Viernheim Triathlon – Bike Split Wars, Part Three

The imaginary duel

Out of the saddle in Viernheim

It’s been three races on three consecutive weekends lately and for my part I liked it a lot. The first weekend saw me outbike Timo Bracht, Faris Al Sultan and a few other pros at Frankfurt City Triathlon. On the second weekend I had a very promising race at the European Ironman 70.3 Champs in Wiesbaden finishing 6^th in my AG with a bike time that was just 2min slower than that of Faris al Sultan. Good for me, bad for him – he says he just is not in shape - yet. Yesterday saw me battling it out with Timo Bracht on the bike again at the Viernheim Olympic Triathlon… not that he knew anything about out “duel” though. It was the third of four races in the triathlon league I race in for my local team and we did quite well finishing 6^th on the day.

On the course
My day also went along quite nicely. After a 1.500m swim that seemed shorter (22:31min non wetsuit) we had to navigate some hills of the Odenwald mountains and tackle some descents that would rather have required a mountain bike than a TT bike. And as I don’t know these hills all too well I was overtaken on a descent for the first time in ages. I repassed the guys on the next uphill section though and slowly distanced them on the last flat 8k section back to T2. To my very surprise I was told that I was leading the league race entering T2. That lead though was not to last all too long as my teammate Florian Brosch passed me after only some 500 meters into the run to not to surrender that lead to anyone anymore. The run in Viernheim is a three lap thing and when I heard that the race leader Timo Bracht was about to finish his first lap when I had only reached the 1km mark it became clear that he had taken revenge for his defeat on the bike two weeks ago in Frankfurt. Not that he knew anything of this, though. He had not only outswum me by some four minutes, he had also outbiked my by another four minutes. At Frankfurt City Triathlon – a pancake flat 45k TT – I had had an advantage of more than a minute on him. Well seems it’s those extra 16lbs compared to Timo that I have to push up the hills that do make some difference after all- testament to this is the fact that my NP @ Viernheim was a massive 327 Watts which was not enough to get even close ti Timos time when I had outsplit him in Frankfurt with an NP of 307 watts.


With the race leader so far ahead and a three lap run course my mind was set on one thing from the beginning: “Just don't get lapped!”.

Trying very hard not to get lapped by Timo Bracht.

I tried very, very hard but just before I finished lap two he got me. I managed to call out to my spectating teammates something like “Bummer, I got lapped!” but then continued on my last lap. I ran about a minute faster than in Frankfurt just two weeks ago and was very pleased with being only 14min arrears of Timo Bracht and in 8th place and 2nd in my AG.

My AG podium M/F. Always a bummer when people can't stay for the awards!

 
The outlook

Thus, in my imaginary bike split war against Timo and Faris the standings going into Kona are: One each! We’ll see what we can do, come the big dance. Just kidding – it’ll be at least 20mins that they outbike me on the Big Island.

So long

Tim