Trans Germany is over and done - and so am I! The last few stages were again very tough, and the problems for me lay more in the body than the bike. Stage 5 was 'easy' stage for the GC favourites, with a big group staying together till almost the end. Unfortunately I got dropped on a long hard climb near the start, and had to chase hard to catch back up, which I did, but then blew up big time near the end. Unfortunately Jochen flatted with about 5km to go, and could have used my help if I had still been up there. In the end he lost almost a minute to the leader, but still kept 2nd overall.
Stage 6 followed a similar pattern; losing touch with the leaders on the first big climb I then spent the rest of the day with a small group until the final 12km (550m gain) climb where I backed right off to save anything I had for the last day when I might be able to do something.
The last day was Jochen and Hannes final chance to mount an assault on the leader Thomas Dietsch from Team Bulls. The plan was to start hard to whittle the group down, then keep on attacking him. After a series of attacks, Jochen, Hannes, Dietsch and Bohme (also Bulls) were off the front, and I was still with Kugler who had to try and make up 30 seconds to get 4th overall. On a long slippery descent towards the end I pushed a hard pace and we made a gap to the rider Kugi needed to beat. I kept pushing hard until some steep climbs, where Kugi took off in an attempt to make up the time. In the end he only fell a few seconds short, leaving Multivan with 2nd (Hannes), 3rd (Jochen), 5th (Kugler) and 20th (me). Jochen and Hannes each won 3 stages, meaning there was only 1 stage that the team didn't win! We also won the Teams classification despite my best efforts to lose time with mechanicals.
Overall it was a very tough week, but made much easier by being looked after by the Multivan crew. I now will be based in Stuttgart for a few weeks; spending some time working at DLR (German aerospace research centre) for my PhD.
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