Eddy Merckx

He was once known as the Cannibal, a bike racer who won five Tours de France and in 1971 was victorious in half the races he took part in. Eddy Merckx, now 62-years-old with hairy legs and a small beer pouch, is justifiably still referred to as the sport's greatest champion and it was an honour for me and 1350 other cyclists to ride alongside him at Eddy Merckx Classic Radmarathon, held on September 7, 2008.

The 148km race based in Eugendorf marked the end of my mini-comeback season, and after a successful training period and recent good results I was pretty fired up.

However, the first 95km were slightly chaotic as the course was too flat and the speed too low for the bunch to split. Consequently, the lead peloton was well over 100 strong containing many inexperienced and dangerous riders. On one particular descent we reached 90km/h with riders were spread all over the road and oncoming traffic had no choice but to veer out of the way.

After 60km, the police brought us to a halt and told us the event would be cancelled if we didn't stick to the right side of the road.

It was a poor decision to stop us. Many dropped riders caught up, swelling the bunch to greater proportions, and we were just 2km from the first climb. If we'd been left to race, the peloton would have been further shredded and the problem of large groups crossing the centre line avoided.

Ultimately the decision point came on Thalguaegg, with 55km left to race. The hammer went down, and the course became extremely mountainous, splitting the field into little bits.

In fact, the final third of the race contained over 1000m of climbing, adding to the 1200m from the first two-thirds. I found myself in a seven-strong group, and we worked well together not too far down on the leaders.

On the final major climb from Vorderfager up to the Gaisberg I was dropped, but kept to a reasonable pace and after a wild descent managed to bridge back to the others. Then it was a mad, balls-out blast final 8km to the finish.

We caught more riders on the way in to Eugendorf and after a fairly mild sprint, I ended up in 28th in a time of 4hr 15min 51sec.

Philip Götsch was the winner, completing the course in a super-fast 4hr 1min 35sec. Eddy Merckx rode the shorter 110km route, crossing the line with some of his team-mates from his racing days in 3hr 46min.

Couple of news reports from the day; you can see me riding up a hill on the back of our group after 1min 22sec on this one:



And I'm turning a corner with a small bunch around 1min 4sec:



Below: heart rate readings and altitude profile plotted against distance.