Engleburg Race Report

This weekend we had another Swiss Cup Race in Engleburg. We knew this was going to be a tough one from the race profile. The course went straight up and straight down. Unfortunately at the same time it was horrifically muddy. On top of the mud, the downhills were super steep and had lots of roots and rocks. The mud was that caky stick to your tire stuff. These downhills were much more treacherous than anything in the US. Also the uphill was very long and we had to do 8 laps of it. In this race I crashed 3 times, which for most of the racers was nothing. People were crashing all over the downhill.

So I ended up getting 27th, which was a big improvement from the first race. I was the first best American. Once again all of us Americans started in the very back of the group. I was happy for the improvement though. These races are much different than any of the US races and every Swiss rider is at the top of their game and super fast. As I said before, mountainbiking for the Swiss is like football for the US. My one down thing though is I did not know how many laps I had left. Because this course was I think a little under 2 miles a lot of people got lapped. Unfortunately I got lapped too. The first race I was down 18 minutes on the leader, when this race I think I was down like 14 minutes. Because of the shorter course like half of the riders got lapped. So as I said I did not know how many laps I had left. One guy told me two and then another told me one lap. I wanted to blow it out on the last lap but I was not sure if my 7th lap was my last lap. I ended up pushing it a good bit more on the 7th lap, which did end up being my last lap. When I looked at the results I saw that if I like even got 2 minutes off my time, I could have jumped like 5 spots, because the gaps between riders were so small. So if I knew it was my last lap, I think I could of gained some spots but that is kind of irrelevant. Overall it was a decent improvement and I hope to improve much more in the future of Euro racing. As I said before this type of racing over in Europe is a totally different thing. The intensity throughout the race is much higher and there is much more competition.

Next weekend is another race in Frieburg, Germany.