The drive cross from Feltre to Deutschlandsberg was "interesting"!
First of all my friendly GPS told me there was a 53 (yes...53 exactly) minutes delay on the planned route, and would I like a quicker way?? Looking at the schematic the "delay" was 214 (yup 214) km away so I declined the offer.
However sometime later my friend Mr Tom Tom repeated the warning and so this time I accepted.
The result of this was that I was directed off the autobahn for a section and onto a quieter but slower road up a valley..as it criss crossed underneath the autobahn, I could see the traffic on it was running freely...grrrrh...90kph instead of 130...sob! However, this was only a minor sin when compared to the finale. The last part of the journey was always going to be a ~50km stretch off the autobahn but what it wasn't s'posed to be was a visit to parts of Austria seen only by wild animals and people who have not yet been discovered by the rest of the world! Well ok..that's an exaggeration, but only a very small one!..unmade roads, switchbacks and 16% downhills were my white knuckle inducing friends.
Deutschlandsberg Races
The first day's race was a Crit, which I had thought was going to be a Miss 'n Out but it turned out not to be and so I had to race the whole thing..ending up 4th in my age grade.
Today's race was a 37km road race, setting off with a group of 18 ladies all 50+ years. I stuck with the group(see my next post re being 'eliminated is 10 minutes behind the bunch!!!) going at about 44kph at times until the first nasty pinch after about 5km,when someone put in an attack and I got shelled. So for the next ~32km I got my fair share of TT training(++++) and again finished 4th in my age group, about 3 minutes down on the first 3.(my age group is 55+year olds)
No pix this time..there's a problem with the system..it's very difficult to type ...wont allow me to correct errors easily and I can't upload pix...sorry
First of all my friendly GPS told me there was a 53 (yes...53 exactly) minutes delay on the planned route, and would I like a quicker way?? Looking at the schematic the "delay" was 214 (yup 214) km away so I declined the offer.
However sometime later my friend Mr Tom Tom repeated the warning and so this time I accepted.
The result of this was that I was directed off the autobahn for a section and onto a quieter but slower road up a valley..as it criss crossed underneath the autobahn, I could see the traffic on it was running freely...grrrrh...90kph instead of 130...sob! However, this was only a minor sin when compared to the finale. The last part of the journey was always going to be a ~50km stretch off the autobahn but what it wasn't s'posed to be was a visit to parts of Austria seen only by wild animals and people who have not yet been discovered by the rest of the world! Well ok..that's an exaggeration, but only a very small one!..unmade roads, switchbacks and 16% downhills were my white knuckle inducing friends.
Deutschlandsberg Races
The first day's race was a Crit, which I had thought was going to be a Miss 'n Out but it turned out not to be and so I had to race the whole thing..ending up 4th in my age grade.
Today's race was a 37km road race, setting off with a group of 18 ladies all 50+ years. I stuck with the group(see my next post re being 'eliminated is 10 minutes behind the bunch!!!) going at about 44kph at times until the first nasty pinch after about 5km,when someone put in an attack and I got shelled. So for the next ~32km I got my fair share of TT training(++++) and again finished 4th in my age group, about 3 minutes down on the first 3.(my age group is 55+year olds)
No pix this time..there's a problem with the system..it's very difficult to type ...wont allow me to correct errors easily and I can't upload pix...sorry
