"Your vacation rental is of the exact same quality as
the one you had last year".... those were the last words
of our landlord....
A construction site with everything that goes with it + construction
workers at 7am and no heat... oh yeah, they must have built
the second bedroom around the bed.... it was tiny... and when
Stephan gasped for breath in the middle of the night, the
wooden cover for the curtain rod fell on his head....
Thank you Mr. Schmitz !
At least we kept amused by our ladies' gruelling decision
making process concerning their finger nail pasties :)
Other ladies even won medals ...
Sascha Bayer was awarded an even bigger medal...
At this point it was still extremely astonishing that Sascha
was an absolute newcomer at the German 4X Championship and
had only been riding his MTB for 2 months....
However, after coming in 9th in the preliminary, he made his
way through the quarter, to the semi and, to our astonishment,
into the final, where he emerged in 3rd place in the German
Championship....
Even we were mobbed by the press.....
Congratulations from all us Pirates!!
In the evening in the swamp of Willingen .....
the usual number of beers met their maker .....
And Mike had to sign his new sponsoring contract. :)
After losing the ability to communicate in our mother tongue,
we tried to assimilate ourselves to the surroundings....
and so we Pirates had a lot of fun in our little corner!!!
We're looking forward to next year!
Ron
Added
by Elvis:
Compared
to last year, the weather was almost grandiose.
In the beginning the temperature adjusted itself to around
57°F/14°C. Robert Karrasch made the top ten in the
small lap (35m/56,44km, 4442 vertical ft/1354hm), coming in
9th in the Masters division (2:15:20.5h), which made him 37th
place overall.
The tandem from the Black Forest with mit Jan Ramsperger came
in 120th on the medium lap (66.5m/107km, 9026 vertical ft/2751hm)
after 6:01:06.5h.
On the large lap (83m/134km and 11053 vertical ft/3365) Smits
Luc, "B-means up that hill", team Pirate Belgium
came in 6th in the Masters division (43rd overall).
Since my goals weren't that lofty, I attempted to place within
the first half. I crossed the finish line of the small lap
in the Masters division after 3:16:13.6h (my buddy Karrasch
had already showered) and in 127th place. That's 437 overall.
So, I just missed my goal. I just would have had to have been
3min faster in the Masters division or 6min overall.
I ended up being pretty unhappy though, because I wasn't even
all that beat after having finished the race, so I actually
could have gone faster.
This gives me hope that I will be able to move up to the front
alittle on similar tracks.
Let's see what the next marathon in Neuhaus in Thüringen will
bring.
Bye,
Martin