The mountainbike race in Tsali was CRAZY!!! Brooke got 3rd - awesome
job! I finished in one piece, which was all I could ask for.

It started to rain the night before the race, resulting in a very
muddy trail. We, the Sport category, were supposed to start in the
second wave, after the trail had been destroyed already a bit by the
beginners in the first wave earlier that morning.

The start was already hectic, with 2 crashes right in front of me,
but luckily nobody was seriously hurt, and the fireroad provided
enough opportunity to pass the slower women and catch up to the
leading ladies (incl Brooke)(the total field was about 30).

After half a mile or so, the road turned into a single track trail,
that we would not leave for the next 20 miles, awesome environment!
Too bad everything got in worse and worse condition as the race
progressed, and I was pretty scared on the downhills, because of my
lack of technical skills and unfamiliarity with the course. I had to
stop a lot of times to allow my eyes to recover from all the mud in
them - it hurt so bad! After about 30 minutes of racing I stopped
going hard - I wanted to save my knees (they held up great by the
way!) and wanted to NOT DIE!

There were some crazy scary sections, with 30 feet drop offs right
next to the trail to the lake, with rocks and roots on the trail
right in that particular section: scary!!! They did 'tape it off'
with some orange tape though - like that's going to hold you up if
you fall! I walked a lot, and found no shame in that :-).

Everybody's brakes gave out - all the mud was basically sand paper to
the pads, so whether you had V-brakes, mechanical disc brakes or
hydraulic disc brakes: everything failed. I therefore walked a mile
or 2 towards the end, alternatively pushing and carrying the bike,
because it was so (down)hilly that I did not dare to be on my bike:
dragging your foot in the mud only gives you that much stopping
power... Luckily the last 2 miles were relatively flat, so the foot-
dragging technique worked well enough so that careful pedaling was
possible, but it wasn't much fun at all, I can tell you that!

Mike gave up on racing after about 8 miles into the race, after
having crashed (hard) into trees on two occasions (dented his helmet
on one occasion, scraped up the right side of his body on another),
and 'leisurely' rode afterwards (for as much as you can
say 'leisurely' for a ride where you're afraid of hurting yourself
badly) and started to help people fixing their brakes, including
Brooke's! She was able to continue to race because of that, finishing
strong as mentioned earlier in third place.

Well, as you may gather, it was an epic ride, and leaves us with the
mental note to never ever ride the Tsali course when it's raining!
I'm glad we're all OK, except for the little scrapes and bruises here
and there, and BooKoo BBC can add another 3rd place to their
repertoire: Go Brooke!

Maaike

PS It was a good thing we didn't wear our new kits yet - my white
socks are still brown, even after 2 washings...