Bike on Søren's Blog

Cycling to the Venice

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 05:00:00 +0000

I have quite a „sporty“ summer coming up.

First, I will run another 10k in July. The plan is to be a bit faster than in January - where I finished after 59min, achieving my goal to be faster than one hour.

Training progress so far: almost 0.

It will be fun.

Good thing is, that I am not very invested in this. If I will be slower I will be less satisfied but nevertheless be proud to have finished at all.

My running training falls short, because at the same time I am preparing for a big cycling tour. Together with my brother in law, I plan to cycle from my home to Venice, Italy.

Venice itself is not the goal - with the bikes we probably won‘t go to the city at all - we want to have a trip together across the alps.

Naive as ever, we spoke about it, booked some hotels and forgot about it. When we met over the Easter holidays, we fine tuned the route, resulting in this:

Day 0: roughly 130km, for me, cycling to where my brother in law lives.
Day 1: 95km and 1.000Hm
Day 2: 95km and 1.700Hm
Day 3: 65km and 1.300Hm
Day 4: 82km and 1.300Hm
Day 5: 130km and 1.000Hm
Day 6: 65km and 100Hm

In total: roughly 530km (days 1 to 6) and 6.500Hm

I am not particularly afraid of the 100km per day but the distance in total and the uphill part, especially on day 2.

I think about how to best prepare for both events. My Garmin Watch doesn’t provide a training plan for this out of the box. I talked to a friend and he recommended using ChatGPT. Which I did.

I am „ok“ satisfied with the result. The proposal basically was:

1 „long-run“ per week
2 shorter „runs“
2 „relaxing runs“
1 or 2 resting days

And shifting the focus from running to cycling the closer we come to July.

As always, I find it hard to free-up regular slots in the calendar for 4 or 5 training events per week. What was working best in the past, was directly putting on sport cloths in the morning and directly after dropping the little one at childcare start the training session. This worked fine for sessions up to an hour, but a „long run“ for cycling should be 50-75km as per the recommended training plan - which is rather 4 to 5 hours. I hope that I will find time and motivation in the afternoons or on the weekend.

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eBike Struggles

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0100

About a month ago, I bought a new bicycle. One with an “e” - supported by a small electric engine.

I went on a few tours and enjoyed myself, but there was always this little voice inside my head asking if it’s still biking if supported by an engine? Is it still sport if I can just turn on the engine when cycling uphill? After every tour I was unsure with my decision - asking myself if I’d rather had picked a “bio bike”.

Last week, my brother in law came by and we went for a longer tour. 90km. I cannot remember that I ever cycled this far on a single day in my entire life. But I wasn’t scared of the distance - security giving by the electric support. I started in bio-bike-mode but it felt good to have the option to get some help, if needed.

After 50km motivation decreased. With my previous bike, I’d probably had stopped and looked for the next train station. This time, I just turned on the engine and pushed the pedals for two more hours. Great feeling :-)

And while I still struggle from time to time, I am convinced that as long as you grab your bike and go for a tour it doesn’t matter if it’s with or without electric support. In my case, I know, that in the past weeks I went for tours that I would have never even started if I didn’t had the engine. Tours with long or steep uphill distances for example. When the bad feeling comes back, I just remind myself that others drive cars in circles and call that motor sport.

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New Bike Day

Sun, 23 Jun 2024 19:00:00 +0000

After a much longer than expected odyssey, I got my new bike this week. Pure coincidence - Jan-Lukas just wrote about his new bike, so I thought this is something I should do, too.

Like Jan-Lukas, I bought a Cube Bike, and it has been a journey. Since April, my employer allows the usage of a “JobBike”. This allows employees to “lease” a bike through the employer. It comes with tax benefits, making the bike roughly 30% cheaper (that at least is what the providers claim) than buying it directly.

I wanted to have an eBike since we moved to the Stuttgart area. I love biking and biked a lot in my youth. But, living at the lowest point of the valley meant that every bike tour started with a hill. More often than I like to admit this meant that I didn’t start biking at all.

Having support by a motor, I hoped, will overcome this and allow me larger radius of bike tours in this beautiful region.

“Let’s get a new bike” is what naïve me thought.

Most recently, I was riding a “Fitness Bike”. It has a sporty position, narrow tires, but a “normal” bar. No fancy suspension or anything else increasing its weight. Having a motor on board shouldn’t change this significantly. For me, this meant that all bikes heavier than 15kg were out of scope, which left me with the new eGravel category.

I looked at the Rose Backroad+. I wanted to buy a Rose Bike already in the past, but they had more than 20 weeks delivery time. The summer would be over by then …

Lucky me, Cube released a new bike. The Nuroad Hybrid that I liked it immediately.

I contacted the store, asking if I can try it out. No response. I contacted another store and got an automated email that the bike would be waiting for me the next working day. Nice. Two days later, I drove there, 30min by car - just to learn that the bike was not there (yet) and that I cannot trust their automated emails. They told me to come back, only after they call me.

Anoter two days later, I received a call and went on the journey again. 30min car drive. This time, the bike was there, yes, but a few screws were broken, making it unsafe to go on a test drive. I drove back the second time.

On the third try, I was lucky. Bike was there and ready to be tested. After a quick ride, I decided to go with it. I discussed the details with the dealer, went back home and waited for email from the leasing company.

About two weeks later, I received a call form the dealer, which I couldn’t take because I was in a work meeting - and an email from the leasing company telling me that the bike was ready to be picked up. Again, naïve me, assuming that this is what they wanted to tell me on the phone, I drove to the store - just to learn that again I should not trust their automated emails. The bike is not yet ready.

Meanwhile, I was not so happy with my decision, the shop and especially their processes.

Another four weeks later, the store calls me again. The bike is still not ready. A part is missing that is needed to power the light from the bike’s battery. They ordered it, but don’t know when it will be delivered.

I asked them - knowing that it’s summer and that I probably won’t need light on the bike in the near future - if I could pick up the blank bike and come back to the shop once the part is delivered to get it installed. They agreed.

So this week, I finally picked up the bike and rode the 30km back home. Great feeling.

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First Bike Ride 2023

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 16:00:00 +0100

It’s beginning of April and - according to the news - there are warm winds from Africa. More than 20 degrees Celsius is unusually warm for this season.

It is, however, perfect biking weather. And thus THE opportunity for my first ride this year.

On the day we moved to the new apartment, I recognized a sign recommending a sightseeing bike tour around the city. Something I wanted to do ever since. Hence, tour planning was completed quickly.

The tour is ~25km long, and goes through all parts of the city including the vineyards. It took me about 90min to complete it - with a not yet checked bike. Perfect after-work length, because I reckoned that I skipped leg day a little too often. The last kilometers were tough. 😩😅

I hope I will find time to do this more regularly in the upcoming months. I also plan to buy a new gravel bike soon and am curious if that will significantly reduce the time I need for this round.

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