Even though I had been to the island five times before, 2013 was the first time that saw me “working” as a tour guide. Generously, Arne Dyck of triathlon-szene.de had taken me aboard as the guide for the fast bike group of his two week training camp. We had some 80 athletes stay with us in those two weeks and especially the first week was a blast. We flew over to the island and in this one two hour flight left winter behind for good. For the first four days we could not spot one cloud in the sky and some of us got severely sun-burned. “My crew” in camp week one as we came to call it followed the “Pink Zebra”, my soon to be replaced 2004 ABG-made Merlin Fortius. “Pink Zebra” was the bikes code name in camp this year as it was pink zebra style with a Pretty & Strong hub set from Chris King (http://chrisking.com/prettyandstrong ) as well as some pink tires, cable housing and zebra style handle bar tape and saddle.
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The regulars in Group 1 from left to right: Seven, Steffen, flo, Ralf, me & Peter
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This “beautiful” bike lured a group of around six to eight riders into riding with me during camp and it seems they seemed to enjoy it quite a lot. We had some serious fun chit-chatting about just about every tri or bike related topic you could imagine as well as other topics that are not quite fit to be made public here. Sadly, not everyone could stay for the whole two weeks and so we had to let them go. Thanks Peter, Ralf and Steffen for the fun… and the massage voucher which I made good use of on the second rest day. As they were Tims Ex Team I thought it only fair to hand each of them a small good bye goodie from TIMEX. They really laughed at that! The second week then presented a real challenge in the form of a new guest: Markus O. I had already been told that he’d arrive in shape as he’s taken some down time from his job in investment banking and put some energy in a good race at Challenge Roth this summer. In addition to Markus three other guys were added to our group and so there was some new and fit legs among us. Arne had told me beforehand that Markus would bring a competitive edge to the rides and even though succeeded in taming the dynamics of the group most of the times we still attacked the longer hills “every man for himself” to wait at the top. Markus and I then tackeled the longest climb on the island together. And just as I was told, is was quite an event. I averaged 303 Watts for 48min climbs which saw me arriving a the top only 20sec after Markus. Cudos to him! Regrettably the second half of camp week two was dominated by bad weather and we had adjust our rides accordingly.
Still, over the two weeks Seven, the most consistent rider in my group and I got in just under 1.500km in on the bike. And just when I considered another 30k loop around the hotel in really wet conditions I received a sign: Just 50 meters before we reached the hotel I got the first flat of the whole camp. Right then and there with a big smile on my face I called it a day or rather a “camp”.
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The first flat after 1.470km right in front of our hotel.
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