Yes, I went to Kumla and they let me leave...
Because I had to be there to test ride the course before 09.00 and I was staying in Örebro, this was an early morning. And I woke up feeling stiff in every muscle of my body. Then to add to my joy my car was frozen so I had to scrape windows and that kind of stuff.

Once I took a lap around the course and saw how fun it was, I knew that I had to start this race despite my paralysis. There was seedning based on yesterdays results and they put me in start group #2 of 3...uh...but I was last. Fine, so after the start I was back to last place and things seems right again. I chickened out a bit on the start because it was a fast downhill and then a tight and slippery hairpin curve. The first stretch was deep and wet grass which was a pain but still okay. I was on pace until a grusväg part when they took off. Something was funny with my back tire (tubdäck had a 'small' bump around the air valve, okay, it was a large bump) but I kept going.
Next came a fun forest slalom part which went quite quickly until the first tough hill. The whole course went slalom up and down that hill about 4 times. Ouch.


This was waiting for me at the top of one of those hills. Note to reader...I am supposed to be running here...

Then came a hole series of hills and corners and finally the stairs. I decided after my test lap that the fastest thing would be to put the bike over my shoulder and run up the stairs, around the corner and up the next hill. It was a good plan if I had actually been in the race. They were long gone by then. So what do you do when you are that far off? Well, just have fun with it.


For example, lets just ride through the toughest part of the sand and feel that back wheel kick out...


Or lets see what happens when the front wheel starts going sideways as well. Hmm...looks like a setup for 'dagens vurpa' to me. =)

Anyway, I had to do the extra lap this time and I made sure to do that a bit faster so their time schedule would not be messed up. So, today's finish was 25th with 4 DNFs this time.

I have some training to do...

Bilder: Henrik Öijer