb meant the end of the race for another 3 or 4 riders.

Each lap the bunch became smaller, as we drag raced each other through the small streets and up the steep, steep climbs.

In my head I was counting down the number of climbs left, and by the time we were half way through the race and I had only 8 category 1 climbs left I was completely shot, everything was hurting, the last 60kms of that race was the most pain I had ever been in my whole life, but, although my body and legs were completely shot, my ego, and not wanting the team see me give up kept me hanging onto the greatly reduced peleton, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, on the last climb the pace was put on to catch the early break away, the pack split and I ended up in the 2nd group, My group of 20 or so finished 20seconds down on the “peleton” of 30.

The race was dominated by Belgians, with every stage but the Time trial being won by a Belgian, which was won by a German, Jarno and I were the only two in the team to finish the tour, with Wouter pulling out with two laps to go and rogier falling outside the time limit for the stage. I finished 38th and Jarno 8th.

My next race is the Veenkolonian, the flattest, windiest, dirtiest classic in Holland, apparently its meant to be raining, woohoo!!
Anyway, keep the rubber side down (I managed this weekend), and ill see everyone soon, only 3 weeks left here.

Joe

http://www.sparkassen-muensterland-tour.de/ (tour website)