Good Times, Bad Times... NMBS Style

Good news first: my form seems to be getting better and I am starting to feel stronger on the bike; Pivot Mach 4 is an awesome bike: climbs great, handles super snappy, is nice and stiff and the rear suspension works! Weather was fine too; support from all the guys at Pivot (especially Jason) was tremendous . Thanks again for that.

Result: not so good. I don’t want to whine too much, so I’ll try and keep it short: it started all wrong before the race even began. I was sitting 23^rd overall, and, according to the promoter, this should also have been my starting position for the CC race today… was not! I lined up somewhere in the second to last line (i.e. somewhere around 70^th place). As the course doesn’t offer too much passing opportunities, that was great of cause. But we didn’t even make it into the single track, as a bunch of guys locked handlebars and went down about 100m into the race. Fortunately, I didn’t go down but got stuck behind the carnage, so that wasn’t too good either. Anyways, after that I started to get in a groove and was working my way through the field (in the process of which I inevitably hit a cactus; I still got some in my little finger on the left hand…) until, halfway through the second lap my rear tire blew out. I know, in an earlier post I complained that the course was too fast and groomed… so that is what I got for that remark. I fixed it but by the time I got going again I had dropped back some 15-10 positions (I had worked my way up into the top 30 before disaster struck). I got back on the bike and started to pick up some of the guys that had just past me when, about a lap later, I found myself standing at the side of the course again, fixing, again, my rear tire… Needless to say, this pretty much ended all my hopes for the day of a good finish. I caught some of the stragglers on my way into the finish but I guess I was pretty far of the back at the end. I couldn’t find any results posted before I left (which was pretty much after everyone else, including the promoter, had left) so I don’t know where I finally came in and how that screwed up my overall ranking at the end of the day…

So there you have it. I just hope that next weekend will be better. To end on a positive note: I didn’t crash and I didn’t get selected for the doping test yesterday, so no harm done there; and, I still had a lot of fun.

There only remains one more thing to say:

METROVOLKSWAGENFIGHTNEVERDIES, so I’ll keep trying!