200km road race  from Cottbus to Görlitz and back to Cottbus again

I always were attracted by the classic road race of Cottbus-Görlitz-Cottbus since years. But the thought of 200km of cobble stone pavement steep mountains around Cottbus, let my heart beat faster. For the 50th edition of the race even the amateur were allowed by the RK Endspurt Cottbus to ride the original course of 200km. At the same time, there was the race for the U23 premier league. It was all clear for me, when I read the announcement of the race, that I´ve got to register on the race, so I trained really hard and than on friday I made up my way to Cottbus, where the race should start on Saturday morning at 8:30. After a sleepless night my alarm clock woke me up at 6:00o´clock. Still looking a little bit tired in the early morning It was a neutral start, we rode almost 8km for the km zero of the race, their were about 80 stsarters in the field, at the starting line I could see a police helicopter circling about us and when I took a look back, I saw that 10 reams got their own supply cars with them, at this time I knew that it would be a hard fighting day, today, the starting signal came and off we go, 200km are still ahead of me…    The start.   The first 90km were almost easy going, but in the mountains before Görlitz, the field started to split up, I was still in the first group after the first ascent, but at the second mountains I felt back into the second group, but when it got flat again, we pushed the pedals a little bit more, and were soon be able to catch up the first group, but it was a tough job, maybe a little bit to much for me, so I ended in a group of 12 riders, the third group, where I rode the last 90km. When we reached the finish, we had over 30minutes on the winner, our race was even faster than the race of the U23premier league race, by 3 minutes. Sadly in the morning, their was a little confusion, because my starting number wasn´t there, so I became a new one, but the wasn´t able to fix it with my name, so in the overall result, I was just a comma behind the number, and my time, I needed 5:18h and finished on the 66th place overall. But this is not important, it´s just the fact to finish this kind of race. Leif Borlinghaus

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