Tuesday, March 30, 2004

Marathon Weekend
I'm in Stuttgart with Julia right now and recovering well from the race in Barcelona. This weekend I'll drive the 800 km home, taking a rental car. On the way I'll probably visit a friend near Frankfurt, and run the 4th Marathon Deutsche Weinstrasse. It was simply too tempting, running my 4th marathon on 4/4/04.

Sunday, March 21, 2004

Barcelona Marathon
It was a tough race for me, quite a bit too warm and with just a bit over 200 km training this year, but I felt good and ran a new personal best in 3:22:09 h. Now I need to recover, until later, Jolle.

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Sun, wind and mountains
The last days I did a lot cycling around Benalup. I went to the beaches in Bolonia, Conil de la Frontiera, Barbate..., I went to the white mountain villages like Arcos de la Frontiera, Alcala de los Gazules, Vejer etc. I also found some time and a very nice track to a lake for running.

Today I planned another day trip on my bike, to the British enclave Gibraltar. I fought against the heave wind from the South-East and against the steep mountains in the Parc National de los Alcornocales, just to find at the border checkpoint, that my passport waits at home for me. What a pity, but this is me. :)

So I had enough time on the way back to explore the scenery Parc National and enjoy the wind, which now came heavily from the back.

On Thursday I will take a night bus to Madrid, and arrive on Friday in Barcelona. Julia arrives on Saturday, so we´ll have a week for sightseeing the city, if I am still able to walk after the marathon.

See you and have a nice time, Jolle!

Friday, March 5, 2004

Arrived in Andalucia
I arrived in Barcelona on Wednesday and continued by Bus to Madrid, where I spent the night at the bus station before continuing to Andalucia in the morning.

Around 4 pm I arrived in Jerez de la Frontera, the citz of the Sherry, where Jersus and his father picked me up in the evening to drive to their Finca Orativa, which is nicely situated on the edge of Benalup, a 6000 people sized village.

Today I got up late and explored the surroundings while jogging for a while. Later Jesus showed me around the estate and their company.

Tomorrow I will start explorng the region on bike. But I didn´t make any plans yet. See you later, Jolle!

Monday, March 1, 2004

The Weekend
On Friday I packed and cleaned my apartment until the late afternoon, before going to Stuttgart by train, where I arrived at 1:30 in the night. Around 8 Julia and me went to Mainz, where we walked around the city centre for a while. Hans picked us up later and we drove to the Nürburgring for another Team Cup of the Bonnfinanz Motorsport Team. I was selected to drive with Florian, the son of Hans. We got the pole position for the race, thanks to our combined best qualifying times. And we stayed first until the last half of the race, when someone crashed Florian in the middle of a curve and we fell back to the 7th position. Anyway, it was a nice race weekend and we ended up second in the overall standing for this years Cup.

Sunday Florian and his girlfriend took us back to Mainz and showed us a bit more of the city before we returned to Stuttgart, totally tired.

A message to Kai: Thanx soo much for helping me moving out of my apartment. I'm sorry I couldn't help you more in return. But I'll pay it back in a way, take this for granted. :)