Monday, February 23, 2009

Mallorca que isla dura

Hey everyone! Long time no hear. So I'm back at the "Wifi für nullo"-Bar to give yall a quick but meaningfull insight in what's been cracking the last Days. *Flavor Flav mode off*
I think I'll start with the body count:
One injured: Ali killed his knee in the first week chasing after a super-strong Matthias.
One sick: Zeller got a really nice sounding bronchitis after a freezing cold descent. With 15 °C and sunny weather he must have been flying at about 100km/h or sweating like mad:) Your call.
I have a little bit of a cold myself. Having not been able to train for 3 weeks at all. I have a really hard time finding into a training rythm again. Six-pack has nearly completely vanished, and the ice-cream isn't helping matters;)
I woke up today with my mouth swollen from my top-right wisdom tooth (molar).
But screw it.
We had an awesome ride yesterday! Yeeeaah!
Cap Formentor! F***ing windy but reeeeaally buuudöfull:)
(I flatted the wattage-curve to make it visible on one sheet, sry no altimeter data, but you can imagine it from the speed and power data)
It was pretty tough clinging on to Guidos rearwheel on the climbs but a lot of fun all the same:)
The high wattage between 55 and 70 is me on a luckily succesfull solo flight to the Cap Formentor.
Shame was that simon's rear derailleur was really giving him a hard time, stomping into nothing every other minute.
On the way back home, our "lose canon" Guido decided to crank it up a little. You can see the peak at about 92 min. I stayed with him for about 2 minutes than deciding than made the only right and life-saving decision to sit up and wait for simon.
While I was pretty exhausted after this 2:20h ride, Matti and Markus pulled a solid 194km with a striking 28km/h pace.
So much for now. A lot more storys to follow in the next days.
Have a nice day,
hasta pronto!

Benja

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Markus Mr. 100%

So much for alphabetical order..what you're gonna do about it? Wanna stop me? .. Na didn't think so!
But this post is about Markus.
Originally a swimmer, his progression in the last 4 years made swimming to his weakness.
Well he wasn't born for swimming anyway!:) (maybe I'll come back to that later;) )
He became a decent runner and always was a very "special" cyclist.
Special as..hm.. well, imagine a bowl, throw in some big legs, good aero position, great aerobic base and threshold, mix it with big training volume and then spice it up with poor bike handling skills, and fear of curves. And what do you get, well something strange that's for sure! He could hammer away from the peloton on every straight road but would get caught in every corner.^^
So maybe Hawaii is something for him.. we'll see in the next years:)
But what makes him Mr. 100% is that no matter what is on his training plan he does it 100%. Although sometimes it could be wiser to listen to your body,
not listening to it at all will get you the training volume you need for making big progress.

I am really looking forward to our trainingscamp in Mallorca (17.2.-2.3) where we hopefully get some big miles on the bike done. Not as much as he did last year with Matthias (2000km in 2weeks) but sufficient.
That is enough for one post, a lot more to follow!

This was only a scratch on the surface of this really nice and colourful guy!

Have a nice day!
cya

Benja

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< He's strong so he gets to stand in front:) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Monday, February 2, 2009

Hobby:)

One of my favorite hobbies is parcouring.
Although as a triathlete I pretty much suck at it.
My moves and skill aren't what one would call refined.^^
But its still great and doing funny stuff indoors in a much more safer environment is even more fun!
Here is one of many very memorable moments:
Felix this one's for you!

Matrix-suuper SlowMo!
Don't feel disturbed by the crazy dude screaming in the back!;)



Felix doing a backflip,
I hurt myself once doing one, so no backflips for me during the season.
Mr. Backflip cya next fall;)
So just backhandsprings and some other safer stuff for now:)




First one on harder surface (scary^^) back in the days.


Just to give a short insight what I like to do:)
more pics to follow

cyall

Benja

Next up - Guido

Damnit he's huge! But if you conquer your fear and talk to him, you'll see he is a really nice and friendly type of guy. Meeting him in the pool on the other hand is a different story!Better start praying, cause he will smash you! It will not just look and but completely feel like war!!! (8x200 in december slowest was 2:29 and he was looking as if he was just warming up^^- I gave it all just to stay on his feet)
Beeing an ex-cyclists he's known to smack some asses on the bike as well. So no doubt he will come with the leading group to T2.
And it doesn't stop there!
As Zeller has to admit that "he can run" pretty fast as well!
He finished in 33:24 on the very windy course of Pulheim 3 weeks ago.

So all of this must look pretty much like I am trying to kiss his ass here, but just calling him a good triathlete would be a big understatement! * Really he is not standing next to me holding a baseball-bat!;) *
To make it short, the competition must be warned as he is one of our Top-Guns for the upcoming season.

So keep a look out for him leading the pack!

have a nice day!

cheers

Benja

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Q-Rings sum-up or..

Originally this should have been the wrap-up of my experience with the q-rings in the last 5 weeks.
But somehow I feel like I am back to the starting line.. but first things first!
Summary:

Week 1: Choppy but a somehow faster feeling outdoors, horrible on the trainer though.

Week 2: Not as choppy as week 1 but still not round, got used to run it on the trainer (still not great)

Week3 : Spin is getting better. Short testing of round rings feels horrible and reveals their possible disadvantages.

Week 4: Finally a good spin and a really good feeling, great 4 hour ride outdoors with them.

Week 5: Tried round rings for 10minutes, felt horribly in the beginning, 2min later, SWOOSH! I am back to my old spin and the q-rings felt nearly as bad as on the first day.

Even my knees don't seem to know which direction I should pursue in the future.
This will need some good thinking. I'll stick with the small q-ring and round big ring for now. But a decision has to be made in the near future. All ideas appreciated!

have a nice day
cya

Benja

Monday, January 19, 2009

Zeller - "my background is running

Zeller, triathlete, 23 years old.
Blonde, blue eyes, good looking, ivory skin.. but wait don't get too much excited here guys!
Its a dude:D
And he can run,
5ks in 16:17 in really difficult conditions today! He'll be attaking the 16min margin next week in Porz.
So much about his strengths.
Although he's got a huge (and if I say huge I really mean H-U-G-E - really, you wouldn't believe..) man-crush on Lance Armstrong he
prefers to stay a runner/ triathlete, keeping the immitation of Lance to quoting him all day long and stalking him over the Internet:)

BTW, Lance if you read this keep an eye out for him and get this restraining order going before you come to europe!
so much for Zeller for now, as I'm too tired to go on.
If anything comes to mind I'll post/edit it right away

Ah wait all in all, great guy!


(pic is from his homepage - linked below)


Love yall!
hugs and kisses
yours
Zac Ef
ron

Zeller Homepage - great pics^^


*I wrote this being really tired, so I really got no idea what I wrote up there
cya

Sunday, January 18, 2009

the Kölner Triathlon TEAM 01

There is no perfect Team.
Every Team out there got its own pros and cons, like Inter Mailand having Marco Materazzi in the team, like Astana having Contador(sry don't like him^^), like Berliners are filled with jam ( very exclusive personal taste, but you know where I'm going with this). Some things just do not work together like Clemens and lactate acid, Markus and turnarounds or Zeller and nuts (DZnuts excluded).
Our Team is not excluded from this rule. While our problems seem to be rather minor, they still can be pretty annoying. I'll just name one for now (keeping the others for later, hehe ;)
Well it seems like we'll be forever stuck with the color red in our teamwear as it's part of the Team-logo and our presidents favorite color.
Don't cry now, I know you expected greater flaws, but its my blog so...
..live with it<|:)
But I didn't want to write about my dislikes but rather more about what I really love about this team, that we are all pretty much good friends. Everybody has his own mind, is weird in some way, can of course be annoying from time to time but deep down I really like all you guys very much.
Therefore I will present each one with a special post in this blog. (I'll only present members of the 1.Mannschaft or maybe just the ones with own homepages - because I'm very lazy)
I'll be starting with Zeller, working my way up through the alphabete to ALi.
So see you soon, with an update on Sebastian Zeller
cheers

Benja