World Champioships
Kaprub, Austria
August 20 - September 2

Hi everyone,

The long awaited day has come and gone. World Championships are over. It's a relief and I'm nursing my wounds and already looking forward to next weekend. It was another rough day at the office.

An hour before our 8:30am start (due to live TV coverage) the clouds opened up and it started raining. Within 30 minutes it was pouring. It never stopped raining the rest of the day. The course was already one of the hardest we've ever raced on at a world championships. And that was when it was relatively dry during training. I personally thought the track was slippery all week, but nothing prepared us for what it was going to be like today. The course turned into a super muddy cyclocross race, only two hours long.

The race started off ok for the first .5km of pavement. We had to make a left hand turn on the pavement onto a grass climb. There was a big crash going around the turn. I felt someone hit my back wheel and it threw me to the side. Alison Sydor literally missed hitting my front wheel by 2cm, no kidding. The result of all this was that I lost my lead spot. I started up the climb in 8th or 9th. Not where I wanted to be. When it is super muddy and slippery the best spot to be in is top three. There is less of a chance of getting tangled with another rider.

The fist climb was a lung buster, all granny gear and slick. All of the single track was getting thick with mud. It was mostly linked recoveries all the way around the lap. I could always see the leaders, not more than 30 seconds in front of me.

I struggled any time the course went downhill and ended up running almost everything. No problem. I finished the first lap in 7th place and moved up on the next climb to 5th. On the far end of the course is a tricky traverse across a green pasture. The trail is flat, but the slope of the hill is quite steep. Now imagine what it's like in the pouring rain. I started riding across and almost instantly my tires lost traction and I fell on my right side and slid fifteen feet down the grassy hillside. I grabbed the bike and ran the rest of the traverse.

Unfortunately when I jumped back on the bike I realized that my derailleur wasn't shifting to the easier gears. I had bent the derailleur hanger in the crash and ruined the derailleur. I couldn't get it to shift so I ran up the next set of climbs. I stopped again and was able to straighten out the hanger. I had gears again. By this point I was dow! n in the twenties somewhere.

On the next big descent I crashed and slid part way down the hill. This was getting ridiculous. At this point I was trying to decide if it was worth it to keep racing, or should I drop out. I decided that I would finish the race, more for my pride than anything. I had lost my motivation at this point and kept getting passed by girls I've never seen before. That's how far back I was.

Starting up the feed zone at the beginning of the third lap Dean, my coach, told me to stop. He said there was no point racing just to finish when there was a good chance of crashing again and getting injured. I'm still nursing my broken wrist from three weeks ago, and I also have a new set of seven stitches in my leg from a crash earlier in the week in training (I had a painful encounter with the chainring on my bike coming down a nasty descent). He had a good point. With the world cup finals next weekend and the overall lead to defend, it didn't make sense to continue. I hate dropping out, but I was secretly relieved to be done.

I rode back to the hotel, took a hose to myself out in the parking lot, got clean enough so I could go up to my room without tracking mud everywhere, and jumped into a nice hot shower. I then crawled into bed and watched the rest of the women's race on TV. It was great!

I'm disappointed not to have finished. I was really hoping to defend my title from last year. It wasn't to be. Oh well. Next weekend, however, is a huge goal of mine. I've never won the world cup title. All my energy is focused on Les Gets, France. And then the season is over. Yippie!

Hope everyone is healthy and happy. Till next weekend!

Cheers!
Alison