My plan was to rideat least 150km, so I chose a little longer route towards Grosuplje - via Dvor, Zavrč and Videm. At Grosuplje, I rode three laps of the charity cycling loop, some alone, some are in good company. It was already dark when I came home, showered, dressed, ate dinner, put kids to sleep and then started packing for the night ride that we planned for that night. We did it together with Iztok, my teammate for Race around Slovenia in a 2-person Team. Joining us were also some crew members for RAS (and RAAM), Miran, Andrej and Irma, who accompanied us in the follow car.

The aim of the training was mainly for Iztok to learn about night riding, getting to know the North-East part of the RAS route and then to see how he copes with the ultra-distance in training. This is the only element that Iztok lacks to become a great ultra-cyclist, or at least a great partner for a successful ultra 2-person Team. He already has all the speed he needs and I never worried about his shape, what was unknown was his ability how will he do after so many hours in the saddle. The second goal was the talk about the tactics and logistics for the Race around Slovenia. I gave my "input" to the crew members in the conversation we had before training, the details they discussed amongst themselves in the nearly 15 hours of training. So it was a fun and useful. Of course, we could do the training alone, but to tell the truth, I felt a lot safer on some parts of the route with the follow car behind us.

I won’t talk a lot about the training itself, let the images speak for themselves. We started quite fast and ended almost as fast, only in the uphills we held back, and then continued faster on the flats. I tested my food regime for the race (a combination of WINFORCE gels&Carbo+ and TURBOKATKA bars does work!), Along the way we enjoyed nice stars in the night skies, a beautiful sunrise and had a great time. Iztok passed the test in flying colors and in RAS he surely won’t be the weaker link. We cannot wait for the race to start!

Some interesting data - because I started training on Saturday a few minutes after 3PM and finished exactly at 3PM on Sunday, there is some interesting statistics for those 24 hours: I covered 610km with 4200m of climbing (around 12000feet), the ride time was 18h 50min, average speed on the bike 32.4 km/h. Quite nice numbers I must admit, but even so I am glad that the main goal of the season is still a little less than two months away...