Welcome to Tuscany

Welcome to Florence, have a nice and clean stay

Sure must say, that I’ve entered a completely new world – the world of racing on the road

This was my training conditions the last days before departure

I am riding a bicycle with two wheels – that’s pretty much the only similarity to the mountain bike world where you’ll most often find me. It’s really fun and exciting to try something new racing this Time Trial world championship. So far I’ve had a couple of great days here with lots of sun and pasta al dente.

Today we went to check out the Time Trial course. It’s located more or less completely in the center of Florence. Florence is very busy with plenty of Italians driving their cars and scooters like … Italians! Training on the course for that reason works only with the roads closed, so today it was time for official training on the course with no cars. We would be escorted on the course by police motorcycles and were only allowed to do one lap on the 22 km long course. Not too bad, besides from the fact, that the policemen showed us the last 5 km of the Team Time Trial course and not the course for our Individual Time Trial… Great! Once again, I guess this only makes sense, if you are Italian. Well, never the less afterwards we managed to ride the first part of the course, which is located at a park. In general the course is completely flat with the most technical ( = most turns ) part the last part of the course.

What you can’t blame the Italians for, is lack of enthusiasm when it comes to cycling. Even though today was only training, the last part of the course was crowded with people cheering. I just start to image how this will be on race day! I’m going to be so fast, I can feel it.

sunset though my window

This is the view from my window at 4th floor. It not really that beautiful – I just stepped up on my instagraming skills. The lack of safety precautions makes it possible for me to climb out onto the roof for an evening chill.