Great Trip

I made it home after a amazing trip to Europe. It was one of the best flights that I have ever had, decent food and not one, not two, not three but four movies watched! I had a mini movie marathon and it totally made up for the trip two weeks ago heading over there when the tv's didn't work and I was magazineless. I was not on the ground for more than a couple minutes and the Mandarin was in conversation. Yep Mandarin it is, all you can eat buffet. The most north American way to chow a pile of grub and a huge shock from the euro way of life. I really like the way of life that most euros embrace. They take their time and enjoy everything, the food, their family, their surroundings, it's a different lifestyle that many north Americans need to learn from. Anyways I am home and I have a eventful fall planned (weather pending). I will keep you updated on what I have been up to.

Well, that was fun.

Yesterday was the world cup finals in Schladming Austria. I have been here all week drooling over the endless amount of epic exploring that is to be had here. I am here to race my bike around a 5.5km course for six laps chasing other crazy fit dudes wearing tights. The course is a real "hilly cross race", it isn't very technical, but it is a course of pure fitness. I had a solid start jamming hard with the rest of the 180 men. The sky was blue, the temp was strangely warm and that was different than what weather we have had for the past week and a half.

Lap 1 I felt decent, passing a couple riders at each opportunity. I went into lap two feeling much better, taking more and more riders all the time. Almost at the end of the second lap, some anaerobic dude crashed in front of me, I slowed down to avoid piling into him, when some other anaerobic dude came barreling by me crashing into the dude who was scrambling to his feet and he had to put a foot onto my chain almost taking my rear derailleur out. I got untangled from the mess and got going ahead of the guys that were literally killing them selves to be where they were. A couple of minutes later I noticed my chain starting to come apart. Ummmhmmm, you have got to be kidding me? Why, and how is this happening? I felt good and was moving through a solid field of riders. I didn't really know what to do? My bike was still pedaling, but the chain was getting really bad starting the third lap, which was just after I noticed something was wrong. I finally blew it apart on one of the steep climbs and scrambled to get it fixed. Now as many of you may know, one of the hardest things to fix while under race conditions is your chain. Especially when you loose your power link in the long grass. I even had the camera men helping me look for it. We (me and the camera men) were then resorted to trying to put a old pin back in the chain. It was freaking hard and my hands were shaking way to much. I suddenly got spooked by the silent battery operated dirt bike, as he all of a sudden appeared behind me and gave me the option to either run the whole lap or dnf. I started to run, all 4km of the course. I finished, chainless and all, running the climbs and coasting the descents. I was honestly bummed about the ordeal. Like I have said before, Mechanicals suck, they suck less when you are having a off or hurting day and really freaking suck when you feel good.

Next up was a big day on Sunday following a OK night of beer and wine. Peter and I just got back from a mountain climbing day, which entailed a 4000ft vertical 1.5hr ride up to the point where we hid our bikes and changed into running shoes. We then ran another 1200ft vertical to the to of some mountain that I cannot and probably will never be able to pronounce. It was a great view and fun day out. I am now slouched here on my computer surrounded by euro smoke at a great little outdoor cafe on round two of a delicious tasting cappuccino.

I really wish yesterday went a bit better, but that's the way it goes.

World Cup #7 Champery Switzerland (stop and start)

Today was hard. Straight up, hard. The pace was fast right from the gun as we jammed the start loop and completely bottle necked once we hit the first single track descent. The euro's can hammer crazy hard on the climbs and for some they have a bit more trouble in the muddier, slicker tech sections of the course. This made for frustrating (and fun) racing as really fit guys crush it on the climbs. I had a "kind of" solid start and tried to move up from there. All I wanted to do was to pass was a couple racers per lap. If you try and pass to many racers to quickly you kind of blow up from going to hard, that is unless you are that much fitter than the racers around you and being in Europe, that is hard. I went out a bit hard (as did most) and tried to wing it, three laps in I was feeling my "wing it" tactic and while I was still passing some racers some faster racers were coming from behind. I fought it out and finished in 80th place. It was fun and is always a great learning experience to battle with the best in the world!

After the race Peter and I went for another ride and slammed out another 2500ft of climbing (total today was 6700ft ascended) as we went out and explored the region around us. The time that we have here is defintley not long enough. We are in for a 10hr drive over to Schladming Austria tomorrow and hopefully will see some cool stuff along the way (pretty sure we will). Peter and I are really stoked that and we have Sandra Walter (pedal Mag) to travel with. We decided to join in on there Privater trip over here for these two world cups and it has been great! We would of had a hard time without her (seriously). Anyways I hope all is good back home and I will try to keep you guys updated on what's happening over here.
I am having a great time here in Switzerland and I will try and keep updates flowing.

Suisse...

Here are a couple pics of Champery. I am in complete Heaven here, it is my first time to Switzerland and definitely not my last. We race tomorrow at 2:30pm here, which is 8:30am home time. The course is phenomenal!! I am really glad that I brought my Trek Top Fuel dually and I think it is the bike for the course.

Peter and I are going to go on an adventure after the race tomorrow, he says "not to think about it before the race", Puff I say to that, we are in Switzerland and all I want to do is go conquer stuff! It is seriously everything I imagined, including the amazing cheese and stuff.

Word up from the land of cheese and chocolate!

We finally made it to our first destination in Champery Switzerland yesterday afternoon after a "full travel day". Time change is whatever you make of it. Yelling crying kids on a plane with no "working" TVs is a rough 7hrs. I was so pumped to get to have a bit of a movie marathon on the flight only to find out that most of the planes "in seat TVs" were not working. Yay, I didn't even buy a magazine to read, totally counting on the fact that I was excited to watch movies. I decided I was going to try and sleep, on a 7 hr flight I slept for a whopping 4.5 minutes. Yes! Nothing to read, nothing to watch and not able to sleep, all the while poofing like the Michelin man. Thankfully Peter had a "Runners World" he let me read. Hm mm, I think I am excited to run when I get home?

The course is amazing and so is everything else here! Who doesn't like cheese and Chocolate? The view is good too, although all I want to do is go and conquer everything! Above is the view from our place, all just a tease.

It's Friday already? (with a rant).

Wow that week flew by! I was(still am) a mess from that crash on the weekend. My head still is pounding, especially when I bend over! (I am trying to get fire wood wrapped up before going to Europe, so take that however you want). I was supposed to not really ride that much this week.... Ya that's it. I am loving the great weather and I am supposed to "take it easy" uh? nope. I have to cram in all my big rides that I didn't get ticked off the list this year. So it's cram time! Plus I am heading Europe next week so that means I really have to get fit this week! It's great, get fit and get to see some of the country I only see on maybe one or two rides a year!

I am running a bit out of time here, Laundry is almost done(at laundromat) and basically I apparently burned a massive pile of calories this week. Check this out, in one ride I burnt over 5 grand worth! My new training program is called "get off your butt and ride"(rant coming up). All these people are always looking for the fastest, laziest way to get fit(or un-fat) and its simple, just go do it. Anything, frig it doesn't have to be a bike it can be anything just go do something. There is no healthy way to get "healthy" other than doing what we are physically and mechanically designed to do, MOVE! People are seriously willing to PAY to lose weight and get in shape, just move more and eat less. You even save some cash on the lesser amount of grub your consuming.

Anyways hopefully nobody found my rant offensive, I am just tired of seeing gimmicks on the tube, in magazines etc. All trying to sell you "health". Ya that's it.