Update from Team PHenomenal Hope Germany
Team PH Hope Germany is looking forward to a great racing season in 2018! Last year, we were unable to climb the “Brocken,” a mountain at the border of east and west Germany. Due to harsh weather during our 2017 Team PH Germany Tour, we ended up leaving this German monument out, and continuing on the rest of our tour. But, we have decided to go back and conquer it this year.
This years’ edition of our Team PH Germany Tour will start in the west of Germany, in Bonn, and will go through the “Brocken” to Berlin, Germany´s capital in the east. Our tour will start on July 6th, and hopefully we will have five full days of sunshine after being unlucky with the weather conditions in 2017. Our team will consist of 11 cyclists, nine of whom are returning from last year. The start and finish of our tour will be at PH centers in Bonn and Berlin.
We are fortunate to have made connections with families of children who have PH. They have agreed to be matches for each of our riders, who will dedicate their training and tour to them! We admired the #LetMeBeYourLungs campaign started by the US team, so our cyclists will ride for kids living with PH coming from Germany, Belgium and Switzerland as well. We will publish the childrens stories on Facebook during our tour to share with our community.
In total we will ride 700 kilometers in five days on a remote route with nice hills on our way. Our last year’s Team PH Germany tour was such an incredible experience that we are really looking forward to doing it again!
As we wrap up our Team PH Germany Tour, we will immediately begin preparing for the Rad Am Ring at the end of July. That’s right, we are headed back to Nuerburgring! Still impressed by Dr. Patricia George’s success in the 2017 race (she raced for 24 hours solo, and ended up at second place overall!), we are highly motivated for this July’s race. We will be at the starting line with 12 team riders, and joined by a PH Belgium group, headed by Tommy Vansteenkiste. We will race for 24 hours at the famous “Green Hell,” a former Formula One race track, in relay teams of two or four people. This is a race with a very special setting and an enormous 10,000 starters in total.
In addition to these two great rides we have on the calendar, we are looking to start several local bike races and triathlons. Stay tuned and check our Facebook page for updates coming soon!
