Originally written in German. Translated to English by AI — please excuse any awkward phrasing.

Part 2 of the race preview covers the second discipline in triathlon: cycling. A lot depends on equipment here, and to avoid falling behind I’ve upgraded again … but more on that later.

First things first though — form. Without it, the best equipment is worthless. Thanks to my almost 4-week training break in February/March I’m missing about 1,000km compared to last year — yet the form doesn’t seem too bad. Or to put it differently: I’m at least at last year’s level. The recent races and training results suggest that at minimum.

The long sessions were a particular struggle during my build phase — they weren’t clicking at all early after coming back. That lasted until almost the end of May before it “clicked” and I could do them at the right level relatively smoothly.
At the Challenge Kraichgau I was already hitting last year’s wattage — despite a huge pre-race load. Two weeks later at Heilbronn, with a bit more rest, I was pushing almost 30 watts more, which was nearly 10% above Kraichgau.
In the last sessions the looseness and relaxation came back too — more than once I’ve been spotted on the bike with a big grin, the numbers on the computer and how they felt just fantastic.
Last year I hit the same wattage in Frankfurt as I did at Kraichgau 2011. With that in mind and accounting for the prior load, I’ll therefore try to push 10 watts more than last year on Sunday. That’s about 230 watts average. Also a bit closer to the limit, which could backfire. On the other hand, I’ve been training exactly for that — running fast with completely dead legs after the bike. No risk, no fun 🙂

What that translates to as a finish time also depends heavily on conditions — it should definitely be under 5h, something around 4:50h would be great.

Now, back to equipment. Here’s what the bike looks like that I’ll be racing on Sunday:


Changes compared to my last races:

  • the bottle cages were swapped for an aero bottle inside the frame (for my drink concentrate)
  • plus a bottle cage on the extensions for water
  • Conti GP TT Ltd tires mounted — an even faster version of the Conti GP4000S
  • I also swapped the inner tubes, from butyl to latex

All of that should deliver the decisive seconds …