This week we spent some time on the track in Buttgen, training for the World’s Team Time trial. I think wind tunnel testing is fine but I like being on the track because you can see how fast you’re going. You are pushing out watts and going faster than 45km/h and it’s similar to the road. In the wind tunnel you are just stationary on the bike.
The day was good as we tested everyone whose doing the TTT at World’s. We made big improvements on the position of some guys and others just needed few improvements as they already had a good position on the TT bike. I think the Trek Speed Concept is one of the best TT bikes on the market at the moment. We can be proud to be sponsored by Trek.
MET Helmets was also with us on the track as they’re looking for ways to improve the helmet and launch a new model next year for us. Big thanks to them for making the tests possible and also to SRM who spent the day there with us.
The next step now is for us to work on our positions for the TTT and decide the order in which we’ll start and whose wheel you will be on. We’ve got a training camp coming up in Lucca so we’ll decide that then.
We are back in Belgium at the moment where we did a local race yesterday, Izegemkoers. These are lap races and it’s full gas from start to finish as we had 230 starters. Sometimes the first break will stay away till the finish so we made sure we had a guy in every break. We first had Jay and Johann in the first major move but after a while some teams who weren’t happy so they brought it back.
I went in a move and thought we would stay away but they brought us back and then Martin Wesemann, Ignas and Gerald went away and Martin finished in the top ten. It was a super ride from him because he is so strong and we are so happy for him because he does so much work for the team.
We’re about to head out for our last training ride before Paris-Brussels tomorrow. This is a big race and everyone knows it so we will give our best. We’re bike riders and we always race to win. We have some big goals for the rest of the year. We want a really good result at World’s TTT and we received some more good news this week. We’ve been invited to Paris-Tours. It’s another ASO race and an opportunity to show them how great this team is. I finished 9th there in 2009 so I am very motivated to have an opportunity for a good result and to make Qhubeka famous and help more people in Africa.
Martin Reimer
