Christiane, Tom, Phillip, Matej, Dirk and I formed our team rather spontaneously to indulge in our first (excluding Matej) 24h race as a 6-person r2-bike.com MTN CREW.
Philip and Matej very kindly joined us last minute as a substitution, anyway they turned out to be much more than this! Our imposing little area at the campsite was decorated with flags, warm-up rollers, state of the art material and a BBQ, which immediately made us all feel very comfortable and homely.
At 14:00 the race began on time and Tom started us off with a nice and fast show, which wasn’t just a great benefit for us, but immediately showed our ambitions. Our ‚tactic‘ of each person riding one round led us to being a couple minutes ahead of the rest. Being in the lead allowed us to get through the night quite comfortably and with confidence. However, of course, soon later came a few technical problems; broken lights, flat tires and suddenly our lead was gone. This meant no more fun and games and back to hardcore tactics, which was to let Phillip, Matej and Tom do the majority of the riding.
As the first sunrays shone, we were already back to where we wanted to be, ahead of the rest. As time went by we came to realize that 24h does not go by quickly and we found ourselves counting the remaining hours. As our final biker, Phillip got the honor of riding into the finish line and bringing home a win. We all had our hands in the air as he was greeted with cheers and excitement.
It turned out that we had quite a lead. Even if there was no check, we were each handed our own trophy to be proud of. Awesome feeling!
