The weekend of 4/5 September saw the Austrian World Ranking Event held near Villach at Faak am See. Having told everyone I would be there, and not wanting to miss, I decided to attend. In the hope of saving money, I borrowed a bike from one of the Austrian team - I should add that the bike was the Merida O.Nine Multivan team bike, which has been the bike of my dreams all. The event, I hoped, would be a good opportunity to try out the bike I would dearly love to own!
The only disadvantage of a continental European bike is the brakes are back-to-front! Back brake for the right side, front from the left, whereas British bikes are the other way round. It seems the rest of Europe abides by different rules to the Brits, and has to do everything the wrong way round. But, given my ease of adapting to drive on the wrong side, I didn't think it would be too much trouble. I am having more difficulty with the different key set out on this laptop!
I arrived on Thursday and was picked up by Kevin. Mel, David AUS and myself were staying at the Haselsberger house for the weekend, where we enjoyed some really great meals courtesy of K's grandparents!
Saturday was the middle distance race, where the starts were based on reverse order of the WRE list. I had a scrappy race losing a good 5 minutes throughout the course, and catching Sonja Reisinger-Zinkl AUT didn't help my navigation. Too many mistakes, but I was leading for the first 50% of the course, and ended up second - a mere 19 seconds from Michi Gigon AUT. This race then counted towards my WRE points boosting me up from 20th to 15th.
Waking up on Sunday I felt really tired and fatigued. Mentally I was in a different place to the previous day, and knew I would struggle with motivation when the course got tough.
The terrain around Faaker See is really uber physical. There is no relief from the roots and mud, and the onslaught began from the word Go! The Merida coped well in the terrain, and I felt that I owned the bike, telling it where to go - rather than the bike telling me where to go. My downhill, root and mud handling was considerably improved and I had no headache at the finish! Result!
At 65% of the course in the long I was dieing, and by 75% I was dead. It was really all I could do to ride the rest of the course to the finish. But another second result followed, which makes this one of the more successful weekends this year in terms of results.
Photos to follow later.
