Rhein-Ahr Triathlon, Remagen – Man, am I done!

The Bridge at Remagen MEmorial Plate

It was the weekend of my 40^th birthday. In a way that says it all: Thee birthday party on Friday night set the tone for the rest of the weekend. This weekend also included our last league race of the season at Rhein-Ahr Triathlon in Remagen on Sunday. You might have guessed that such a party does not end at 12pm. So when I finally got home in the early hours of Saturday morning only to get up again at 8:15am to hand the location back over to the manager I was quite done. The rest of Saturday saw me in "zombie mode" going through the motions of getting back home and setting up race gear. Team mate Jörn Gabler came down Saturday night from Marburg to take the Stutzer shuttle to the race venue some 200k away. The shuttle had to leave at 5:45am on race morning. You see, everything was set for a great race. Everything? No, not everything, it was getting even better! We had agreed to meet at the race venue at 8am and at 7:51am I received a text message from our fifth athlete that he was ill and had to pull out of the race. That very early notification left the four of us a little bummed. But what could we do but our best?

It was my first time racing Rhein-Ahr-Triathlon that took us to a quite historic site: The swim exit there is right at the bridgehead of what used to be the Bridge at Remagen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludendorff_Bridge), site of a fierce battle in WW II for the last bridge still standing across the Rhine when the allied forces reached the river.

Talking about the swim exit at the bridgehead means that the swim took place in Germany’s largest river: the Rhine. With quite a lot of rain in the days leading up to the race the river was flowing quite fast. So the ferry we would jump from took us upriver for some 3,5km to accommodate for the current. We had been warned that everyone who did not stay on the shore side of the buoys would be disqualified – no quarter given! There is a lot of ship traffic on the river and thus too much danger involved. Still, swimming in a larger group of athletes lead to me fumble at navigation a bit. So when looked up when approaching the first buoy I had to veer to the right to take it on the inside. What would have not been a problem at all without a current but proved almost impossible with the river flowing at ~7kph. This lead me to neither pass the buoy on the right nor the left. I hit the buoy straight on! Right there and then I felt the current for the first time in its full force I was pushed under water and quite some difficulty grabbing the net holding the buoy to get my head out of the water again. This split second felt like ages but obviously was not enough for a panic attack to hit. Nonetheless from now on I took to the far side of the buoys with a lot of space to spare. Even if the current was much stronger in the middle of the river, that was not worth the risk. I hit the shore after only 19min of swimming and was up the ramp and at my bike first of our team. Still this was a Kona rehearsal and so I put on socks and road cycling shoes instead of no socks and triathlon cycling shoes. This took a while and so two of my team mates caught up to me when I exited T1. Jörn dropped back almost immediately due to some back issues – it was not the best day for our team that day! But Alex stayed with me for some time until we passed a group of athletes and he for whatever reason stayed behind and lost about 1:30min. I played the usual catch up game. After riding through the field at three races I knew who to look for in order to figure out my position in the field. And when I passed the usual suspects for leading the league with about 15k to go, I knew that at least the bike ride today was a good one. I put the pedal to the metal for the final 8k and reached T2 five minutes after the leader, pro athlete Markus Fachbach. Yet, his wave had started five minutes before me so that made it look even better for the bike. Nonetheless the race for the runners was now on. And as the 2^nd Ferderal League guys of the wave before us usually do drafting races they can run! And run fast! So one guy after the other passed me. I noticed only two guys competing in my league though and so was quite contend with the run, too. And even if those fast runners passed me they still had to make up 5min in order to get back what I had taken out of their lead from their head start. I was waiting for Alex to pass me on the run all the time but he did not. Even at the last turnaround he had at least a 1min deficit and so I came in first of our team. Still I ended up fading badly on the last of the three run laps but I was just dead tired. In the end Alex and I were separated by only 40sec. I finished 3^rd in our league, a good 15^th overall and 2^nd in my new AG (http://www.triteam-sinzig.de/tri2013/ergebnis2013.pdf). And yes, even though the bike time included my donning of socks and road cycling shoes I still had the fastest bike time overall (http://tpks.ws/DpiE)!

Regrettably Jörn had a bad day and Oliver’s day was even worse: For whatever reason he had to throw up three times on the bike already and almost pulled out of the race. In the end though he persevered and so the minimum number of four athletes of our team finished.

 

For me the race concluded my rest week before the last two week block of big hours before leaving for Kona on Oct. 2nd. And man, was I tired Sunday night. In bed at 9pm I was fast asleep no 5min leter!

Kona is next and so it's time to evaluate the shape I am in:

The outlook for Kona is great regarding the swim and bike. The bummer though is my right foot - not "My left Left Foot, that'S one great movie! - which aches. This being my third foot issue of the year means the inevitable: I am 40!