Powerman World Championship
Not Enough Power at Powerman
Richard Ussher / 12.09.2009
We managed to make it to Frankfurt for the miserly sum of EUR80 and immediately encountered an unexpected obstacle. An overzealous rental car lady who, taking one look at our 4 bike boxes swore there was not a car in their fleet which would accommodate these, let alone the small class of car we had booked. It didn't help that the car type they'd advertised on the net was twice as large as the actual car they were offering but once she'd gone on her break we snuck back and talked the other rep into letting us try and fit them all in. 20 minutes later we were on our way.
Once in Zofingen it became apparent that we were somewhat under prepared for the course. Elina and I had polar opposite problems, on the up hills I simply didn't have a small enough gear to keep my cadence up, especially on the largest of the climbs and Elina was continually running out of gears on the super fast descents. Add to that our training base in Finland had been about as flat as you can get and here we were looking at over 500m of elevation gain per 50km lap and then some more on the runs.
Race day and the women set off 48 minutes in front of the men in a handicap format. First home overall gets an additional $2000 as well so there was plenty of incentive for the women to stay ahead and the guys to chase them down. We had a perfect day which sounded like a minor miracle in Zofingen, with most of the weather stories containing references to rain, snow, hyperthermia or a mix of all 3.
It was pretty cool being able to watch the start of the women's race and Elina was near the front on the opening run and when she disappeared on the bike she was still with the lead group of women - I was left wondering if that'd be the last time I saw her until the finish or not.
Our race started with a gentle sprint up the first hill, and that pretty much continued for the next 9km until we got on the bikes. The run courses is a mix of on and off road and when you're not struggling up a hill you're inevitably playing catch up with your legs as you plummet towards the next uphill.
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