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!

.
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