Column Left : The spring, the time of the wheel-feast days

like the other day me clean up my old training records from 1980. Neatly, I got started back then as a youth rider, to document my training sessions. My former supervisor at the Kreuzberg Cycling club RVg Berlin in 1888, wanted to the so, but has thrown is never really a look. The reading in my hand-written records was like a trip back in time. 11. April 1980, is in the training diary, for example, "Havel-crown-Havel river, 30 km, 1:20 hrs" A round of the beautiful mountain on the Kronprinzessinnenweg, Havel Chaussee and back – I was as slow on the go.

Nearly three years before had captured me as a twelve-year-old the Cycling Virus. Didi Thurau, the blonde angel from Frankfurt, drove a sensational Tour de France and I feverishly on the screen. The football I had sworn off this time, since I was only on the substitutes ' bench. In Cycling, everything was different, I was all somehow responsible. Whether it was a success or a failure, or whether I trained or not. Also, I got to know the world, and to me the ride from the former West-Berlin in lower Saxony, Braunschweig, for the circuit race already seemed like a trip around the world. I was still very young.

The fascination for Cycling has not diminished all these years, whether as a Cycling Journalist, as a Trainer or as a functionary in the Association, something to do with Cycling. On visible the Cycling fever is actually in the spring. When the temperatures rise and the sun warms, the Cycling of Hotspots in Berlin abruptly. On the Kronprinzessinnenweg in the direction of Wannsee and the Havel Chaussee and it's full of small and large Cycling groups in between, then families who travel, particularly at weekends, "nothing out of the Wannsee". If you can ride fast or slow, long distance or short. There seems to be any sense of independence and freedom.

Honest people and nasty scammers

Also for the Fans of professional Cycling, it is in the spring, seriously. The monuments of Cycling, the classics in Italy, Belgium, France and the Netherlands are on the program: last weekend, the tour of Flanders on Sunday and Paris-Roubaix, then Amstel Gold Race, Fleche Wallonne and Liege-Bastogne-Liege, are the real feast day for me.

Often I am asked, why so long a thing may prescribe, with all the UPS and Downs that this Sport has brought and still brings. I think, apart from the sporting aspects of Cycling, such as the right to life. Here there are honest people and very nasty scammers. If you did everything for one thing, either you're the big winner, can stand on end but also with empty hands. There are big emotions, but also bad defeats. There are rules that you should keep, but there is always people who ignore these rules for a different interpretation, or simply. Some then get the receipt for it, others can get away with it. When faced as I was as a teenager to learn in a playful way for life, because a can not shake much.

Cycling is just fall down and get up again.

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The bike Blog of the daily mirror, Berlin is bike-friendly

Julian Graeber, Claus Vetter, Jörg Leopold, Helena Wittlich

Michael is Back, Cycling coach and sports journalist, and writes here in the exchange with the daily mirror a volunteer and runner Felix Hackenbruch.