Apologies that this has been a long time coming, but yeesh…it seemed like our finals race at the World Champs simply extended into a mad panic to pack the bikes up straight away, a fast-paced party evening, and then three solid days of travel from Andorra to Barcelona to Doha to Johannesburg to Howick…not a lot of time for blogging.
Jimmy Redman was racing Cross Country in the men’s 50 – 54 category on Tuesday (I stand to be corrected on that), and since we finished practice at 3pm that day we were able to go up and support him as his race only started at 5pm. It was an excellent excuse to fill our backpack with beer, ring cowbells and yell real loud at all the riders…we even managed what we thought was a hee-lah-ree-ious silent cheer. I don’t know if Jimmy found it that funny. But with those brutal uphills for three laps, I probably wouldn’t have energy to laugh either.
You know, I thought when we entered a World Championship race that it would involve conquering physical obstacles, keeping calm and riding smooth to get a good time. I have discovered, however, that there is another element to World Champs racing and that is going into battle with 300 other riders during the one-hour practice session before qualifiers. Continue reading “Running of the Bulls: Seeding”
Monday and Tuesday were our official practice days on the DH track. To say Sunday nights sleep was a little ‘off’ would be an understatement. We now had to find out how the hell we were actually going to get down this mountainside upright…or even semi-upright.
Continue reading “Vall-Nought”
Registration took place on Sunday, which resulted in a rather frantic dash around trying to get our international racing licenses printed. Somehow Mark, Cobus and I had not put two and two together, and the angry man and bewildered young lady at the registration table managed to firmly tell us that showing a picture of it on our phones was not good enough. Note to self: if the CSA say “should you wish to have this licence printed you need to pay another R30 etc etc…” just make the effort to pay the extra R30 and the courier fee. Honestly, it’s not worth being scolded in French, Spanish, Catalan and English… Continue reading “Track Gawk”
Friday was Day 2 of riding for our merry band of misfits, and we thought it may be less eina on the hands and arms. We were wrong. Very wrong.
Riding in Vallnord is different to home, and similar to other European bike parks in that it sees a lot of traffic. To get to the top of the park there is a system of three ski lifts, which start in the very centre of the town of La Massana. We can pedal to the gondola in under 5 minutes from our apartment, pedalling back takes about 20 minutes. 10 of these are spent pedalling and 10 of these are spent pushing and sweating. Nigel has a secret pathway down from their spot which seems way quicker, so we’re going to try find that tomorrow. Anyway, I digress. Continue reading “Stuff getting conquered-ed”
By Jo Hicks
So today was our second day on on the hill here in Vallnord. Yesterday we had a brilliant day getting to know the terrain and the hill. Peter and I have been progressing to new jumps and drops which has been a real learning curve and seriously awesome!
However tonight I’m drinking beer for the fear because i rode up to a pallet jump about 600 times this afternoon and couldn’t get myself to hit it, this resulted in major frustration (including those watching every attempt from the bottom).
When we had originally seen this particular jump yesterday we reckoned we would do it on saturday but my dad jumped the gun and hit it today so now i have to do it 😂. But its always a mind thing with me…tomorrow I hit the thing! Continue reading “Beer for the fear”
southafricansgoingdownhill 