Mud and Rain... - E.T.

Hello from Slovenia!

A lot has happened since my last post! Race registration and walking course inspection was Thursday. The set up here at Maribor is strange. Race registration is at the very top of the mountain away from everything. You have to ride the gondola to the very top and then walk for another 5 minutes just to pick up your number plate!

After grabbing my plate I met up with Daniel and Emanuel (Pombo) for the course walk. Again, strange set up for this. The race course starts half way down the mountain so we had a solid 30 minute walk just to get to the start. There are no lifts with direct access so every time you want to do a run you have to ride half way down first.

Once at the start of the course I couldn’t help but smile. Such a sweet start! Nice start house/roll in with a couple long sweeping corners into a big step down jump (35 foot gap or so) then you are pinned into a HUGE left hand berm followed by a right and left berm and then you are in the woods.

The woods in Maribor are unlike anything I have ridden before. Always turning and flowing so very good except for one thing…THE ROOTS! I have never seen so many roots in my life. They are EVERYWHERE! The Pombo brothers call them “snakes” and for good reason. They will bite you when you least expect it.

The course is long in distance (roughly 2.5km). Last year the winning time was around 3 minutes so the course is fast (just do the math). The course is also almost entirely in the woods so you are pinning it by trees the entire time.

After the course walk Emanuel and I went to the grocery store to pick up some food to cook for dinner. They are camping in the same area, but have a super factory RV thanks to their sponsor Liberty Seguros (Liberty Mutual) of Portugal. For dinner we made up some good salad, chicken, and pasta and they introduced me to “Brisa”. A Portuguese juice drink. I can’t remember what kind of juice, but it was AMAZING! After dinner I worked on prepping my bike for Friday’s wet practice then headed to bed around 12:00 am.

Friday’s practice was crazy! I have never struggled so much on a race course in my life. The mud, roots, and rocks are NOTHING like home. The mud is slick and the roots even slicker. No brakes or turning on roots is key. Tough to do when 80% of the course is roots and there are so many corners. I began to get the hang of things somewhat by the end of practice. Never did I get a non stop run though, which is not good.

Saturday I woke up nice and early to the sound of rain DUMPING on the roof of my van/accomodation. It was going to be a wet one! Practice was short at only two hours. Between the long gondola ride, being forced by the ski resort to wash your bike between each run (they won’t let you on the gondola if your bike is dirty), and the logistics of it all, I got two runs.



The course was really wet and it was so dark and foggy in the upper woods it was difficult to even see where you were going! I joked to John Reynolds (a videographer on course) that I needed some night rider lights to see the course. He agreed that it would most definitely help and said I should try the bike shop at the bottom of the mountain. Maybe next year!

After practice I headed straight back to the campground to wash my bike since there was a nice bike wash set up by the camp host. Unfortunately a minute into washing my bike his water pressure quit working and I was forced to head back up to the pits to wait in the LONG line for the jet wash. An hour later I was freezing cold, but had successfully blasted all the grease out of everything in my bike (I hate pressure washers!). I went back down to the camp and changed into some dry cloths, dropped off my bike and headed back up to the pits in search of the qualifying start list, a team USA jersey, and some food.

The jerseys still had not arrived. They were supposed to come with Scott Sharples of Yeti, but his bags were lost. USA Cycling notified the UCI so I was good to do my qualifying run in my regular jersey. With that out of the way I found the start list and saw that I had roughly 2 hours until my start so I decided to grab some food.



The base of the mountain has an amazingly good affordable restaurant called “La Cantina”. They specialize in pizza and pasta and they kill it! Every rider eats either lunch or dinner here everyday and I don’t blame them. As I type this I am eating my left over gnocchi from lunch today and even though it is cold now, it is still amazing. Best I have ever had without a doubt.

After lunch I prepped everything for the ridiculously wet course and weather and headed up for my qualifier. Once at the start I had to pull one of my tearoffs (due to the long wet ride down to the start) which left two for my run. In the start it was foggy, windy, and cold, but I didn’t care. The start beeps went off and away I went.

The top part of the course was super fun. It was absolutely destroyed by the 200+ riders that had gone before me, but I was loving it. It felt so good to not stop 5 times in a run. Half way down the course and things started to blur. The speed was so fast and the conditions absolutely horrible. I carried so much speed into one section I couldn’t slow down and blew entirely off the main line at a CRITICAL section and crashed. My bike was pointed backwards up the course. I quickly grabbed it, turned around, and tried to get going again. The mud was so slick and the section of course so awkward it made it almost impossible to mount my bike. I crashed again just trying to get going! By now I had lost roughly 20 seconds, coated my hands and grips with mud, but I was determined to keep going.



I continued down the course at a good pace and blitzed through a whooped-out section which splashed mud on my goggles. I couldn’t see a thing! I had no tear offs left at this point. I tried to continue to ride with my goggles this way, but it wasn’t working. I stopped, pulled my goggles off, put them on my bars, and did the rest of my run squinting through the mud. I crossed the finish line with a time of 4:22 in 173rd and did not qualify. The cut off was 3:49.

Despite not qualifying I still had tons of fun and learned a lot about riding in mud and most of all Europe. Next weekend is the IXS cup race in Winterberg, Germany. I am looking forward to building off the knowledge I’ve gained at this race and seeing what I can do there.

-Evan