Tanke2Tanke 2024 – Berlin Team Time Trial

The absolute highlight of the Berlin Road cycling community took place yesterday, June 20th, Tanke2Tanke! The event is organized by the Berlin Eisenschweinkader cycling club, and master of events was as always the club’s own Tobias, making sure everything runs smoothly.

Tanke2Tanke is a team (of 2) time trial, and spots are limited to just 50 teams. They are gone in just a couple of hours so you have to be quick to sign up. The course runs the intersection of the Havelchaussee with Kronprinzessinnenweg in the Grunewald, near Wannsee, climbs up and over one of Berlin’s biggest climbs to the Grunewaldturm, takes a difficult right turn on Am Postfenn climbing up to Stallspöner Allee, turns 180 degrees around and runs back to the start. It is about 19km and takes most people between 30 and 35 minutes.

Big Forest Frameworks was on start again this year with two teams. Konrad teamed up with Rangi who is currently finishing up his 2 week course in building a cargo bike, and I rode again with Ludwig as we did last year.

I was really hoping to maybe break into the top 10 this year! I felt pretty fit, though the scale says otherwise. Still I have been riding about as much as I did last year, and I feel like the extra pounds are perhaps in muscle mass and not in fat.

Ludwig and I met about a week before Tanke2Tanke to test ride the course and see exactly where we were at. And of course the clock doesn’t lie…. and neither does Strava. One of the cool things I like about Strava is the basic tracking feature, I can see our times from the past few years, and last year we also rode the course about a week before the event. So I could pretty well directly compare how we were this year compared to last. And, we were 10 seconds slower than last year. I was sort of a bit disappointed. But hey I am also a year older and it could have been worse. Clearly top 10 was out of the question, but maybe there was still a chance for our course time to be faster than last year.

We were the 31st team to start.  We held a brief team meeting to plan our strategy. We wanted to switch positions more often than we did in practice, and not start too hard so we wouldn’t run out of gas at the end. And we were off! Everything felt pretty good and it seemed to me like we were definitely significantly quicker than our practice run a week before. But would it be enough to beat our personal record from last year? Things looked pretty good as we made the turn at the halfway point, we were at around 15 minutes (our official time last year was 31:04). The course is pretty interesting becuase for Berlin it does have quite a bit of climbing, so it isn’t so easy to know when, and how much, to go hard. When we were almost back to the start/finish it seemed like maybe we had a chance to get our time under 30 minutes!!! Under 30 minutes would probably move us into the top 15. To get into the top 10 we would probably need to be under 29 minutes.

Time to pick up the pace! But there is a climb near the end that makes the end tough to gauge. You need to save a bit of energy and avoid blowing up before the climb or your time will suffer. We made it up pretty well and then came the big sprint to the finish line!!!

As we crossed the finish line, the excitement was palpable – did we improve our time from last year? The results were still pending, but the camaraderie and thrill of the race were undeniable. From the cheers of the crowd to the final sprint, Tanke2Tanke was an unforgettable experience that left us all hungry for more.

Reflecting on the race, it’s clear that the Berlin cycling community is a force to be reckoned with. The challenges we faced yesterday only fuel our passion for the sport, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds. Until next time, keep riding and striving for those personal bests!