Euro Trip – Part Two

La-Bresse

So here is part two of my Europe trip, hope you enjoy.

Monday we stayed at Elisabeth’s place in Stuttgart, Germany, so that we could get our bikes serviced and basically try to get everything organised before traveling to La-Bresse on Tuesday. We took a slightly longer route to get to La-Bresse, which included stopping in at the Tune factory and driving through the Black Forest.  I must say, Germany is a stunning country, that did not fail to impress, with incredible passes and scenery that makes leaving the place a lot harder than one would think.

I would once again be staying in the Squirt accommodation with James, Ariaan, JP and a rider from Belgium named Rob who we met on Friday night in Germany. The guys from Squirt truly outdid themselves with the accommodation. We were literally 200m from the top of the course with the most stunning views imaginable from our balcony in an equally stunning cabin.

The incredible accommodation we were staying in

And the other side

James and I set out on Wednesday to get a bit of course practise in. It had been raining on Monday and Tuesday, and as a result, the course was muddy and very slippery, with sections growing ruts that were probably knee height which made riding rather difficult.  The rest of the course felt like you were ice skating. Fortunately, the course was not quite as bad as Albstadt as the larger rocks seemed to have a bit more traction than the clay type rocks in Albstadt. It was also a much longer, more natural-flowing one in comparison to Albstadt, with one long climb to the top of the course and then one long downhill, which had some gnarly sections all being pretty natural which made for some fun riding.

La-Bresse is a truly stunning little village to ride a bike in 

Practise on Wednesday was going quite well, with James and I getting a feeling for the lines we should take, until I had a massive crash off the rock drop! There was an awkward little ridge to get up onto, just before the rock face drop, and as soon as I had committed to going down the other side, my foot slipped out the pedal with all the mud build up causing me to bounce down the rock face and land pretty heavily on my knee, which had just started to heal after my crash at Albstadt, as well as landing on my thigh which now felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. To make things worse, I snapped my chain around 500m later after getting back on my bike. Not a great way to start the week, but fortunately no bones were broken and I was able to get some more practise laps in before the race on Sunday (without any more crashes). So I was pretty confident on the course going into race day on Sunday.

The Elite teams really have some impressive set-ups

The weather forecast had predicted rain for nearly every afternoon that we were there, but fortunately, nothing came.  The course was starting to become prime for racing, feeling like a highway with the exception of the last part where you basically rode through a stream (it was probably one of the more technical sections of the course).  By Saturday afternoon, conditions were looking perfect for a really great race on Sunday. Until evening came.  The heavens opened in a serious way and when we woke up the course was back to the slick and muddy riding conditions that we had started practicing on. The elite men would be the third race on the course so it did give a bit of time for the track to dry up and get ridden-in somewhat before our race.

The view from our accomodation

 

With a 14h20 start, James and I commenced our warm up and headed down to pick up timing chips and the like before being called up into our start pens. La-Bresse had a very long climb right off the gun, so tactics were going to play a vital role if you had any chance at doing ok in this event; with one needing to hold back in the start sprint to ensure you could still make it to the top without mushrooming. The start gun went off and once again we were doing a mass sprint up the streets of La-Bresse, albeit slightly slower than usual, trying to hold our position. World Cups are wild and for us guys in the back of the pack it’s a dog show with people fighting for every position. I tried to stay composed and save my energy as much as I could as people were crashing over the bars all around me up the hill, and I didn’t want to get caught up in any unnecessary incidents. I managed to make it through all the technical sections, even with the now muddy conditions (the races beforehand hadn’t done too much to dry out the course and it was like glass), until the last part of the downhill when my front wheel would get on the wrong side of a rock and I hit the ground hard, twisting my bars. I got up, straightened them as best I could, and then had another guy crash into me before I got going again.  Fortunately, I was uninjured and managed to finish my first lap. I looked up at the Tissot timing clock that spans the start/finish line and I was already four and a half minutes down on the front guys. Not a great way to start the race! On my second lap, I had another small crash in which my front wheel slipped on a root at the top of a small drop and I fell to the bottom with my bike still been stuck at the top. This wasted a fair amount of time as it took me, well, what seemed like forever, to get going again. My third lap went by without a hitch finally but unfortunately, at the end of it they pulled me. I think I missed the 80% rule for my forth lap by a handful of seconds as getting to the bottom of the course and end of lap 3, I watched fellow riders who were just ahead of me, riding up the start stretch to begin their lap 4.

It was once again an incredibly disappointing race, this more so than Albstadt as, with the exception of the crashes, I had no mechanical issues which would normally take you out of the race prematurely.  I must admit that I took the results quite hard as one starts to question one’s decisions in life and whether you really are cut out for racing on the European circuit.  I mean, off the start block you are pushing as hard as you possibly can, and other riders are coming around you like you’re standing still.  However, sometimes these disappointments are needed at points in one’s life. Failure is not always as bad as it is made out to be, as hard as it can be sometimes, and getting to the point where you are questioning your life’s ambition is probably the only way that real growth can occur, and it is in these moments that one can either decide to learn from them or give up, and I’m not quite ready to hang up my racing wheels just yet, so I guess I’ll be a sucker for punishment for a bit longer.

One thing I must mention is that the support you get on the side of the track from the fans is unreal!  They scream just as loudly for the guy coming last as they do for Julien, their hometown favourite. It truly is something to experience. I finished up in 105^th place, a step up from last weeks’ 137^th position – so small positives.

Straight after the race I would travel back to Elisabeth’s place in Stuttgart, Germany, for the week, as we had decided to only travel through to Switzerland for the BMC Swiss Cup in Granichen on the Saturday (because bloody hell is it expensive there). But Granichen and my week in Germany is a story for my next post.

Once again, I want to thank James, Ariaan and JP for helping me out so much in La-Bresse, as well as to Joggie Prinsloo, who helped me out again with some bike issues I had, and to Elisabeth, Marco and Max for taking me into their home and for looking after me and for showing me what Germany had to offer. I would not have been able to have done this trip without your help and will be forever in your debt.

Next time I’ll talk about the Swiss Cup and my experiences there which went a hell of a lot better than the World Cups.

Till then,

God Bless.

Cheers

Mathew 6v33