Halfway

Heyyyy ya’ll.
Never said that before. I never use ya’ll. Well, now I did. Europe is starting to do strange things to me. I’m starting to think about flat bars and carbon bits littering my bike. Ahhh!!!! Not good, I need to be back in the south.

Another weekend down, another race in the books. Saturday was a Swiss Power Cup, or a Swiss national race. In other words, just as fast as a World Cup but with less people. Sweet! For those of you in the know, Julien Absalon, Nino Schuter, Christophe Sauser, and Florien Vogel were some of the guys in attendance. My legs started hurting just looking at the names.

To make it that much better, about 70% of the race is on pavement. Pavement=pinned. Got an alright start but made a big mistake and ended up on the wrong side of the barriers and had to slow down and duck under the tape. Got back going without a problem but I lost contact with the group I was in. I tried to bridge on the climb and couldn’t do it but some guys caught up on the next pavement section. They were going a little too slow, so I tried to bridge again and spent the rest of the race stuck in the middle of nowhere between groups.

I almost got lapped by Absalon but I totally out sprinted him at the finish and made it out for the last lap. I ended up catching some more riders on that last lap but screwed up the sprint finish and had to settle for second out of three.
Pretty good race, you have to have most things go your way at these Euro races and it just hasn’t clicked yet, but I can feel it coming (I hope that is).

Sunday was another race we did last year. It was small and local last year but like 40 people showed up this year. They changed the course and took out the longest descent and put in a little girl downhill with some super, super lame logs you had to jump over. It was raining but that didn’t really help out much. Not trying to sound like a broken record but the legs were gassed and I just couldn’t get on to the lead group again so I settled for a top 20. I was top 5 last year ha-ha. Ow.

Looks like a good week coming up. We’re planning on going to Freiburg or someplace else either today or tomorrow to break up the routine. Then on Saturday we’re driving up to Heubach to do a German national race. Fun course with a sustained downhill full of ruts and berms just what T. Cowie ordered. Plus we’re racing the U23 class instead of the elite class. That just means there will be less people not that it will be any easier. The top U23 guys are getting top 5s in the elite races, so yeah really not that much slower.

Things are going good, looks like another day of rain and cold weather. I’m used to it though, thank you east coast. Makes everybody unhappy but not me. Just hang it out a little more and get loose. It’s slowly starting to wear on me, just being wayyy far away from home but before I know it I’ll be back and keeping that throttle pinned on some Pisgah trails. I can’t wait.

Please don’t float away Amurica, I don’t know if the planes can make it.
T

P. S.
I’ll post presse from the race as it comes in. And yes “press” is meant to be spelled European. Thank you St. Marie.

P. S. S.
For those of you who are interested in the ‘stache. It’s coming along quite nicely, not as sketchy as the old one. Pictures to come eventually.