Leogang World Cup - E.T.

Last weekend was the third UCI World Cup race in Leogang, Austria.  After narrowly missing qualifying at the last World Cup, I was determined to give it my all in Leogang.

I arrived late Wednesday afternoon with it taking me roughly 7 hours to drive there from Germany.  I was pleasantly surprised by the on-site camping set-up.  For less than 40 Euro I had hot showers, electricity (if needed) and was a stones-throw from the pits and gondola.  Sweet!!!

The next day was registration followed by course walk.  For some reason they put racer registration half a mile down the road which kinda sucked.  I rode my bike and got in line for registration.  I handed the UCI official my license, he checked his computer, and told me I was not entered.  What!!??

I had given USA Cycling all of the info and had been told I would be entered.  The UCI official gave me an e-mail address and told me to have USA Cycling contact it to get me a late entry.  I went to the press room and typed up an e-mail to USA Cycling explaining the situation.

At this point I was livid.  I had traveled all the way here, it was the last race of my European trip, and I was most likely going to be a spectator.  Regardless, there still was a chance I might get entered so I headed up the gondola for the track walk.



This was the fastest track walk I have ever done.  I didn’t really spend much time looking at anything in detail.  I just walked down to see what it was all about.  The track looked pretty sick with steep rough sections, technical woods sections, and a few jumps for the crowd.

Next morning was the moment of truth for me.  While everybody else was heading out for the first day of practice, I headed over to registration to see if USA Cycling had sorted me out.  Lucky for me, they had worked some magic and I was now the last rider entered in the World Cup.

Stoked to be allowed to race, I prepped my bike, threw on my race kit, and headed up for practice. 

My first impression of the track was that I needed a stiffer fork!  Steep and rough sections had me riding my bike hanging off the back which is not the best position to be in.  After the first run I added compression damping and raised the ride height of my front fork.  The next run was night and day better so I decided to raise my forks even further and increase the compression damping even more.  Maxing out at 23mm higher than my normal fork height things started to click on the course.  I was having a great time riding until it rained…



It rained HARD!  Hanging out in the pits during the storm we literally had close to an inch of water flowing through the entire pits.  I wished I had a skim board!  After the storm lightened up I decided to do another run without changing to mud spikes.  Big mistake!  I crashed my brains out and finished our practice session scraped up, muddy, and with a bad taste in my mouth.

Saturday was practice and qualifying and I had now switched to mud tires after my bad experience the day before.  The tires made all the difference in the world and I finally felt up to speed on track.  Because of my late entry I was one of the last riders to go in qualifying.  I knew the track would be destroyed, even rougher, and more rutted-out than what I had practiced.  I attacked though.  No sense in not qualifying for a third time!

¾ of the way finished with my qualifying run, I caught the guy in front of me.  Due to the technical nature of this section of the track, it was difficult to pass.  I followed the slower rider down the last ¼ of the track.  Luckily he pedaled hard with me screaming at him all the way to the finish.  I crossed the line in 52nd place out of 233 racers safely making it into the top 80 qualifying cut-off.  Stoked!  Finally I get to race!

After a LONG time spent cleaning and prepping my bike and kit, I hit up a shower, and treated myself to a nice dinner at the restaurant nearby.  That night sleeping in my van, it sounded as if it rained all night.  I thought this might make the course better for race day, but I was wrong.



My first practice run ended up being my last…I got cross-rutted and sent over the bars going close to 30mph.  I tumbled at least 50 feet down the hill with my bike tumbling an additional 50 feet only to be stopped by a barb wire fence.  NICE!!!  Great way to start off my race day…

Hurting quite a bit, I gimped my way down and again started the cleaning and prepping for my race run.  It didn’t really matter now how I did in the race.  I was just happy to not be too hurt and still able to take my run.

My race run was amazing for the first 50 seconds!  I attacked the course just the way I wanted too until I unfortunately crashed.  I blew off the course in a whooped-out, muddy, rutted section, coating my hands and grips in mud.  I tried to get back on to the course, but was slipping in the mud and getting nowhere.  At this point I had no chance of doing good so I removed my gloves, got out of the way for Neethling, and cleaned off my grips as best as possible.  I then jumped in behind the next rider and cruised down the rest of the course just having fun and throwing some whips for the crowd.

Again with the cleaning only now I would be boxing up my bike to fly to SFO the next morning.  Stoked to not be hurt too bad, but bummed that I hadn’t been able to keep on my bike in the finals, I began the long journey to Whistler.

Now that I’m here in Whistler, I’m relaxing, riding, and training for the U.S. National Champs coming next month.  I can’t wait to see what I can do at this race!

Keep your eyes peeled for more updates from Whistler.

Cheers,

Evan 

Pro Grt #3 Course preview

Pro Grt #3 course preview with Cody Eichhorn and Graeme Pitts of Team Geronimo.

Northstar DH #1

This past weekend was opening round of the Northstar DH series. Northstar is the premier bike park on the west coast, and also features the only lift access race series in Northern California. At the end of May, Northstar still had a quite a bit of snow due to recent rains and even in June, most of the trails still were not open because of thick patches in the higher elevations.

Gypsy was the trail for round #1 and also will be used again this weekend for Pro Grt #3. With melting snow, the course could go from muddy to dusty within 2 corners. However the groomed, big jumps at the top of the course made for some great photography. Point One Racing's Jimmy Amaral and his younger brother Alex raced in the Pro class against fellow athletes Team Giant/Northstar and Geronimo. Both of them had a few mistakes in their run which surely would have put them in the top 10!

Check out the helmet cam and photos. Full results at the bottom...

Jimmy Amaral follows Patrick Tidd down Gypsy just prior to their race runs.


Alex Amaral


Cody Eichhorn


Max Houtzager


Jon Wilson


Jordan Lopez


Patrick Tidd


Photos by Wil Smith

Full results

CCCX DH #5

Last weekend was suppose to be the CCCX finals, however the series will continue with several more races in the Fall, when it is not so hot and dusty. This race showed the extreme differences in weather conditions you can have at a CCCX race. While the last one was rainy, windy and muggy. This race was hot and the course...dry as a bone.

Jimmy Amaral had a 1-point lead coming into this race, while his rival John Hauer was at the Ashland Super-D. Jimmy had a couple mistakes on course which cost him the win. Losing to his younger brother by only one second.


Ian Massey raced the big bike and showed everyone how well he can ride it. A solid 3rd place and only a few seconds off first.


Alex Amaral must be enjoying his summer vacation. Relaxed, confident and in control. 1st place on the day to gain valuable points for the series overall.


No photo! Scott Seery easily winning the Expert 55+ class, Allen Stoddard with a 5th place in pro, Mike Amaral also winning the Expert 45-54 class and Tim Lukko with a 2nd place in Sport 19-34.

Photos by Dale Lewis

Full results

Ashland Super D

Team Northstar/Giant made the journey to Ashland, OR for this past weekend's 12 mile Super D event. With snowy, Winter like conditions on Thursday, it proved that being at elevation in June, you can never be certain about the weather. However the skies did clear up and the traction seemed as though it was close to perfect.



Courtesy of Jordan Lopez:

With the days leading up to the Saturday race being warm and sunny, the Ashland Super D had all the potential in the world. With my previously mentioned crash which resulted with me walking to the finish line and resulting in me finishing in 40th place last year, my race start time was 40 minutes off the start and the first racer.

As I rolled into the starting tent all the thoughts that were going through my mind faded away and only one stayed – “Go Time” then it came…5, 4, 3, 2, 1, GO!

I sprinted out of the booth, snapping through the gears trying to get up to full speed as quick as possible for the first “fire road” section of the race course. The first part of the course is non-technical with only two 90 degree turns where a riders speed can be all but absorbed. I made it a point to slow before these corners and then drop a foot and no brake “flat track” through them. Doing this allowed me to hold a strong speed through the section and let me do less work to get back up to speed quickly.



After the fire road then came the hill climb: throughout practice I made it a point to take it very easy on the climb. On these practice runs I never pushed my legs or forced myself to hold a high gear up the hill, but instead measuring the distance and maximum time of the climb. So on my race run I shifted to 3rd gear and stood up on the first 1/2 of the climb which is the steepest part of the climb. As the hill started to plane out I went to 4th gear and forced my self to hold it onto the “False Flat” after the climb. This section is almost tougher than the climb itself in that a rider can blow all their energy on the climb and have nothing for the longer section that follows it. Throughout this section and onto the 2nd fire road I felt strong and my legs felt snappy and full of energy.

The end of the 2nd fire road leads to “4 Corners”, top of the Spring Thaw DH course and the real fun section of this race. This section is fast, flowing and burned into my memory from 2 weeks back. My goal for this section was to be smooth and to push where I could to make time up on the XC racers in the course. From there to “BTI” the course is mostly downhill with one slight up hill that was more tough than the first because my legs were feeling the high pace of the race. As I neared the end of the course I came a little to fast into the new and final section of the course and this bobble caused me to come to a complete stop and to land my weight onto my left foot. As I started to get rolling again, I realized that I was in the wrong gear (8th) for a dead stop start. As I slowly started to pedal across the flat traverse, I quickly up-shifted to 3rd gear and tried to salvage my loss of speed and time. This new traverse section of the course added around a minute to 90 seconds to a racers overall time over the previous years. This flat traverse lead to a hard 90 degree right hand turn down a narrow single track and down to the 3rd fire road and a 30 second sprint to the finish line.



My overall race time was 37:50.2 with a average speed of 19.6mph. This time which placed me into 30th place of the total 72 racers.

After all is said and done I had an amazing weekend racing, hanging out with friends and experiencing the racing community and family at its fullest.

Special Thanks to Ashland Mountain Adventures – Wild Bill & Sue; This weekend in Ashland was such an amazing weekend! From all of the Northstar-at-Tahoe/GIANT Bicycles Race Team – THANK YOU for everything, both seen and unseen you did to make the race a huge success. Please keep us posted with future events and we will be there.

- Nate Byrom finished in 14th place
- Jon Wilson finished in 25th
- Jordan Lopez finished in 30th
- Lizzy English finished in 2nd in the Pro Women's

Also, big congratulations to Jr. X winner Max Houtzager with a time of 38:10.00

Full results

Tested!

Leo Kokkonen from Finland posted a race tested and proven Podium Pedal review. Check it out!

London and Willingen - E.T.

After Scotland it was time for the 20+ hour trip back to Germany. Lucky for me, fellow American racers Katie Holden and Curtis Keene joined me in the van and helped out huge by paying for gas. With the van loaded up and the GPS set for London, we hit the road early Monday morning.

Arriving in Chelmsford just outside London around 5pm, we parked the van and searched for some food. There was a decent pub nearby where I thoroughly enjoyed some fish and chips and a beer while waiting for Katie’s English friends to arrive.



Halfway through our meal the two brothers (Steve and Dave) show up and after a quick introduction they bought us a second round of drinks. I could already see how this night was going to go… Katie’s friends Steve and Dave are what movies are made of. They are absolutely hilarious to be around and were hell-bent on us having a good time in London. With no time to waste we soon hopped on a train to the center of London.



During the train ride they pointed out some new construction for the upcoming Olympics. The stadiums and buildings were impressive to say the least! Once in London we quickly hopped in a cab (you know the English ones you see in the movies) and we were off. We had the quickest, funniest, and most informative tour of the city with Dave directing the taxi driver through the city like a pro. I saw Big Ben, the Millennium Wheel, and Buckingham Palace to name a few. It was rad!

We then had the taxi driver drop us off at a very nice pub where we enjoyed a few more beers and had a great night out on the town. What happens in London stays in London!

The next morning we said our goodbyes to our tour guides and headed east towards Dover. We had a 10:45am ferry to catch and being lucky with traffic we made it there no problem. Customs on the way back into Europe was nearly non-existent which was nice, but strange.



The hour and a half ferry ride went by quickly with me REALLY enjoying the English style breakfast that they served on board. Once in France we burned through the countryside eventually making our way to Frankfurt, Germany.

Here I would part ways with Curtis and Katie with them taking a train to Austria and me heading to my home away from home in Ober-Morlen. I spent the next couple days in Germany resting, recovering, and preparing for The Wheels of Speed.

The Wheels of Speed is a once yearly downhill race held on the Willingen, Germany World Cup race track. It is well known for being full of jumps and berms and most resembling an oversized BMX track. Once on course I found it actually quite challenging and surprisingly fun to ride. There were some BIG lines to jump. Stuff that during my course walk I wouldn’t have thought possible. It was possible though…and very eye opening to see what a downhill bike and myself could get away with nowadays.

Camping at this event was great and terrible at the same time.

Positives:

1. Location (right between the finish line and the gondola)

2. Cheap (cost 15 euros for the entire time)

3. Hot Showers

Negatives:

1. Crazy storms! First night there I honestly thought my van was going to be blown over. GNARLY lightning striking constantly and absolutely pissing rain. Not much sleep that night!

2. Drunk Willingen party-goers opening up my van at 3:45 in the morning asking me if I want a beer. Then making tons of noise for at least another hour. Not much sleep that night again.

3. Trying to boil water on a small camp stove in the wind. No luck there!

Despite not getting much sleep the entire weekend, I still managed to hold it together during qualifying and the race, eventually finishing 19th in the finals. Considering the large amount of factory racing teams in attendance and the fact that it was my first time racing here, this was a good result.



I’m once again relaxing at the Zimmermann residence between races. HUGE thanks goes out to the Zimmermann family. Moritz for helping with organization, planning, and psychological support. Jonathan for taking me grocery shopping, letting me ride your hardtail on the pump track, and generally helping me when I needed it. Jorg for cooking AMAZING feasts on the barbeque to make sure I didn’t wither away. And last, but not least Monika for being my Mom away from home. You have been such a HUGE help and have made my trip that much more enjoyable.



Next up is the 3rd World Cup of the season in Leogang, Austria. I am excited about this venue because it is entirely new. There will be no home court advantage. Everybody starts from square one and has to learn the track in the same amount of time. It should be a great race.

Until next time, Prost!

-Evan

Catching up with E.T.

Hey Everyone,

The last two days was spent driving from Fort William, Scotland to London, England and then to Ober-Morlen, Germany. I have so many things to write about that I simply won’t be able to tell it all in a single update. I start off my game of catch-up with this update I was meant to post last Sunday from Fort William.

After Innerleithen I joined up with a couple Austrian friends (Mario and Markus) to search for camping. We settled in to a nice campground in the nearby town of Peebles. The next couple days were spent relaxing, doing laundry, catching up through internet, eating good food, and mostly just being lazy.



Monday evening was the first time I was introduced to “slack line”. Basically a heavy-duty tow strap ratcheted tightly between two trees roughly 10-20 meters apart. The goal is to walk from tree to tree without falling off. Easier said than done…



Like natural human progression you must first stand before you can walk. At first I couldn’t even stand up on the line without instantly falling off. After a few pointers from Mario, I soon progressed and was able to balance for a short period of time before being ejected. After beginning to feel a bit more confident standing up, I then began to walk…or try to at least. By the end of our first session I was able to make (inconsistently) 8-10 steps on the line (roughly half-way across). I think I will be buying one of these when I get home to use as a balance training device and have a good laugh watching others try it for the first time.

After our few days stay in Peebles, we hit the road headed towards Fort William. Directly along our route is the capital city of Scotland, Edinburgh. We decided that if parking wasn’t too hectic, we would do some sight seeing in Edinburgh for an hour or so. Traffic was a mess, but we managed to find parking and 3 quid later we had roughly an hour and a half to check out the city.



The city is crazy old. Filled with historic buildings, monuments, and museums, it is a tourist’s paradise. I for one don’t enjoy big cities, but managed to have a good time walking all over looking at a bit of everything. I would imagine you could easily spend a week here exploring and still not see everything. I enjoyed the Scottish art museum the most. Looking at paintings older than our country was pretty cool. Each one told a story with some more interesting than others. The sculptures where really cool too with some dating back to the ancient times of Greece.



Once the hour and a half was up, we pushed on through ridiculous traffic, finally escaping the busy streets of Edinburgh and drove the rest of the way to Fort William.

Fort William is a fairly small town in Scotland. Its main attraction seems to be the camping and hiking in the nearby mountains of Ben Nevis and the once yearly World Cup downhill race. Finding camping here was difficult. Pretty much everything everywhere is booked for the World Cup. I managed to find camping in Glen Nevis roughly 7 miles away from the venue. 56 pounds later (ouch!) and I was set for the week.

Registration and course walk was Thursday. The course is loooooooong and rough with a good mixture of man-made and natural terrain. After picking apart every section of the course I was exhausted, but ready for the next day’s practice.

Friday I got my first taste of the track leaving a huge smile on my face. The track is WAY faster than what I had imagined. Rock sections that I had meticulously inspected in search of the smoothest line became plow festivals instead. You were simply going too fast to hold a precise line through them. Over the course of the day, the track got harder and harder to ride. The speeds got faster, the track rougher, and my body more tired. I did six runs which is a bit more than most, but necessary due to it being my first time here.

Saturday was practice and qualifying. After my poor performance at Maribor I was determined to qualify at this World Cup. My lines were dialed in and I felt like I was up to speed and ready to go.

In the start house for the qualifiers I was excited to give it and see what I could do. The start beeps went off and I pedaled HARD out of the gate. The top section of the course I attacked pedaling where I could and trying to be dialed and smooth with the corners. About 45 seconds in the thought crossed my mind that maybe I couldn’t hold that fast of a pace for the duration of the course. Having never raced here before, I had no idea what to expect.



I backed off the intensity a bit and just focused on being smooth from there on out. I hit all my lines well and ¾ of the way down the track I started to catch the guy in front of me. This motivated me a bit in the pedaling, but at the same time I was worried about catching him on the super fast finish section of the track. I crossed the finish line only a few meters behind the rider in front of me and was into 87th position. Terrible! I had backed off too much and missed qualifying on a 5 minute track by 3.9 seconds.

I was angry at myself for pacing. I trained HARD in the off-season and looking back on my run I was nowhere near the physical exertion levels I had trained for and was capable of. Once again I am a spectator at a World Cup instead of a racer…

I have decided that from here on out I am attacking the courses in qualifying and either blowing up, crashing, or doing well. It is one of the worst feelings getting done with a run knowing you could have pushed it harder than what you did.

Due to the cancellation of the Verbier, Switzerland race, I am off to Willingen, Germany tomorrow for the Wheels of Speed instead. I am excited to see what I can do with my new outlook on racing…With 15,000 euros up for grabs this weekend, it would be a good race to finally figure things out! More catch-updates coming soon.

Cheers,

Evan

CCCX DH finals this weekend!

Point One Racing's Jimmy Amaral and John Hauer are set to battle this weekend. Only 1 point separates them. Read the full report here.

Ft. William World Cup

Big congratulations to Emmeline Ragot for her 5th place finish this past weekend at round 2 of the UCI World Cup in Ft. William, Scotland.



Results

Slow Motion Santa Cruz

Check out Ian Massey doing some slow motion runs in Santa Cruz. Courtesy of Martin McKeefery.

Pedal shot

Great Podium Pedal shot on our racer Evan Turpen, last weekend at Innerleithen, Scotland.

US Open - Team Geronimo

The week opened with a long anticipated event - the team retrieved Pro racer Cody Eichhorn from Newark airport, NJ on Monday night, in time for him to get acclimated to life in the US of A. Tuesday was spent going over his new rigs, getting organized and relaxing a bit, and ending with dinner and a chance to get to know his new team mates. 31 hours straight travel time for the Codeman.

Cody Eichhorn - My main goal was to get a lot of time on the bike and get used to it - keep doing runs, just to get the bike dialed. Once I hit the first big table top, I thought "Whoa!!! This feels pretty good!" Coming off my injury, I wasn't used to anything, so it made the transition easier. I like the more raked out head angle, the Dorado feels plush straight out of the box, and I'm happy with how the bike cornered and how low the front end is.

Graeme Pitts - The GS was like the alpine slides where you can go ridiculously fast - and scary. The course encouraged riders not to touch the brakes.

Brian Buell - The GS was like a ski race, and being a former ski racer - I like the format of timed runs. The course was fun but really hard to race because in order to go really fast, it was a mental game and you had to set up and have your speed right and want to go fast.

Michael Buell - The GS was a challenging course to figure out tactics and how to ride. It looked really straightforward but there was a lot to it.



Friday - GS qualifying. It had rained the night before, which made the rocks slick with a film of dirt which got carried onto the rocks by racers' tires, which made it like riding on ice. BB wrecked his knee on the slippery course, and all the racers had problems in the rock garden. Brian was having a lot of fun - "I had to ride loose, commit, let the bike go and do its job. I got tossed off the bike, stuffed my knee right into a rock and got airborne. After that, I became a gimp on a razor scooter - it was the only way to get around because couldn't walk."

When it was all over, the team had worked hard, but didn't earn one of the 20 spots for the Giant Slalom event. Brian narrowly missed out, qualifying 22nd.

Saturday - DH quali day. Palms were sweaty. BB's knee was swollen. The course had dried up a bit so it was faster. CE got more confidence while figuring out his new ride as the riders all got their lines dialed. CE had overcome jet lag, and the diet of the day for him was ibuprofen.

BB - My goals were to keep momentum, keep it upright, and smooth in top woods portion. I survived; I had been riding cautious, got a bit of adrenlain - took it easy, pedaled hard out of turns - pretty decent run all the way to the bottom, and I was happy with it after thinking I might not be able to race that day due to about 35 degrees of movement in my knee. When it was all said and done, I had qualified 35th. They had reduced the field to 50, down from 60 the year before, and 137 were competing for the slots.



MB - My qualifying run was 99 percent good, until I was upside down. Had a good top section, got throguh the rocks clean, should have been within the quali cut until I slid out in the berm. Came off the bike, recovered as quickly as I could, but not good enough to be in the list of racers on race day.

GP - I had a sweet run and hauled butt. Got to the diarrhea rock section (looks disgusting and you don't want to put your foot down), but at the very exit as I was making the corner, the bike got kicked off line and I had to put my foot down. The other pedal managed to catch a rock, which pitched me forward and off-balance - I went OTB. I was trapped under my bike, trying to get up - people were yelling as I took off that I had dropped my chain, but I thought I'd just run with it ianyway. After fiddling around, my chain went back on and the rest of my run went pretty well. Gave it 1000% to make up for foobar, but it just didn't happen and I joined the ranks of spectators for the rest of the weekend.


Photos by David Tufino.

CE - Some cat told me that top 80 qualified, so I thought I'd just keep it smooth and not come off. Did the top with no mistakes, came out of the woods trying to be smart and conserve myself by not pedaling hard. Scraped in by the skin of my teeth with 48th.

Sunday - Race Day!
The weather was perfect, the course was bone dry and fast.

CE - Did two practiace runs in the morning - woods were riding really fast and it was a lot looser out in the open. I felt pretty good, I knew mistakes were going to be costly because it was such a short track with so many good riders. Race run went pretty good, and I just wanted to finish my first race in the USA to start off the season right. In the end, I had earned 31st place and felt good about it.

BB - Went into my run feeling no pressure because I had made the main - due to the conditions being so fast and dry, I willing to go faster in the woods. Everything was going great until I got a little bit loose in the rocks - hit a rock hard, sprinted out of there and over the step down into the wide open - I started slowing down and realized I had a front flat.

The crowds at the US Open were so loud - they actually had a DJ with a full on stereo system with turntables in the rock garden. So much fun to have that kind of energy at a race.

After the pit was torn down and the bikes all clean and loaded in the trailer, the team convened at the pool, where there was a pretty good party going on. John Hauer did the honors of throwing Leslie Pitts
into the pool fully clothed, which she duly appreciated.

We hit the road on Monday, bound for Angel Fire, NM #3 Mountain States Cup 1836 miles away. En route, Team Geronimo made a stop in New Jersey at The Proving Ground - home of east coast legend Lars Tribus and wife Christine for a full-blown freeride session, swim and grub at his private bike park. They were hosting a mega Memorial Day party, with many luminaries and media attending. Look for pictures of the event by Ian Hylands and Matt DeLorme.

Also, congratulations to Logan Kemp for pulling a podium on his new Podium pedals in the Junior men open class!

Full downhill results

Innerleithen - E.T.

Hey Everyone,

It’s 10:22 Monday morning as I type this to you from a campground in Scotland. It was a bit of a journey getting here from Germany, but things are good now.

I left Germany around 8:00 A.M. Wednesday morning for Calais, France. Calais pronounced Cal-eh is where the shortest ferry route to England is. It took me roughly 7 hours to reach Calais with less than favorable driving conditions. It rained almost the entire time with a couple periods of rain so hard that some people pulled over to wait it out.



Once at the ferry terminal I went to the ticketing office to buy my pass to England. 166 euros later (Ouch!) and I was good to go, or so I thought…

American kid with a big German rental van traveling to the UK for a couple weeks alone. They probably don’t see that too often. They had a look inside the van and sent me to the heavier duty passport control where you fill out paperwork and answer questions. The officer was friendly and after hearing my story, stamped my passport, and wished me luck in Scotland.

After customs you then go through one more checkpoint where they confirm your tickets and tell you where to go. Since I had been held up in customs I missed my sitting and was moved to the next one which left in 55 minutes. Not a big deal, just more waiting.



40 minutes before departure they began boarding. Once on board and parked you are instructed to head up into the passengers lounge. Most if not all passengers seemed to be your typical tourist with backpacks, shopping bags, and matching “Europe Un-leashed 2010” t-shirts. I couldn’t help but laugh a little inside.

Once in England I was a bit nervous for the whole driving on the other side of the road thing. I just kept reminding myself that I needed to drive ass-backwards to what I was used too. I settled into things pretty quickly and continued the drive towards Scotland. I decided to skip a stop in London since it would be ridiculous driving a massive van around and would most likely end up quite expensive.

A couple hours into England and it was time to search for gas. I decided to try the GPS out and searched for the nearest gas. After taking me through some of the tightest roads in a tiny English town for fifteen minutes it led me to a non-existent gas station. Thanks GPS! I went into a local store and asked where to find gas or camping. No camping and the closest gas station was closed. I decided to head back to the freeway and push on towards Scotland. I could find some gas along the way. By this time the sun was getting low in the sky and thanks to the GPS it took me down a crazy narrow back road to get back to the freeway. Out in the middle of nowhere I found a nice turnout to camp for the night.



The next day I decided to F-off the GPS and back tracked towards the town to ask directions. Finally got a full tank and back onto the freeway to Scotland. Six hours later and I was in Innerleithen, Scotland (the site of the IXS European Cup).

The race organizers where very helpful and pointed me in the right direction for on-site racer camping. Basically set up a hundred meters from the finish line. I walked the track and was surprised to see lots of loose powdery dirt and rock. I thought this was Scotland?

Apparently it is an all new track built primarily in the dense woods. The woods here are all man made and very tight. According to one of the course workers, after World War II the Scottish government paid people to plant trees to create jobs. Plant they did, and thanks to how close they planted them, the course was dry and dusty.

Registration and practice started Friday. I paid the whopping 75 pounds ($100+ U.S. dollars) for on site entry and got ready for practice. Practice went from 2:00 til 6:00 but with so many riders and a slow uplift I got 3 runs in this amount of time.

I had a blast on the course. The dry dusty dirt made me feel like I was riding in Northstar. Unfortunately Scotland usually can’t stay dry for much more than a day and it would rain on us the next day for qualifiers.

My qualifying run was quite slow. For some reason I struggled to pin it like I had in practice. I managed a 28th place qualifier out of almost 200 elite riders. The night before the finals it rained hard transforming the course into a mixture of slippery roots and open sections with still dry and dusty woods sections. Tire choice was a gamble for these conditions. I decided to change from dry tires to cut down spikes, but had no idea if this was a good decision. The weather was flip-flopping back and forth.



Unlike my qualifier, I pinned it in my race run. Despite the slower conditions I pushed it hard. About 2/3 of the way down the track there was a loose and rocky left hander in tight woods that I railed, but maybe too hard…I came out of it still turning left off the main line with lots of speed. Unable to slow down enough to get back on line I smashed a tree head on coming to a complete stop. I got back into my run as quickly as possible. My visor was pushed down blocking some of my vision, my front brake lever down and to the grip, and my number plate dangled off the side of my bike with one remaining zip-tie. I finished my run as best as possible, but bummed that I couldn't stay clean.

I later checked the results to see that in worse conditions with a head on collision I had gone a second faster than my qualifier and ended up 25th on the weekend. Not bad, but I felt like a top 20 was in the books and maybe with a strike of luck a top 10. One thing I’ve learned this weekend is to not hit trees. They will only slow you down and keep you from performing!

Next weekend is the World Cup in Fort William. I am excited to see how I will do on such a rough and long track. Wireless internet is a bit patchy here in Scotland, but I will try to keep you guys updated as the week goes on.

Cheers,

Evan