On Friday, August 6th my support team and me started at the most Western point of Austria, the city of Feldkirch.

Our goal was to reach the most Eastern point of Austria, the city of Nickelsdorf within 24 hours. There are strict rules prescribed by the Ultra Marathon Cycling Association. It is not allowed to draft, it is not allowed to get supported by the crew more longer than 4 minutes per hour, during the night it is not allowed to ride without the follow vehicle right behind you.

But I know all these rules from the ultra races I have done in the past years, and so does my team. We may concentrate on our goal, on a damned fast ride. From the start I set a very high but constant pace, controlling myself with my new SRM crank.

That crank is really great, because on ultradistances it helps you a lot. It is very important to go fast but not too fast. Going too fast means that you will suffer and slow down after some hours. I know exactly what my body is able to perform, we did medical tests to find out my perfect speed for 24 hours.

Right from the start we had to climb to Arlbergpass, the only high mountain on the track. It was rainy, cold and foggy, you would never believe that it should be the hottest time of the year. Instead of enjoying summer weather, I had to suffer only 5 degrees Celsius on the summit. But the ride went on, and back in the valley of river Inn it became more comfortable again, temperatures rising to 18 degrees and the streets drying up.

My legs felt great, the display of my SRM crank showed me an average power of more than 240 Watts after 10 hours. What a pleasure, and I still felt strong, no signs of exhaustion at all.

My support team did great work, they kept me fed so I could push and push through the night.

After a breakdown of my bike I had to change to my spare bike and reached the very hilly sections in upper and lower Austria. Some roadworks forced us to go another way, which caused unexpected mileage and made it impossible to reach the 24 hours deadline.

In the end I did a great average speed of 31 kilometres per hour on 766 kilometres distance with 6300 metres of climbing. But because of the longer way the official time was only 24:42 hours.

That means that the UMCA imposes a time penalty of 15 minutes, because I only had one UMCA official with me. If a record attempt takes longer than 24 hours you need to have two officials.

So I am still happy, although I lost time. If the record is challenged by another rider I will also come back to do it again. I know that I can still go faster.

Now there are just 10 days to recover from this extraordinary training ride. I hope that it is enough to get in shape again, because my ultimate goal of the seasen is coming up: the Race Around Austria with a distance of 2160 kilometres.

I’ll keep you up to date,

Yours Christoph