5th Bodensee Megathlon 2009 | August 2, 2009
In spite of a very short training time, GATC team achieves surprising result.
After only 8 weeks training, the GATC Biotech Team finished 27th out of 105 mixed company teams competing in the 5th Bodensee-Megathlon 2009 at Radolfzell.
The challenges were not easy: 2.5 km swimming in Lake Constance, 26 km inline speed skating, 66 km on a racing bike followed by 38 km on a mountain bike and finally 10.5 km running.
The idea to participate came from Jiri Ködding at the end of June and he was immediately successful in convincing 7 GATC-Colleagues. This meant that each discipline could provisionally be covered twice except for swimming and inline speed skating.
There were some organizational problems to be solved before the training could be started. Missing racing and mountain bikes were quickly provided by colleagues. The swimmer Daniela Esser trained three times a day in Lake Constance, sometimes as early as 0600, to make the most of the available time.
On the day of the contest the GATC team surpassed itself and finished all five disciplines in an unbelievable total time of 5:52:08 hours. With a time of 37:44.02 minutes swimmer Daniela Esser finished 6th in spite of stomach pains. Inline speed skater Andrea Fackelmayer covered the challenging 26 km through the Hegau in a personal best time of just over 1 hour, whilst Eddie Steinmel made his debut with a speed of 33 km/h on a borrowed racing bike which was much too small for him.
Jiri Ködding regarded the mountain bike course with 400 m altitude difference and gravel descents as „fast and relatively harmless“ and finished 16th with an average speed of 28 km/h. Runner Nicole Lehmann, travelling from Berlin only the day before, had to complete her race in heavy rain. Although bothered most of the time by side stitches, she ran the 10.5 km in just over 52 minutes. For the last few meters to the finishing line she was accompanied by her cheering team colleagues. Due to a thunderstorm the Megathlon was terminated at about 1500 by the organizers.
Team Captain Jiri Ködding is convinced they will able to achieve even better results next time: „We could have improved by 10 to 15 minutes if all conditions were optimal.” He thinks a Top 10 place will be possible if the preparation time was longer.
Because of the heavy rain the Sunday-Evening Party was cancelled. It will be rescheduled at the „High-Altitude-Camp" in the Swabian Mountains with teammate Elke Decker. There plans will be made to enter the 6th Bodensee-Megathlon 2010. Because the 8-person sports team is convinced that with Jiri as captain and with such a team spirit you can only win...
