I discovered that my vevlager was the thing stopping the pedals from turning but with a bit of encouraging, it loosened up and was fine. But when I get home tomorrow I will need to take things apart and grease it again.

Right, so now to Kumla. It was pretty much the same course as last year with a few nice changes. The Veteran start was okay until the first corner. I wanted to go faster there but then everyone stopped and I thought, okay, what idiot needs to learn to ride. But it was actually Tomas who fell and had to fiddle with his chain before catching up to me again. By the time we reached the hill (which was not as big as I seem to remember), I was already quite far behind and that was about it.

The grass/mud/snow part was absolute hell but I had actually caught up to someone from Almby IK. I thought he had some teknisk problem but he didn't stop in the pit. He was fairly close behind so I decided to start racing and took off in the long downhill with the sideways-banked mud part that was pretty exciting.

This year I actually did make it up the hills fine and ran a lot less. So I am actually improving since I can compare from last year. There was supposed to be 2 laps left so I thought I would try and pick up the tempo a bit even though my body was more thinking about falling over. Then in the short downhill after the pit and down towards the beach I made a hell of a slide and was sideways. By some miracle (or decent MTB technique) I stayed upright and could finish my lap with some style. And that was all I did since they stopped me.

21st place it would have been if I did the last lap but in the official results I seem to just be listed as +1 varv. Whatever.

I remember why I voted for Kumlacrossen as the best of last year. It was still a wonderful CX course even if this year there are ones even better. Excellent choice for SM!

During the day I also heard about Söderköping tomorrow...snow snow and more snow. Wet snow...