Freiburg --> Hamburg .:. 800km in 6hrs

Um, yeah. Schnell, anyone? You know that when 140km seems deathly slow that you've been moving really fast. With Captain Jens Schwedler at the helm we made short work of the German weekend traffic and arrived here in Hamburg in time for some coffee and shopping in Hamburg centrum. Not that I can afford ridiculously expensive clothes, but it is nice to look sometimes.

I am installed with Jens and Astrid just outside the city for a few days while a room is being made ready for me at the team house in Hamburg. I owe them both a big 'vielen dank' for letting me stay with them in their very nice apartment, which is in a converted farm house.

We made a light 3-hour road training this morning with Stefan, who had the dubious distinction of chauffering our bikes back to home base in our Ducato team bus. I'm pretty surehe never hit 230 in that thing... Jens won every sign sprint and succeeded in not killing Dano and I, so I consider the ride a success. Very nice roads and little traffic, so I think that training in this area will be good. I just have to try to remember how to get around. Euro roads are a little different from Ottawa.

There is apparently a night criterium not far from here on Friday, which we will be attending. Hopefully they turn the lights on, but I am not getting too optimistic. The good news is that I am much better than one week ago, and the good feelings are starting to come back on the bike. Soon I will have to see how it feels to go hard again.

Tomorrow, some cyclocross training while Jens stars in another photo session. Prima.

A good place to get near-realtime cyclocross updates is cyclo-cross.info. There is an English translation for this page in case your Flemish is a little rusty. Look to the upper right when you get there.

ciao ciao,
GReain