Revelofication = Velo + Revivification
The following blog is an attempt to capture and share an important side of my life, with friends, family (although most of them will have to wait for the German translation) and clubmates: My history as a cyclist.
Whilst most of the "historic" parts will be written in retrospect, summarizing key stages of my cycling history from 1982-1994 purely from memory and material still available in 2013, the "contemporary" parts will be quoting detailed race reports as written chronologically throughout my "revelofied"era and hopefully continue as a cycling diary in the future.
Beyond that it might also inspire people who, at a mature age, would never consider a return to performance sports, i.e. cycling. This blog might convince them that it is possible, even after a very long break, to return to reasonable levels of fitness in order to compete again, possibly in all sports, but in this my case just focusing on competitive road cycling.
It does happen to some people, that they have been occupied by a particular interest or obsession throughout many years of their life and all of a sudden they are forced to compromise their interest, due to other new demands in life, i.e. family, university, job, etc. Some people are able to make some sacrifices and still continue to follow their long term interest, just with a slightly "reduced" intensity. I have always envied those people. Others can't even bare to think of a "half-hearted" interest, or sharing their passion with other things in life. Not being able to bare any sort of compromise those people may decide to drop their interest alltogether, once and forever!?
My best childhood friend got his first race bike when we were 10. It was silver, had ten gears, a dropped handlebar and 27" narrow wheels. I was gobsmacked. I had an orange "Bonanza Bike" with one gear 20" fat wheels and a "banana" saddle. I was sooo out!
One year later my parents coughed up my first race bike and despite being grass green, having 26" standard wheels (not narrow) and having only five gears, it made me infinitely happy. It had a "tachometer", an analogue mechanical version of a cycle computer, measuring speed and distance. I got it for my eleventh birthday and did a staggering seventy kilometres on that day. My dad was gobsmacked...
Another year and some three and a half thousand kilometres later it didn't need anyone's convincing when I introduced myself to the president of the local cycling club. Hermann ran a little sportshop in Vorsfelde and was the president of the "RV Wanderlust Wolfsburg". He wanted to talk to my dad before I could join the club, so I had to introduce them to each others. I had just turned 12. A week later, Herman and his club loaned me a real road racing bike, in order to support me and my family to get into racing. It was awesome, a white Reynolds 531 based "Kalkhoff" frame with TA cranks and pedals and Shimano deraillers. The frame was too tall so that initially the seat post had to be completely submerged in the frame.
But most disappointingly they took the ten gears off my bike and made it single speed, compliant with U14 race regulations. There I was, facing my yet unknown future in racing, being introduced to my very first cycling team and coach, youth category "Schueler B"
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| Although this is not my bike, it is exactly a same copy of the one I got loaned by my first club. |
Rolf, my first coach, was an incredible cycling enthusiast in his mid fifties and dedicated most of his private spare time to volunteer as the youth coach of the club. He took us little ones out for training 3 times a week, on rides between 30 and 45 km. Our first team consisted of 6 riders aged 12-14, all of them had been riding races for a few seasons before, already. I was the novice and it stayed like that until we dissolved 4 years later. We didn't have any newcomer entering our youth race team in 4 years!
Rolf is in his mid eighties now and last thing I heard was that he is still going strong at St Johann every year! Meanwhile he had even beaten cancer and a heart attack and he is still riding his bike at a top international event. I will write more about Rolf later in this blog.
Our first Team was going strong, between 1982 and 1986 we won the regional 4-up TT and the Federal State of Lower Saxony 4-up TT three times and ended 8 times on the podium.
In my first year of racing, aged 12!!! I raced at 42 races, mostly in the northern regions of the German Republic. I still remember my very first race, Syke-Okel-Syke for youth category 12/13, there where around a hundred racers and I got 4th place. Won by a girl who later become my menace. Girls were allowed to race with the boys age group of two years below.
