Team Lübbering/Inside Blogs: The Tour de Carinthia was a real tough test for the riders of Team Lübbering. An amateur stage race over six days, approx. 450 kilometers and approx. 7.500 meters in altitude. Tanja reports on her racing days.
For me it was the first stage race and therefore a completely new experience.
I had the most concerns in the run-up to the individual time trial over 40 km. I don't own any professional time trial equipment and only did a couple of training sessions with an attachment to prepare. Based on the times from last year, I had set myself a goal of 01:05 h. So I was completely satisfied with 01:04:59 (5th place overall, 3rd work group).
In the 2nd stage (Ironman round) over 105 km and 1.160 hm I was able to break away with an Austrian for a short time on the mountain, but the field was reunited in the flat section. The finish line was in the Alpen-Adria-Arena. Here the legs were still quite good for the final sprint, so that I rolled over the line as 2nd in our group and thus achieved 5th overall place and 2nd AK.
On the 3rd stage, the "Roof of the Tour", 120 kilometers and 1.830 meters in altitude awaited us. I had promised myself a lot from the stage, but the climbs of over 10% bothered me. The stomach also rebelled a little. In the final sprint over cobblestones I was able to mobilize my strength again and ended the stage after 04:08 h in 7th overall place, 3rd AK.
The 4th stage "Local Round" over 98 km and 1.870 hm ended with a mountain finish "Buggl in Bach at 1.073 m". However, at 80 kilometers my legs didn't keep up, I couldn't keep up the pace and had to let it rip (7th overall, 4th AK). To make matters worse, we also got soaking wet on this stage. The disc brake has proven itself for the first time, as the braking performance is top even in the wet. Since we waited about 2 hours for the bus transfer in the finish area - with our clothes still wet - it was a pretty exhausting day.
The 5th stage "Bad Bleiberg" led over 93 km and 1.490 hm with a fairly high initial pace. Again very high gradient percentages of over 10%. We lost a group on the first climb, but caught up again after the descent. The recovery before the next climb was accordingly very short. Nevertheless, I gave everything here to keep one of the groups. However, the 2nd and 3rd group were brought together again in the following flat section. Since I had already lost a few grains here, the performance at the back was no longer good. It's a shame, because it was another - actually nice - mountain finish! So that day it was 7th overall, 4th AK.
The mountain time trial "Dobratsch" of the 6th stage only ran under the motto "drive the thing to the end". My heart rate was low that day and I couldn't get the engine to run anymore. So I couldn't get the 3,5 minutes that I was missing in 3rd place in my working group that day.
Punctually at the end of the last stage, my body really didn't want to go anymore and a sore throat and fever set in. Now I hope for a speedy recovery for the upcoming events!
All in all a great event!
A total of 16:21 h and thus 7th overall, 4th AK.