Ahoyi Piraten,

at the beginning of this winter 08/09 I thought about the winter of 07/08, if it might be as warm as last year, warm and not that much snow, so you gotta had the possibility to do some more bike-basic-stamina. So, I made my plans all for cycling this winter to do some basics and of course to prepare for the Hmaburg marathon to reach a time under 3:00h, a little bit earlier than I used to plan for 2011. Well, you know everything about the weather yourselves and I got mad about me, because all my exercise were now made of running and not cycling, apart of a few visits of the pool and some trying to cycle in the deep snow. Damn… All the more I was glad about the stuff, a good friend of mine, Sven, told me of. He called me and told me about an indoor triathlon in Stralsund next weekend. Just for 15€ and the chance to use the therm, sauna after all and the main thing to use the slides of the Hansedom in Stralsund, which are really fast, I know by now. Well, the tasks for the triathlon, was divided in three partsw hich each half an hour. After each 30 inutes the groups of 5 changed, in between some time to change clothes. Everything started with 500m swim in ther pool, as I said before, I didn´t spent much time in the water, so I lost very much of my feeling of the water, and against the swimmers of the local swim team and the DLRG you had no chance, so I won´t tell ya my time and you´ll see no pictures of it. But I still had an ace up my sleeve, and I wanted to get the hell out of me on the bike, to shoe the guys of Stralsund what I´m made of…The bike stood in line and just waited on my legs and while I´m really satisfied with myself-assurance, the chief of the gym made an anouncement and said that the treadle of drag made no difference in time or not. This means: just doing cadence on lowest level and no drag. My mood went bad, ecause I never ever did it before, cycling with no power and just with cadence… 10km of tough, hard work... Phew…I sweated like I never sweat before and rode without any kinf of rythem and jumped as well very often of the saddle. But I did quite a good job with about 115 cadence and so, I was really far away from the places on the podium. So, next year more spinning… Well, now I had to walk over hot coals by running, I thought about a time of under 20min for the 5km, just to show the swimmers that I´m still a tough guy, because they were almost KO, while standing after their strongest event. I started up with 15,4km/h and could hold it for a while, than I had a small breakdown but recovered real fast and than everything went just fine. Why its gotta be more than 20 minutes after all, I don´t know, but I had the best running time except for one of the 40 starters. At the end, I had a time of 45minutes, with this time I had won last year, but this year…this event enjoy great popularity from a year to the other, so, there have been lots of real fast people... But…I finished in 3rd place in a colorful field of young and old, even the mayor of Stralsund took part in this event and did a good job. After all, it was a really nice, well organized event with a very friendly team and quite a good atmosphere. To recommend. And if it don´t stop snowing I gotta kick the aZZ of Mother Holle and nick her pillows… A really nice start in the spring to everyone of you Jost Litzen

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