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