Long bike ride

After Rennsteig, I’ve got to do some crash training in order to get ready for Vätternrundan.

My running has been greatly reduced, basically I’m only going for a run when I don’t have enough time – riding less than an hour doesn’t make much sense. I’ve gotten a few runs in since Rennsteig and my legs are okay, but I don’t really feel like doing much running.

With Vättern only two more weeks away, riding bike is much more exciting. I’ve managed to ride quite a lot (for my standards at least) – this week I did four rides totaling 260k. (Any week over 200k is a “big” cycling week for me.)

Today, I’ve had enough time to do one of my favorite routes. The base route is about 125k and can be lengthened, but it goes through mostly quiet back roads and has some great views.

After I leave from my home, there is some “climbing” and then a great view towards the old city center of Lübeck with its towers. My cell phone does not really do any justice to the view:

After that there are some downhills and after 1h30 of riding I get to Travemünde where the river Trave flows into the Baltic Sea. If you’ve read Thomas Mann’s “Buddenbrocks”, you’ve probably heard of this seaside resort. A port with a bunch of small and large ships, some nice old buildings, but also some (not so nice) new buildings:

I then take a ferry across the Trave and after a bit more riding I cross what used to be the border between East and West Germany:

It looks pretty unspectacular now, but twenty years ago there was the inner-German version of the “Berlin Wall” with fences, mines, dogs and a bunch of border troops ready to shoot at you, probably even some spring guns. I still get goose bumps when I just ride across the old death strip.

Now in “East Germany”, there is a nice mixture of old roads and some newly built ones with lots of rolling hills. With the help of a good map I figured out some nice back roads that are practically devoid of traffic. (And most of the bad cobblestone sections gone by now.) After a while there is a nice view over wheat fields back towards Travemünde:

(Again, pretty tricky to see anything here on my cell phone picture, but the white blob in the middle of the picture is the high-rise you can see on the Travemünde picture.)

As you can see from the picture, I had great weather and a lot of sunshine today, no problem riding short/short. After about 3 hours total riding time and a lot more hills, you get a bit more inland towards the tip of the “Ratzeburger See”:

A long, fast downhill down to the lake, then a pretty steep uphill and you get to view everything from the other side of the lake:

From here it is another hour home, so I ended up going for 4 1/2 hours at a pretty good pace. This was the longest ride I have done since my Ironman last August, and I felt pretty good. Apart from getting a bit hot, I didn’t run into any issues. I still have another full week to train (plus the taper week), and I should be okay for Vättern. Let’s see how I feel tomorrow …