Last Sunday I participated at the Hamburg Marathon. The marathon was interesting as too many good athletes were present. At the start, the group cycled at very high speed in order to bypass as many athletes as possible.

Three km through the race, Vico Merklein and Arkadiusz Skrzypiski, who are from another division, made their attack to which I didn’t respond. After 12 km, I made my attack with Bernd Jeffre from another division as well – as you know in the marathon all the divisions ride together so there are 3 different divisions: H1, H2 (my division) and H3 which is the strongest division – and we were able to move ahead more than 20 sec distance away from the group.

Unfortunately, after about 25km, we lost the track and we ended up on the high way cycling between cars! We then had to go back and try to join the group but it was too late as I had to ride more than 10 km alone. BY the time I joined back, I was 34 km behind.

I tried to recover, and be prepared for the last sprint. I knew that the first 2 already passed the finish line, and on the 40th km Bernd Jeffre made his attack on the hills, and i was able to follow and we dropped off the others.

I finished 2^nd in my division and 6^th in general.

My teammates were disappointed about what happened to me during the race, but this is sport… sometime you win and sometime you loose, and now I should concentrate on my second race this coming Sunday at Dusseldorf Marathon. I have even a small race in the Czech Republic on Saturday just before I leaving to Dusseldorf.