On to Munich

Alright, things have been a bit crazy since leaving Dortmund. We had a great time hanging out with Vio and her friends, and they took us all around the city. It was great to get to look around without needing to stress over racing for a couple days. On Wednesday we piled back into the van and set out for Munich. We didn't ride the day before in order to recover from solid week of intensity on the bike, and planned to hit the track when we reached the Olympic Stadium.

No luck. We got in on Wednesday afternoon to find that the track was still being painted. By the time we got to where we're staying, it was about 10:00 PM. No riding. So two days off, and racing beginning the next night. Not exactly an optimal riding plan.

But first a little about where we're staying. It's a considerable notch down from the Hilton they put us up in at the Dortmund race. We're at a rowing center some 10 km outside of town that was built for the 1972 Summer Olympics. Some interesting things about this place:

--The 2 km long canal in the middle of nowhere.

--The building looks like a cross between a horse stable and a bomb shelter.

--The lights are all on timers, so you hallways are almost constantly dark, and when the are lit, they go dark at random.

--There are vents in the bathroom that open automatically when the lights go off (timers again) and let what would be hot, steamy air from the showers escape into the warm summer surroundings. In this case, it just lets even colder, winter air (it snowed today) into an already cold building, with extremely cold toilet seats.

--The doors creak severely, and the place generally just smells like a hog farm.

On to the racing. We finished night two today, and are, in short, getting worked over. Last night only one team took a lap, and we stayed on lap, even though Adrian's legs weren't feeling to hot and I felt like I was bonking. They don't feed us before the race here like they did in Dortmund, so I ate about 6 hours before race time, and didn't have anything with me when we went to the track. Again, poor planning. Tonight was longer than the previous racing, at 48 km instead of 40 km, but it hurt an awful lot less thanks to the track being much smoother than Dortmund. I think that really redefined my standard for discomfort on the bike. It just sucked. In any case, things got shattered, and while my legs were doing better today, Adrian felt even worse than yesterday, and we made some stupid mistakes, like a missed exchange on my part, and some messy ones where I had to slam on the brakes to get to Adrian. Not too good. There are a few strange things though, namely in the scoring. We're listed in dead last right now, but I know we beat several teams last night, and there were a handful of teams that went down more laps than we did tonight. So something is screwy here. They don't have transmitters on our bikes the way they did in Dortmund, and that can't help.

The show here is generally a lot smaller. There was almost no one in the stands either night. Last night it was chalked up to a Bayern soccer game here in town, but tonight was nearly as vacant. To their credit, they do have fireworks, but the practice of setting them off on a freshly painted wood track is bit dubious...

Tomorrow we'll try to scrape ourselves together and put in a real race. After that, we're off to Tübingen, where Adrian will be based with his cousin for the remainder of the season before going to Geneva on Thursday for a 3-day.

Pictures and video will go up when I'm somewhere that lets me get on Blogger.