Willingen Festival - Germany, about 7 June 2007
by Dave Wells
After travelling for about a day and a half from Calais on a variety of roads and traffic conditions, I arrived in the spectacular region of Sauerland in the state of Hessen. The whole area seems to be rolling green pastures with many hills covered with thick pine forests. The villages are dotted all over the countryside. All clean and bright. It reminds me in many ways of areas in Switzerland.
The town of Willingen which was hosting the MTB festival is nestled in amongst forested hills up to 800+metres. In summer time the area is a mountain bike paradise with mapped trails of varying distances and difficulties as well as having world class down hill and 4 cross facilities. In winter there are many top ski runs as well as a world cup ski jump. Which looked scary just standing at the bottom!
Willingen Festival was hugh! The expo displayed many bikes and parts that I had never heard of.
The festival itself was based around the marathon but also had a fantastic expo with many new and unknown (to me anyway) bikes and accessories. It needed a couple of days to really see everything. The race organisation was just about spot on. There was 2 nights of pasta parties prior to the event with heaps of food and handfuls of power bars, fruit and pastries at the check points. After the race there was again pasta and hot soup with bread, pastries, mixed nuts fruit, flavoured milk and electrolyte drink. Enough to feed an army!
As for the race, there were 6 groups that started at 5 minute intervals. I’m not sure how many starters there were but I would say easily over 1500. I was in the second group and after a congested first km, there was a flat out ride through the village before climbing the road and turning onto the first dirt section. Everything seemed to be happening at a high pace. The climbs weren’t huge but I just didn’t seem to have the strength in my legs to push any harder. All I can think of was that I had trained too hard in the hills the 3 days prior to the event. I continued on and at one stage it seemed that we were riding through a fine mist all of the time. It was relatively cold so with the moist air dampening my riding gear, the high speed downhills became very cold. I felt that I was catching a cold in fact. I constantly had to use the farmers’ handkerchief! Although it didn’t concern me, there was a continuous row of riders passing me. I pushed on but never really felt comfortable so during the later stages of the ride I decided to complete only the 57km ride. This was the choice of most other riders as well. My finishing time was about 3hrs 15mins. This placed me at 125 in the junior-old-age group from 235 starters.
I realized after the event that I must train more for the hills to try and strengthen my legs. So now that I have been able to stay here in Rhadern with Eckhards family, I have been out riding the surrounding hills for the last 3 days with lots of climbing. It is all just an amazing place here. I could easily settle here just to ride everyday in another direction. Next stop will be at another festival just south of Munich. I haven’t decided whether to race there or not as I feel that I have a cold coming on. I will wait and see when I am there.
