World Cup #1
St. Wendel, Germany
May 24-25, 2003

Hi everyone,

I'm writing from the airport hotel in Frankfurt. We're on our way to Scotland tomorrow. Waldek, our team manager and soigneur, dropped us off around 1:30pm and we don't leave till tomorrow at 9:45am. We've got a lot of time to kill. Good chance to get caught up on email and my book.

We just finished our first world cup in St. Wendel, Germany. It's a small town about an hour north of France. The last time we raced here was 2000. This will be my fifth time racing here. The course hasn't changed at all. Hard to believe but it's been exactly the same all these years. This year there was a lot of rain during the week and when we rode the course on Friday it was a muddy mess. We couldn't ride any of the uphills. Some of the descents were quite slick. It was a challenging course.

By race day the track had dried considerably. It's hard to know what the course is like on race day because we don't ride any of the course. Usually we just show up to the team truck and start our warm-ups on the trainer. It had rained the night before and based on how muddy it was on Friday I choose a narrow 1.5 mud tire. It ended up being a bad choice.

The pace was brutally fast. The fastest start we've had all year. I just kept thinking, "How in the world can I maintain this for two hours??" The field split almost right away. I struggled to stay with the front group. My heart rate was through the roof and the legs were screaming. As we entered into the slick woods the gaps grew and I quickly lost contact with the top five. I could tell it was going to be a rough day. The legs didn't have the power I needed in the soft mud and I wasn't riding downhill as smoothly as I wanted. I had many close calls that had I gone down, would have probably resulted in some kind of injury. Yikes. The narrow tires I had chosen were sinking into the mud instead of floating on top. I had to work extra hard through the soft stuff. Felt like I was riding on a sponge. I struggled all day between ninth and twelth place. Not where I'm used to riding. It was frustrating and hard to keep fighting. Everything affects everything else. When you don't feel good, you don't descend as well, and then you get flustered and frustrated, and then you feel even worse.

A painful two hours later I crossed the finish line in 12th place. Yucht. Gunn Rita Dahle won. My only consolation was that Marga Fullana didn't make the podium either. I was really disappointed but it's not something I can do much about at this point. I am pretty much out of contention for the overall this year so maybe that will take some of the pressure off and make the rest of the world cup races easier. Haha!

I'm hoping the legs will come around in time for Scotland. My last name, Dunlap, is a Scottish clan and I've actually found the town of Dunlop. It is only 16 miles SW of Glasgow, the city we fly into tomorrow. After we arrive we have to wait two hours for our mechanic to arrive and I'm going to use that time to find the town my family name originated in. I can't wait!

Hope all is well and I'll talk to you next week.

Cheers!

Alison