JB's Adventure Blog: Swimming with the Dolphins and the Sharks

Woo-Hoo the season is OVER!

Well mostly. I can at least have a beer or two and not obsess over the minutiae of training that would drive most crazy! :)
I was hopeful that this trip to Austria would be nice redemption after not having much luck at the previous World Cups this year. My luck at the race was less than perfect, but I fought the good fight and wrapped up my first full World Cup season ranked 42 and with some good points.

The experiment of showing up 48 hours before the race was a good one. My legs came around, but those who traveled from the west coast found that the extra few hours may be the straw on the proverbial camel's back. Adam's bike didn't show up with him, and Jeremy seemed like he was over it before it started.

I arrived on Thursday and met up with Team Dolphin Trek (based in the Netherlands). www.teamdolphin.nl/en/
Poz had set it up with Ralf the manager so I could stay with the Dolphins for the weekend. Their team was very professional and they had a Souigner Kevin that was excellent at massage and great at keeping the team organized and well fed.

The riders, Jelmer, Rudi, Bjorn, Kevin, Zander, and Ronald where really fun to hang out with. There was a lot of time spent on the X box and joking about the Ralf Game! Ralf, the team manager was not at the race, and since they where talking about him a lot they made a game to gather money for beer after the race. If you said Ralf's name you have to put in one Euro! It was funny to see the lengths they went thru to trick each other and me into saying Ralf. Because there is a tire named the Swable Ralf and World Marathon Champion is a Ralf it was pretty funny. They would be speaking Flemish and I was like ??uhh?? for most of the conversation and then some one would say Ralf and then everyone would burst into laughter.

The race itself was crazy. I was a bit worried about the start not conforming to UCI regulations. It choked onto a 90 degree right turn onto a narrow wooden bridge after just 0.5 kilometers! Sure enough, it was like the lunch line at high school. I am serious! That happened a few more times. The next few laps seemed like a series of sprints to pass where you could but since the course was so narrow and I was around 45th on the 1st lap I did more waiting than racing.

The other crazy part was the altercation with the Russian "bike destroyer." As I used skill to ride through the steepest 180-degree switch-back of the course, he was cutting through the forest on foot. Now, It's one thing to run on the inside of the corner, but when your passed by some one who is racing less distance than you and then jumps in your way you'd get upset. So, I yelled at him "NO CHEATING" as he collided into me on his way back onto the course. Then, just as I got back to peddling and I heard the BBRRRRRRRR... BRRRRRRRRRRRR of tires rubbing tires from my back wheel. And then, before I knew, it he bent my rear derrailler! I had only dreamed of using that kind of dirty maneuver. Then my derailleur was bent for the rest of the race. I had to stop to bend the derailleur out of the spokes and then once a lap I found myself on the side of the trail getting my chain extracted from my spokes. He got his though, because when he was going for my derrailleur he took out a spoke in his front wheel and then when on to flat a lap later. Sucker!

The funny part of the late race was when Ronald said two laps to go and handed me a red bull when there was really three to go! I went full out and sprinted for the finish only to realize there was still one lap to go, and I was in 24th place. Well enough, I got the fire burning hot, and if you had given me four more laps I would have passed even more riders! I was flying. I finished 20.

It was a good feeling to finish up the season with good legs and I even had some Austrian fans to talk to and share the exciting stories from my adventurous final world cup.

Auf Wiedersehen; Jeremiah

posted by Jeremiah Bishop # 6:26 AM

Swimming with the Dolphins and the Sharks

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