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!)