Riedberg, Germany: Hour 20 of 24skate #13


Dear friends and skaters around the world,

after a short night (or long night, depending on what you count) - see report from Kronberg - my alarm clock rang early enough to put me in my skate gear at 7:15 am. My call for duty was scheduled to eight a clock, but from my hotel in Eschborn - I chose the location to avoid the hilly slopes of Kronberg - I had to get to my skating spot. I had first searched it on the internet, then sent some scouts there - the 100 year old couple, see Kronberg report. Their feedback about the track around a noise protection embankment next to a highway was: "The part of the track we checked is not straight, but smooth and level ground." That sounded okay. Now I had to arrive there, about 6km as the birds fly from my hotel. But as long as skates (or I) don't fly, I had to skate. The first obstacle was a temporary one:



Fortunately, the path through the fields was tarmaced and only slightly wet from the nightly rainshowers.



Far behind a sugar beet field the skyline of Frankfurt came into view:



Seems there had been another race at this place earlier:



Bunnies on the ground and magpies in the air were crossing the path (no photos, sorry). Cornfield in the foreground, mountain range Taunus in the background.



Not only tarmac, some mud too on the farm track:



Finally I arrived at the planned location. However, when I did a complete check of its lay-out, I detected not only a steep slope behind a sharp bend, but also a closed fence gate. Oh dear! (and no time for a photo) Track busted and only 10 minutes to go. So let's check the neighbourhood. Fortunately it was a development area and most buildings not yet finished, but the street pattern had been done first.



Empty Sunday morning streets were more than acceptable in my situation. I used the remaining minutes to check the conditions and off I went. As you can see from my GPS log



I changed the lap lay-out three times. First I circled along a ca. 500m lap. During one of the first rounds a big rabbit disappeared into the meadows, later a fox crossed my way. I literally skated where fox and rabbit say good morning (the version of this sentence with "night" instead of "morning" is a German expression for "in the middle of nowhere". After a while I decided that the junction to the main road did not allow to look ahead enough on the main road, so I extended the lap lay-out, although it went up and down a bit now. You can see it in the velocity plot with the wave pattern after minute 15. The "d" in the map shows where it went a bit downhill - faster speed at the wave top - , the "u" stands for uphill - slower speed at the bottom of the wave.
The numbers in the map indicate where the pictures were taken: 1: the development area bill, 2: the empty road with flower - both above -, and 3: the finisher photos towards both sides of the street:





The next photo shows the proof of my skated distance and the witness (the humblebee on the flower ;-).



26.48 kilometers in one hour was very close to my seasonal best of 2016, so I skated back with a feeling of gratification. Past corn poppy in front of far away skyscrapers,



along apples trees resembling upside-down boats by their layer of bird protection nets,



through the same mud as on my forward run,



back to Eschborn



- this is a barn, not my hotel ;-) -

where I arrived just in time for shower, breakfast and check-out.

Conclusion: The German saying "If someone travels, he can tell a story." can be adopted to "If someone 24skates, he can tell a story."
I hope you liked mine.

Best regards
Clemens


History of this page:
4th of July 016: First version