Last weekend was the Willingen Bike festival where Wheels of Speed downhill race is hosted.
Wheels of speed is an interesting race because it gives amateur riders a chance to compete with the pros.
Theres a qualification for the amateurs and the top 40 go through to the amateur final.
In the amateur final the top 8 go through to race with the pros on sunday.
The pros dont have to qualify but they get a seeding run on saturday.
Last year I also rode in Wheels of speed but what wasnt made clear when I signed up was that the women were expected to qualify which of course is stupid, I did some complaining and in the end we also got to ride in the amateur final.
This year they got a bit (only a bit) more organized. This year 2 pro women riders and 3 amateur riders(including myself) signed up. So they decided to make a pro womens class and put us all together
Having ridden last year I knew the course pretty well, but my lines needed working on. I did quite a bit of training, did all the jumps I had to do and started to check out some new lines.
Im trying to remember my time from last year, I think it was 3:05.
On Saturday we had the seeding run, I felt pretty strong going down, no crashed and wasn’t so exhausted. My time was 2:59 and 4th place from the 5 of us, only one second of 3rd place. So I knew I really needed to work in training the next day. I added two more jumps at the start and at the finish and worked hard on finding faster lines.
What I notice now when looking back at being up at the start just before my final run is how much my nerves have calmed compared to last year. I think after my broken arm my attitude to the race run have changed a lot, I think now I’m much calmer.
Once I dropped in then it really was just about riding the run I’d practiced and getting down without crashing. Coming out of the woods, you ride onto an open field, the finish is still quite far away but you can see it, that’s really where you need to hold it together. I could hear the commentator say my time was faster then the first girl up and much faster then my seeding run time. Now all I had to do was ride the last few jumps clean and ride into the finish. I took the hot seat and waited for yesterdays 3rd placer to come down. When she came out of the woods her time wasn’t as fast as mine and close to the finish she lost grip and crashed, she quickly got back on but her time was only 2:57 and mine 2:43, 16 seconds faster then my seeding run time.
Then came Antje and Claire who were about half a minute faster, they are amazing.
Anyway got to stang on the opdium and got prize money of €100
All in all a very good weekend!