Tomorrow we’ll depart for the Hochsauerland area, our base camp being an apartment – or “FeWo” for Ferienwohnung – in Medebach.
This will be our third trip there, but unlike when going to the Alps, where you can basically never go wrong if you want to climb a mountain, this will still need some planning.
Luckily, the splendid site “Bike Arena Sauerland” has all the trips listed that you need and I’ve picked a few.
If you follow the link to that website, you can see that it’s already concentrated on the area we go to and the rides (filters) I want to pick from.
I’ve selected trips that either start in or pass through Medebach (or at least pass by close to it).
Prologue
As I did in 2016, I will start with a prologue of around 65 kms.
It’s a four hour drive to get there and Paula urged me to plan nothing longer than that.
To avoid a miserable start, I obviously was happy to oblige.
It may still rain, though 😂
This will also be a good test to determine if I will be able to do any serious climbing this week.
My bruised (and possibly cracked, but I didn’t go to the hospital) ribs are preventing too much “stress”, but with my VO2max and lung capacity, I can handle a lot without the need to breathe deeply or even frequently.
That’s what continuous threshold training does to you: shitty sprinter/lousy at short max efforts and sub one hour time trials but I can keep going almost indefinitely…
Stages
The rest of the week will most likely look something like this.
Note that I’m just putting the plotted courses here. I do not necessarily ride them in this order and I can ride them clock- or anticlockwise.
Epilogue
Also similar to what I did in 2016, i.e. riding (close) to the highway to Dortmund, but a little more challenging, if I’m still up to it.
I’ll see if I can write post ride reports on a daily basis, so keep an. eye on this site.
At the very least, I’ll write up a recap, with fancy stats and shit 😎
Wish me luck!