Racer bike cup - Granichen, Switzerland

So the first race of the season. the one that the results only get better as our speed builds we are doing a 5 week block of racing this being the first and only a few weeks into our speed build up, we had a mixed bag of results again...

Check out this race pack there is enough goodness in here to feed me for a week

The days forecast for thunderstorms turned out to be a baking hot day, and we cooked in all 29 degrees of it. Katies race kicked off first and she was feeling good, recovered and had scoped the track in her warm up coming back ready to go. She was not ranked very well on the start but went unbelievably well I was half way up the first hill when I saw her swing out passing a number of riders to slot in behind 2009 world champion who went on to win the race. I thought we were in for a big day however things went very wrong from here and turn into the one of the worst performances I have seen from Katie, I knew she would be disappointed it was well below her capabilities. In training I think I may have knocked her confidence a bit she was capable of all the technical sections but on the jumps was coming down short on her rear wheel, and risking puncture or a smashed rim, I recommended she take it easier into these and manual through them. This caused her to loose a lot time and confidence in her ability I later saw that nearly every female rider even the top placing ones were coming down short and some got away luck while others punctured or getting hurt as I had said. This week we will be going over these skills big TIME both of us want there not only to be the confidence but the skill so she can clear the gaps with no risk at all which she is easily able to do. On the whole Katie could climb well and her start was good, she told me "rode like shit today... but I can climb" :) so we are working on it.

Taped out 1st climb

Katie quickly got back to the car in the 20minute gap between races changed and ready to support Sam and I in the tech/feed zone. Ranked 8th going into it all I wanted to do was stay in the top 10 (got called up 14th lots of hard cores turned up) which would be possible if I was as fast as nationals. But reality is that I have only just started what it took me to win nationals so I was kinda pushing $h!T up hill. Started ok ish and we all bunched up for most of the climb then some one hit it hard spreading us out quickly. It felt really weird being at max heart rate for so long but felt good. The laps were very short laps so with Burry and Florian out there I had been lapped out in the back of my mind.... but not this year boys. My first 2 laps were ok again but I felt average, from then on it was all on, from sitting and only just making it over the steep pinches to out of the saddle powering over the top. Felt like a new me, I picked of a few chaps I was having battles with and gapped it finishing up 20th 12 mins behind Florian but still in wasn't very pretty but still ok. We did 9 laps of the very techy and very cool track. It was mean cant wait for my legs to come to the party wont be to long now.

Hurt box other side of feed zone

we didn't really get picks as we were both in feed zones.

Cheers
Carl + words of Katie's