The Tour de Berne World Cup and the Sprint Classification (?!)
Sunday was the Tour de Berne World Cup in Switzerland.  We left Haaren (Holland) at 6:30 in the morning on Saturday!!!   After 6 hrs of driving plus a 30 min stop in Germany to pick up Madi, we arrived at our hotel in Lyss.   This left plenty of time for a couple hours on the bike to check out the course and do a few prerace efforts.    

Switzerland is one of my favorite countries.  It is so clean and pristine.  The colors are all so vibrant and sharp.  AND there are mountains all around!!!  It was so good to see some terrain.  Holland is nice, too, but Holland is FLAT. 

The race was fast.  The circuit was 20km with a short, steep 3 min climb on it.  The roads, narrow at times, weaved in and out of the small towns in between the wide open countryside.  After 1.5 laps of racing, the attacks started to happen.  Nothing stuck, though, until I attacked on the next lap, about 50-55km into the race.   Away I went on a solo, 35km, suicide breakaway.  It was much too early to stay away until the finish, but I was either hoping for some ‘friends’ to come up to me or to stay out long enough to set up my teammates for the final selection.  Well, the good news was that I stayed out long enough to collect enough points to win the sprint classifation.  However, when the final split happened,

Susanne was the only BFL rider to make it, and she ended up 11^th in the sprint.  The rest of us came in with the large chase group.  I was cooked when I got caught and was content to cruise it in. 

After the race, we showered and made a quick exit back to Holland.  Thankfully, there was no traffic on the Swiss-German border, and the speed on the German highways is unlimited.   The ‘flow’ of traffic is easily around 160km/hr with 180km/hr being common.  And, it is even possible to get passed like you are standing still while traveling at 200km/hr.  Unbelievable.  In the states, people pay hundreds of dollars to drive a race car on a track at those speeds.  In Germany, it is free!!!  Where is my Z when I need it?!