One of the cool things about having done XXC Magazine is that I was on the media mailing lists for a lot of cool races. Hell, I even used to get invites to races all over the country and the world. Of course it was a bitter pill to swallow knowing that my days of racing or at least successfully completing serious endurance races were behind me, and that with a staff of one at the helm of the magazine and little money in the company safe, there was no world traveling in my future.
If you haven’t seen Epic TV’s five part series Racing The Untamed, Team Bulls at the ABSA Cape Epic, then you’re missing out on some great coverage on some of the top mountain bike racers in the world at one of the most amazing races in the world– The ABSA Cape Epic.
Team Bulls is a German based UCI mountain bike team made up of Germans Karl Platt, Stefan Sahm, Tim Böhme, Simon Stiebjahn and Martin Frey, as well as Thomas Dietsch of France and Urs Huber of Switzerland. If you are into endurance, marathon and stage racing, I recommend following Team Bulls on Facebook and Twitter, they do some of the coolest races in the world and are not shy about sharing photos, videos and recaps to promote their team and the sport of XC, marathon and endurance mountain bike racing.
The first episode is posted below with subsequent episodes linked after. Really great, well produced stuff. Check it out…
This past weekend was the 2014 European Cross Country Championships in St. Wendel Germany. There was no big surprises in the Men’s race as Julien Absalon (France) just keeps on winning whether it’s for team or for his country, this time taking the victory over Swiss rider Fabian Giger by 15 seconds. The Czech Jan Scarnitzl took third.
Pauline Ferrand Prevot (Liv Pro XC Team) has started two races in the 2014 UCI XCO series and has won them both. She not only won them, she crushed them, winning in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic by 2:50 over Catharine Pendrel (Luna Pro Team) and in Albstadt, Germany by 2:59 over Gunn-Rita Dahle Flesjå (Multivan Merida Biking Team). To say she has dominated the two races would be an understatement, taking early leads in both and never looking back, leaving all the other women to fight it out for 2nd place or pray for a mechanical.
I finally got around to watching the round 3 XCO action from Nove Mesto na Morave, Czech Republic on Red Bull TV. Always a great watch. The women’s race was utterly and completely dominated by Pauline Ferrand Prevot (Liv Pro XC Team) who won the race by nearly three minutes over Catharine Pendrel (Luna Pro Team), who seems to have recovered quite nicely from an early April collarbone break.
In other dominating news… Nino Schurter (Scott-Odlo MTB Racing Team) returned to the XCO circuit (for now) after recently completing the Tour de Romandie with the Orica-GreenEdge team and appeared to be in fine form.
In the end Schurter won by just just eight seconds over Stéphane Tempier (BH-Suntour-KMC) but held the lead for nearly the entire race and at times looked as if he would pull away and take the win in the same way as Pauline Ferrand Prevot had done in the women’s race earlier.
The UCI XCO series now moves to Albstadt, Germany this weekend so it should be another fine week evenings spent watching some awesome race action.
Photos via the UCI XCO Facebook page.
We are just two rounds into the 2014 UCI XCO series and the Men’s overall title is looking like it MIGHT be all but wrapped up. The reasons? Julien Absalon and Nino Schurter…
Last Friday, after Jolanda Neff podiumed at the UCI Eliminator race in Cairns, I commented on Twitter about how every UCI XCO race weekend seems to be filled with a tad more Jolanda “Neffness” (a Tweet which got favorited by the current Women’s UCI XCO series leader I might add). Considering the form she is in right now, I fully expected a good showing from her in Sunday’s XCO race.
With the likes of Gunn-Rita Dahle choosing not to make the trip to Australia, I figured the race could come down to the likes of Neff, her Liv Pro XC teammate, and long time Soiled Chamois favorite, Maja Włoszczowska and experienced racers the likes Sabine Spitz and Irina Kalentieva. It turns out I was sort of right and sort of wrong…
I don’t consider myself much of a mountain bike racer anymore. I no longer worry about planning a season, sponsorship proposals, race nutrition or how many hours I’m getting in on the bike. I’m also finding that where I once gravitated towards races of six to twenty-four hours in length, I am now drawn towards shorter marathon races (in the 50 mile range) and cross-country racing.
There is a variety of reasons for this: some burnout, some “been there, done that” attitude (seriously, there is no need for me to EVER do another 24 hour race in this lifetime), increased parental responsibilities and demands, and of course my recent history of DVTs and being on blood thinning medication. If I am going to crash and potentially have a bleeding issue, I would rather do it on a 10 mile loop with easy access to help, rather than in the middle of nowhere during a 100 mile race.
Still, no matter the length, I enjoy racing and continue to do it just as unsuccessfully as I did five years ago, This time making sure that I don’t take it too seriously.
With that lengthy, un-needed introduction out of the way, I now move on to yet another un-needed race recap that truly did not need to be written, this time from Saturday’s MMCC Rust Shaker XC race in Harrison, Michigan.
Fuck yeah, it’s Friday!! So drink up my bicyclesturbating friends! But not too much, ’cause there’s racing to do this weekend… Continue Reading →
