Up to visit the Vikings

I have returned from a weekend up in Sweden and Denmark....lots of travelling, some good racing and a little bit of seeing the sights. It is definitely an area I would like to spend more time in.

On Thursday we flew up to Goteburg on Sweden's west coast for a World Cup the next day in Vargarda. The weather was as hot as everywhere else in Europe and without bikes we had some time to kill drinking coffee and exploring the little town we were staying in. The next day we didn't start racing until 4:30pm so we went for a pedal in the morning and drank more coffee. The race was harder than most expected I think...the course was deceptively tough. It was effectively an 11km criterium circuit with a hill in the middle. The extremely strong coffee that I had before the start put me in good stead for the opening stages of the race and I was a little bit of a maniac. I paid for it later in the race, with sore legs and a very upset stomach...that was the end of the day for me. The team had a good day with lil Gela finishing 6th and Kirsten winning the bunch sprint home for 10th.

The next day we were up early for the long trip over to Denmark. We drove, caught a big big ferry for 3 hours and then drove a whole lot more. Denmark is beautiful as well, lots of rolling hills, green fields and lovely coastline. We headed out for a pedal to get the stiff legs moving and then camped in our room with English tv on (its a bit of a treat over here).

Yesterday we had the first ever Teams Time Trial World Cup for women. We didn't start until 2pm so again a leisurely morning was on the agenda. I don't tend to get nervous for racing any more...but I found that I had butterflies in my tummy and that quesy feeling. I idea of letting down your team is much worse than letting down yourself! We thought before-hand that Buitenpoort and Univega would be very tough to get close to but that if we had a good day we could podium so that was our aim. The strength of our team was that we were all pretty closely matched so we should be able to hold onto all 6 riders. We headed to the start, did the usual warm-up and then got moving. We got into a good rhythm early, held onto it and tackled the 43km course in 53 mins 29 secs. All 6 of us were there at the end and we had set the fastest time...very exciting! In the end Univega beat Buitenpoort by 2 secs, and we were 3rd, 1 sec in front of Nurnberg (always good to beat the little sister ;))

Kate has come back to Holland with us and this morning we are heading down to Gent in Belgium to see Gary Sutton...something we are both really looking forward to.