Last race (?) of the season

I wanted to do one last race this season. I always want to do the last race knowing that it’s the “last race”. It’s no good one or two weeks later to just say, “that was the last race”. It doesn’t have the same sense of finality, or give you the chance to go all out for one more good result.

I found two different races I could potentially do this weekend. I chose the race that was about 2.5 hours away, because it was somewhere I hadn’t been before. One of the nice things about racing here is even the trips to and from the race can be enjoyable.

One the way, I passed many fields full of these yellow flowers. I’m not sure what they are, but they were gorgeous.


The race was yet another criterium, but at 70km quite a bit longer than the others I’ve done here which I hoped would be to my advantage. There were two very tight turns, one of them onto a road that was only a bit wider than a bike path. Fortunately there were only 30-35 guys in the race for a change. For me, in a criterium, this makes all the difference. I could not imagine this course with 90 guys.

After I got my number and was riding back to change, I stopped and talked with a couple of local guys watching the race that was going on. They told me there were crashes because the riders were scared ("angst") going through the corner. They said they had told the organizers it was too tight, but did they listen? They looked at my bike -- not one you see around here -- and asked where I was from (they usually guess England). Then asked, how did I know about this race? Ah ... the Internet.

I wanted to be patient and wait for the 2nd half of the race to do any serious attacks. But no one was making the race hard, so sometimes patience isn't the right answer. I attacked and 2 other guys came along. We got caught after a couple of laps.

Right as we got caught I attacked again, and we had a 4 man group. After several rounds of attack-and-chase, finally I got away with the same 2 guys from the first break.

It’s funny how that happens. Sometimes it doesn’t take long to sort out who wants to make the race go that day.

With about 20 laps to go, another group of 4 joined us. The announcer kept running through the names in the break. Every time he said my name, it was always, “Brian Batke aus den USA”, as though I were some celebrity racer over here. I guess we would probably do the same at one of our local races.

Normally I would not want to sprint from a group of 7. But with about 5 laps to go my right calf started to cramp, so I wasn’t up for any late lap attacks. I was in pretty good position (3rd wheel) as we headed for the last corner. Then one of the guys did this impressive kamikaze attack over the grass on the side of the road. Must be a cyclo-crosser. As everyone scrambled to get his wheel, I lost my position and then only managed 5th in the sprint.

I can’t complain though. It was a fun race, I was one of the animators, and afterwards stood around BS’ing with the other guys in the breakaway. For my 10Euro entry fee, 5th place got me 60Euro, a set of Look cleats, some tire levers and some bottled water.

I hung around after our race to see one of the most fredly things I think I’ve ever seen: a criterium for recumbent bikes. Not that I have anything against recumbent riders, but one of them was racing in long pants and a shirt with a pocket protector. I am not kidding. At one point, two guys crashed in the tight corner. They were going so slow I think they might have just tipped over.


I drove home through some insane Sunday afternoon traffic. It was as if all of northwestern Germany was on its way back from somewhere. As I drove I was thinking, maybe I should see if there’s a decent race on the calendar next weekend.