Offenburg, Germany

First race of the season done and over with. Sea Otter always promises to be a mentally and physically challenging event, and this year was no exception, if anything it was even more so. With the short track on Sat, I was really hoping that I'd managed to flush all the winter gunk out of my legs, but 20 mins inthe the cross country race (which they shortened from 2 to 1 laps due to the heat...thank goodness), I new there was still lots of gunk left. I managed a great start, felt good and was in a good position through the long descent, but once we started climbing, I had to scale it waaaaaay back and enter survival mode. Never good when you hit that mode only 20 mins in, but when I started seeing vultures circling overhead, just waiting for me to drop, I knew it was all I could do. Managed to get a little bit of a second wind on the final 20 min climb out to the finish and pick up a couple of spots, but still only managed to finish 24th... :( On a very positive note, it can only get better from there and it's a long season again this summer.

So with reports of snow and miserable weather in Calgary, I am super excited that I decided to make the trip over to the European World Cups... the weather in Offenburg has been ideal all week. It's an extremely beautiful place to begin with, but with sun and blue skies everyday, even better.

Had a pretty good crash on my first ride of the course when my front tire stretched off my rim on the first technical downhill of the season, that's always really good for confidence, missing part of my elbow and my shin is pretty scraped up... guys dig scars right?? .. hehe .. I hope so or else I'm doomed ;-)

Just finished up my last pre-ride of the course, same as last year but dry so it's in amazing condition and really fast. And I've managed to nail the technical drops to the point that I'm comfortable my front tire will stay on the rim. With plate number 64 out of 103 (yeah, big field), it's not going to be a great call up, but then again some of the top pros that didn't go to the first World Cup are only 10 spots a head of me. I'm actaully feeling pretty good too, so I'm really excited to race..which is always a good sign.

Just wanted to send out a huge thanks to Dan and Scott for the great job they are doing with the Canadian project!!! They are doing an amazing job.