Racer bike cup Engelburg

Engelburg

Liars

After the race in Granichen we made our way to Engelburg where it is winter in summer, it was freezing! And we only had two days of sun in a whole week. Apart from that the place where we were staying (on the side of a valley) had amazing views of the mountain peaks.. and the snow haha, the temparture felt colder than at home. Leading up to the race was not so good for me.  I was barely getting enough sleep at night, the night before the race I got to sleep at around 1am and I could tell this race was not going to be fun. On race day the sun had finally decided to show itself which was very bad for unprepared me. After the puncture last week I had ordered some new tyres but the wrong ones arrived and I thought as it was very wet I would wait for the right ones (for dry conditions) and use my  Medusa mud tyres, but somehow the course had completeley dried out by our race time at 3 in the afternoon. When the race started the pace was easy but I was still struggling out the backdoor up the first climb which was gutting!
I was just thinking I came over here to race and not give up,  but the leaders still caught up and lapped me on the 6th lap (out of ten) I sat on their wheel up the climb and puttered out by the top, the next rider to come past was Jose Antonio (current world champ) so I decided it would be cool to race him so I did and for the last three laps I pushed my way up the field a bit and it was cool riding with Jose.

In the end I finished 24th which was not what I was after, especially being lapped out!

We have now left cold Engelburg to go to the summer in Basel which is soo nice, Pascal Shmutz and his family have taken Carl, Katie and I in for the week which is awesome, the people here are so friendly and helpful!

It only looked like this twice

This was what it mostly looked like.

Have got some new shoes and new tyres now! So the next race in Chur (pronounced sure, choir and hore haha),  which isn't for two weeks, will be better, so will probably update the blog sometime next week as well.

Laters

Disaster Strikes!!

Granichen Racer Bike Cup

The event village

This week leading up to the Racer Bike Cup, Carl, Katie and I left our nice "all you can eat buffet house" in Germany and moved onto the next best thing in Zurich, Switzerland. It turns out Karle and Annemarie's daughter Katrin and her partner Clemins are just as nice. We have been staying in their flat since Wednesday after Katrin and Clemins went to the Black Forest (Germany) to stay with Karle and Annemarie'. We pretty much just did the switch with them.

Anyway the lead up to the race was really good, and we had a lot of time to play on the course and get to know it. The first couple of rides on the course were pretty wet and slippery making it really technical but after a couple of days it dried up and was dusty by race day.

The race pack. I gobbled this up after the race:

8 packs chewing gum,4 packs chocolate, a pie, some cereal, a muesli bar, 3 tubes toothpaste, 2 bottles mouth wash, sunblock, key chain, bottle and a seat cover!

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Race

I kind of liked being seeded in 45th (last) as it put no pressure on me at all. All I could do was improve and improve I did... The gun went and the pace was moderate but people were still managing to crash and lose control, about 300m into the race a rider behind me barged into my shoe destroying the buckle completely (epic), I managed to stay on my bike and keep with the pack until my chain dropped at the first descent and sucked into the chain rings. While I was untangling it I moved back into last haha.

Like new

I spent the first two laps in 38th then stopped at the tech zone where Katie and Bek had prepared some tape all ready for the mint shoe repair. I rode the next 5 laps really strongly and had moved into 23rd place by the 8th lap. But a puncture in the 8th lap saw me lapped out and finishing in 32nd which I am kind of happy with but would have loved to see how the race went with no problems! Oh well gotta go shopping tomorrow to replace some things. Big thanks to Katie for feeding me, and giving me her wheel so I could finish the race!

Oh and one more thing haha somebody stole my gloves too! I wish insurance would cover all of this..

Looking forward to having a faster race next weekend in Engelburg at the next Racer Bike Cup!

Matching bug

Thats all for now

Cheers

Sam