First Race of the season

After arriving in Slovenia on Thursday afternoon, I camped at a little paid motorhome parking lot for the night (€15) so that I could empty and refresh the water in the van, clean toilet etc ahead of the race weekend.

Friday morning I had a little run around the local shops looking for a spare part for my toilet that happened to start leaking on Thursday night, then heading to the event village.

I booked a team spot for Swift Racing, it was free (we Iike) but meant that I could stay in the pit area and be amongst it all for the weekend.

After a quick little set up of the van, I got the bike out and checked it over head of bike check later on Friday afternoon. While waiting for bike check I went to check out the power stages. Power stages are e-bike specific stages that have technical features with uphill climbing a true test of riders skills and bike power. We are only allowed to practice our stages during practice times and only allowed to do one lap of practice so a really good idea is to walk the power stages first. They were quite long, 300m with around 50m vert and very technical.

After the power stage walk it was time to take the bike for its check, I’ve never actually done this before as it was normally Marks job being the mechanic but as I am it for everything this year it was up to me. It was super simple, they plug the bike into the computer and run some measurements all done within 5 minutes.

After that back to the van and cooked up some dinner, chicken curry was on the menu and it was super tasty. I upgraded the van this year and bought a rice cooker - best investment yet!

Saturday was practice day, I heading out with the Polish crew of Slawomir Lukasik and Katarzyna Burek, we had until 12pm to practice all our downhill stages. The trails were super dry and dusty and I was struggling to find the balance of grip and speed. Some interesting trails though with some rocky features and jumps and some random taped lines to keep you on your toes.

*New riding friend, the polish legend Katarzyna*

Just after 12 we arrived back at the pits and had until 5:30pm to rest, fix bikes and charge bikes before practicing and racing the power stages.

The crowd came out in force and it was packed, I had terrible practice runs on both power stages but was determined to better them for race run, I did well but not well enough finishing 6th after the two power stages and a couple of small errors - check out the instagram page for a POV of one of the stages.

*Up and over a tree for part of the power stage*

Sunday was race day for the remaining 8 stages of downhill, we had a loop to do in the morning before back to the pits for lunch and a battery swap before loop two. This was the first offical race in the rainbow jersey for me and I tell you the pressure was on, it was a slow start for me but I started to build towards the end of the day and started to claim back some time, though it wasn’t enough and missed out on the podium by 6 seconds and having to settle with 4th for the weekend.

Mixed emotions after this one, but overall I am happy to have started the season and show some good times on stages and excited to build from here. Being at the race by myself, after a busy week dealing with some drama and after traveling just over a week ago from NZ it soon all built up and I had to take that into account.

I now have the journey of traveling from Slovenia back to Belgium for round 2 this coming weekend.

Stay tuned for the week in between blog.

A week between races

The first week in europe

SWIFT RACING LIMITED