This weekend is one in which I have had the pleasure in staying with a family in Germany. I am staying with a girl who was on my collegiate rowing team last year and who is going to be living in the same eight person dorm/apartment next year. I decided to book a flight to Europe about a month and a half ago and found out that the cheapest option for me was to fly into Dusseldorf, Germany. I asked my friend Greta where she lived in relation to Dusseldorf and found out that she only lived 1.5 to 2 hours away! She said that she would gladly pick me up, so now I am here with her lovely family.
I am writing all of this because Greta’s mom was telling me all about her next adventure, a 100km bike race. She has been training for a long time, and August 16th is the big day! She is driving out to the start of the race, which is in Hamburg. Her event is part of the larger event called the Vattenfall Cyclassics. There are three categories. One is the 100km race in which about 10,000 people participate, another is the 55km race in which about 7,000 people participate, and the third is the 155km race. About 2,000 people race in the longest event. It is a pretty big and important race, if you could not tell judging by the amount of participants.
It is not that old of a race. It has a short history that starts out in 1996. It was made a part of the UCI Road World Cup in 1998, a part of the UCI ProTour in 2005, and starting this year it became one of the 24 races contributing points towards the UCI World Ranking. So, even though it did not start off as an important race, it grew extremely fast and now is huge.
According to Wikipedia, the route should be challenging enough, so that it typically will not end in a sprint. We will have to see how my friend’s mom does this year! Last year she had an average of 34 km per hour so she hopes to improve from that.
