st wendel uci marathon world champs 2010

well i am already back at the swiss home and the race i had been waiting to do for so long is been and gone! crazy how fast it all went in the end!

i left on Saturday morning by car to drive to St Wendel in Germany, the drive was somewhat over 5 hrs, a bit longer then expected but pretty painless but it was good to get to the destination and being able to stretch the legs.

st wendel, the host town, is a lively small city with lots of old buildings, a busy cobblestone plaza and a big dome right in the middle of it.

i decided to go to the team managers meeting at 6pm the night before the race, so i wouldn't miss any vital last changes to the race or other useful information. it was weird being there not knowing anyone, i usually see a few familiar faces at the xc races, but not this time. there hadn't been any changes but i found out that they would give out water bottles at the feed stations which was something i didn't know. now i had an other option to taking my hydration-pack which would be quite nice in the temperatures we would potentially race in. i wasn't too sure if it was a good idea to change plans so close to the race but i decided to go with the bottle option and not get the disadvantage of getting too hot. 

when the gun went we started off as expected but then didn't split up into smaller groups as i had thought but rather rode together as a big group. i soon realised that i was in a road race, the riders kept in a big peloton and we cruised around (at a good pace) the country side, up and down the hills through fields and small towns and forests. it wasn't quite as cruisey as it sounds, not at all, but the the views were nice. i lost contact with the front peloton close to the half way point due to dropping the chain. it was nice to be riding by myself and being able to ride a more constant pace. i caught 5 riders and was starting to ride better but then i run out of water and the next feed station didn't come for ages. i was going backwards rather fast. in the end 3 of the riders passed me back so i finished the race in 23rd place in just under 5hrs. the course was physically  and mentally quite challenging, with hardly any single trail but loads and loads of climbing on all sorts of roads.

my marathon world champs experience was quite different to what i had trained, planned and hoped for. i didn't know i had entered a road race as when i first had a look at the course description about a year ago it said 25 % single trail, the rest forest road, nature trails etc. but somehow they had changed their mind or couldn't find enough single trail as we had hardly any single trail in our race, bummer. now i think, it was a typical european marathon race with almost only forest, grass and gravel roads and no mountain bike skills required, very unlike our kiwi races that are specked with single trails. so when i am talking about 'road race' i am also talking about the fact that we were racing in a big peloton and using the front riders to get pulled along etc, and it was quite windy on the exposed roads. i am not used to riding in big bunches of riders like this, i have only done a few road races and never go riding with a big bunch on the road so i certainly lacked the experience and aggressiveness you need to get and keep a good position close to the front of the field rather then being pushed to the back of the group and having to constantly adjust your speed to keep in touch with the peloton, the yo-yo effect. so all in all it was an experience i will remember and i will take lots from. and even though i was hoping to do much better it's still not too bad to get 23rd at a world champs without a support crew and on a bike that is meant for riding single trails ;)


here the course graph 107.93km long and 2556m of climbing; yep it did go up and down quite a bit ;)

champery the race

here a bit about the world cup, it was a bit of a 'non' event.

my dad and i drove to champery on saturday morning, the drive was 3 and a bit hours so not too bad really. i had heard that it had rained heavily all day on friday and later i found out it had rained all night to saturday as well, the course was a mud bath to say the least! i started preriding the course and got stuck on the first climb, a grass climb, by that stage the mud was almost half a foot deep and it was therefore slippery as and you could hardly ride it (let alone walk it!) at the top of that climb there was the first technical steep downhill which all riders who were preriding the course were walk/sliding down, so there was no way you could try to preride it as you would end up slamming into the other riders. i decided that there was no point in pre-riding/walking/sliding (whatever it was going to be) the course as i wouldn't learn to ride it by walking it anyway and my bike would get so muddy that it potentially wouldn't work for the race the next day. i therefore decided to abort the preride session and get surprised by the course the next day - true kiwi style ;) i had heard it was rather technical so it would be rather beneficial to pre ride the course but oh well, without mechanic on hand i didn't want to take the chance and Dirk talked me through the course so i had a fair idea of what it was like. nothing like a little surprise when you are racing, ha ha ;) Nathalie (who i went riding with on Tuesday before the race and who went to win the race (her first world cup win!) told me her forks stop working after 1 lap of preriding on Saturday - so hearing that i was assured to do the right thing by staying off the course before the race.

race day: it's not that great to start in the last row, there wasn't much chance for me to move up into a good position fast, due to the design of the course and in the conditions we had as we had soo much traffic and most riders were walking through the more technical parts which meant that i had to walk/run as well as otherwise i'd end up flying/sliding into them and most likely get tangled up as there is not much control on the slippery mud and wet roots, so i keep loosing more and more time on the front riders. so for the start lap and a bit i could hardly make any ground at all, i was just stuck in the masses. after that i could finally pass some riders on the climbs and flats mostly. i was running half the lap as it was faster and safer running then riding (crazy!?) luckily i had been running enough so i felt pretty strong running through the mud and made up some places there too but then on the very last super steep climb i got my chain stuck between my frame and crank and couldn't get it back out (there was so much dirt stuck in there too so that made it worse) i didn't want to pull too hard on the chain as i was sure going to bend the chain as then it wouldn't work anymore anyway so i decided it was time to call it quits and ended the race there and focus on my real race the marathon worlds. 

so next time i do a world cup i will make sure to collect some uci points before hand and get a better starting position and maybe take my mechanic + support crew + feeder = Rob with me ;) 

all good though as it was still good to be doing a part of a world cup again (after 4 years break!)