EKZ Cross Tour Baden

After three performance tests in the week before the race my legs weren’t super fresh, but my new PB’s in the tests really motivated me and made me forget my tired legs.

In the past years the track in Baden always suited me very well, but I still didn’t set a concrete goal for my first cyclocross race of the season. I simply wanted to complete a very intensive race and improve my fitness even more.

 

At the start with the number 31 I had to avoid some crashes. But I soon realized that I could ride much faster than my direct opponents and I could fight my way forward relatively easily. This was a great feeling and motivated me even more!

Although there were a lot of attacks at the front of the race, I was able to fight my way into the very large chasing group in the third of the eleven laps. Due to my catching up, I unfortunately didn’t had the energy to stay in the front of this group all the time, so after the first half of the race, six riders, unfortunately without me, were able to pull away.

I showed an offensive race and during one of my attacks in the fourth last lap I even achieved the second best lap time. But this fast lap wasn’t enough to catch up with the six riders in the front and so I was caught again by two riders.

With extremely fast laps I fought with these two riders for the seventh place. Until the last lap I was able to keep up well, but in the decisive attack I unfortunately lacked the energy that I had used in the starting phase and had to settle for 9th place.

 

In the past years, I always had to fight a little bit in the international elite cyclocross races and never had the chance to really get involved in the decision of the race. Normally I was very satisfied with a top-20 result.

This year in Baden I had a completely different feeling. I’m overjoyed that I can now even keep up with the best international riders in cyclocross and that I was able to achieve my first top-10 result in an international cyclocross race. For the EKZ Cross Tour in Berne my ambition are even higher and a top-5 result in front of my home crowd would be a dream.

But first of all there are still the three important mountainbike races of this year’s season upcoming. The two World Cup races in the Czech Republic and the E-XCO World Championship in Leogang.

 

//Joris