Crashing and learning on Salamina. This is all about not racing my bike
What do you do when you fly 16 hours for a bike race and then crash out before the start? That’s not a question I was hoping to answer, but it’s actually less depressing than it first sounds.
We perched up on the hill with a view of the start and the first corner, and watched the drag race unfold below. When you’re in the race, everything seems to close and tight, but watching from a distance made me realise that I have more space to ride than I think I do. We situated ourselves on the first descent, the one I was really struggling with, and watched the best riders in the world struggle in exactly the same places. Gerhard Kerschbaumer from Italy (well, Südtirol if that counts…) took the holeshot, and drifted out on the trickiest corner on the DH, getting unclipped just like I had done pre-riding. On the steep and fast section before I crashed, only a handful of riders went down confidently, with everyone else on their brakes as much as me. It made me feel much better to know that I may not have been riding well, but I wasn’t riding any worse than anyone else either.
Seeing the gaps form, hold, and then lengthen throughout the race justified the weight I place on the start of the race. The order in the first 3 minutes was mostly the order that would hold to the finish. But I also realised that getting a bad start shouldn’t exclude me from a good race; I just have to get fast enough to close those gaps. Sometimes in chasing some margins here and there, it’s easy to forget that training harder and for longer is the simplest way to get faster. So that’s what I’ll be doing for the next 6 weeks – more training, more hours, and more intensity. Hopefully I can fit in a trip to somewhere warm to make it happen.
Seeing the gaps form, hold, and then lengthen throughout the race justified the weight I place on the start of the race. The order in the first 3 minutes was mostly the order that would hold to the finish. But I also realised that getting a bad start shouldn’t exclude me from a good race; I just have to get fast enough to close those gaps. Sometimes in chasing some margins here and there, it’s easy to forget that training harder and for longer is the simplest way to get faster. So that’s what I’ll be doing for the next 6 weeks – more training, more hours, and more intensity. Hopefully I can fit in a trip to somewhere warm to make it happen.