Ronan’s Summer Euro Trip no.1

The trip started out with the long drive out to Leogang, Austria with World Cup racer Fergus Lamb and photographer Stephen Hughes. Ferg was racing the World Cup that weekend so i thought it would be good to do some riding out there before racing the IXS Cup in Leogang the next weekend. As i don’t have the points needed to race the World Cups I just rode some of the other dh trails while the WC was on, as well as a few xc rides with Liam Moynihan and Hannah Barnes (Cheers to Joe Barnes for lending me his xc bike).

After the WC I travelled with Joe, Hannah and Liam to Schladming for a few days riding. The Schladming track was awesome, although I was feeling uncharacteristically tired and weak for some reason. Dh runs followed by messing around at the pool was still well fun. The next weekend came around quickly and it was time for the Leogang IXS Cup. Unfortunately I was now even more tired had picked up a bug of some sort. It turned out to be a weekend to forget as the track was really physical and I struggled to ride well on it with being so tired. This was annoying as I know with the amount of training I do I would normally be well prepared for a track like this. In the end I ended up crashing in my seeding and race run which was pretty frustrating, but I guess if your ill and have no energy there is not much you can do about it. With Ilmenau IXS the next weekend I had a few fairly chilled days before driving to Germany. I did some xc , hill walking and swimming as well as dh runs.

Walking the Ilmenau track on Thursday it reminded me of a track you might find in Britain, not that steep or tech but still fun. The course go a lot rougher over the weekend with dust like I’ve never seen before.
By the time Sunday came around I was feeling confident on track after being first in Junior in seeding on Saturday. My race turned out pretty good as I went faster than seeding, although in places I felt on the brakes too much as well as making one mistake exiting a turn. In the end i ended up 4th in Junior which I was pleased with, especially as the racing was mega tight and I was only 0.9 seconds off the win!
It was a good experience to do a European race where the times were so tight as it really makes you think about the little things where you can make up time.

Posted by Ronan Taylor on August 9, 2010 at 7:12 pm | Race Reports