Welcome To Europe...Bundesliga XC, Germany.

Damn. On count back it’s been five years since I have pinned a race number on in Europe. From a fresh faced J.I.T (Junior In Training) back in 02’ for Worlds, last weekend was a long awaited return, taking the 6hr drive to St Margen, Germany. Must say I was pretty darn nervous to say the least. Like 147bpm on the start-line nervous. And that was only before the ‘six pack’ race, a nifty little 6 man heat around a 3minute section of the XC course with the top three advancing to the next round. D-Mac got us off to a ripper of a start in his heat, taking a nice second place and advancing through whilst scaring the shit outta me on just how frickin’ fast these Euros are. Hello World Cup hitters. So redlining before the start it was heart straight in the mouth stuff as I got off to a half decent start in my heat. Definitely used the 620mm risers to their full potential. On the gas in third place and dying, I got caught and passed into the last corner and got dogged for fourth place on the line. Welcome to Europe. Norris gave his all in his heat and unfortunately too came up short, leaving Macca to fly the boxing kangaroo flag, eventually finishing 10th.


So with unsettled sky we woke up on race day not sure whether it was going to stay okay or bucket down cats and dogs. We got the latter. The course was a pretty neat little affair, super short at bout 16mins with a cool bmx section, typical Euro grass field action and some hairy steep forest rooted chutes that were tricky in the dry and off trolley in the mud. Climbs wise there were only a couple, with the majority of the main one having to be tackled one foot at a time. And damn quickly if you are a native. So being a UCI ranked shindig the hitters were there, including Fredriek Kessiokoff, Ralph Naf and the Fumic brothers to name a few. Once again this was the big smoke. With a solid field of 75 I got a pretty good call up in the third row in a race where I had know idea where the hell I should end up. Off the start it was super fast as expected and having a good start and a few close calls on the descents I came through the first lap in 23rd. And that was pretty much all she wrote, going backwards steadily from there. Definitely a little under done after 7wks of no racing I guess you could say it was a pretty ugly affair for the next 7 laps, coming home in 42nd place.

D-Mac puts in the big ones...

Going a little stir crazy on the drive...it happens from time to time..

Norris is quite the artist...

So that was it, the Euro racing account is now open and it’s time to build on last week and try and get the form cranking for this weekend, a Swiss Cup in Bern. Hopefully it’s on the way up from here...ciao, cw.