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Written by Adam Craig
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Wednesday, 30 May 2007 |
 A couple things before we start... This is going to be quick, as I only have .45 euro cents left in the (incredibly smoky) internet cafe. German keyboards are a bit of a challenge, bear with me. Z and Y are switched. ä means ' and a few other things might be amiss. The highlight of our weekend in Offenburg (Durbach actually) was our lodging. Probably the best weäve (by we I mean Elke and Frank) done in europe yet. a sweet Frierenworner (vacation rental) hidden at the base of vineyard covered hills with a castle across the valley.
Beautiful weather and everyone had their own bedroom, with close proximity to the kitchen, and living room, complete with couches. awesome. capped off by a garage, washing maching, dishwasher, bike wash and multiple patios and such for lounging.
It also was rainproof, which, it turns out, weäd need on sunday. badly. and monday...
Kelli was able to at least get in a couple laps before the deluge started. Unfortunately, a mean trick played on her by me made her event a bit of a struggle. You see, the day we got there, thoroughly guttered from the travel, we found the course and figured cloudy minds could still handle a lap of some goofy german track. Turns out there was awesome flowy singletrack. Great. I guess thereäs a first for everything. Hereäs a good first, being tricked by flow into thinking it would last forever. In reality, it only lasts about a minute before a totally blind 15 foot drop onto a road. I noted this about five seconds too late and ended up throwing my bike and running/sliding/tumbling down the drop just in time to look up and yell at Kelli to ditch it. Ditch it she did, tomahawking down the drop in spectacular fashion. Fortunately, she jumped up laughing and with a big smile, so I thought it was all good. After a few minutes though, the reality of some kind of shoulder problem became apparent. She took it easy for a couple days, wearing the same shirt the whole time, as changing it was harder than riding... Race day came with it feeling a bit better but still not perfect and her embattled body toughed it out for most of the race, finally getting pulled with two laps to go, just after getting good and wet, cold and muddy...
I was lounging around in our glorious digs, eating and listening to J5 when the deluge started, I should have known it would, as I asked Tom to put dry conditions tires on after seeing the morning sunshine... I was soaked to the bone by the time I arrived at bike marking and the rain let up, good timing on my part... Fortunately, Elke was there with magic warming oils to bring my legs back to temperature before the race. Evidently I needed more magic. I survived the downpour and crash riddled start loop with heavy legs and settled into survival pace, somewhere in the 40#s. This is where the heavy legs and eyelids would stay the rest of the day. Even though it seemed like I got passed by a couple guys per lap, at least that many dropped out or had their bikes explode as the sun came out and the mud turned into the kind of stuff that gets stuck everywhere. The sticking was helped by the (evidently totally idiotic) organizers who put hay down on all the super scary super triple extreme drop sections to dry things up. Great idea, take terrain designed by someone who has freeride hucking fantasies for XC courses and cover it with hay, making it both more slick and totally unreadable, or ridable, for that matter... Good times with the contrived business... At any rate, I stuck it out and ended up with 42nd place for my efforts. Not as bad as it could have been but definately nothing to write home about (wait, Iäm writing home right now...)
This week weäre headed towards the Czech Republic for one of their national series races and to check out some scenery and get in shape before next weekendäs world cup in Switzerland. Should be good. |
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