Last race this year - Best race this year

Sunday was the last race this year (there will be a winter fun race but that is not a a marathon) the Alpinsport mtb marathon. This was my best race, I finished 23 minutes behind the first guy and 14 minutes behind the podium. I finished 8th in my age group and 16th overall :)

It was a very beautiful day and there were 212 participants.

I raced on the short track, 28 km mainly because Saturday I crashed and I lost a piece of my brake :) As usual I didn't warm up enough and I missed the start to :D

The start was from a field and we had to get on to a road. The problem was that in front of me everybody stopped because there was a lot of mud and water on the road :( So I missed one more start and I had to push hard to pass people fast.  I was doing well for the first 3 km when I noticed that I lost the piece of wood which I used to fix my brake :( After that my concentration was gone and I was struggling to keep up with the others. At about 7km I lost my pump (always keep your pump in the middle pocket) so I had to stop. I was lucky that it was near a tree and I fixed my brake. But I lost a few very precious time with this :(

Hayes Stroker with wood tuning :D

After that I got to a check point (I never saw so many checkpoints in a race before) were I had a power gel and some water. After that there was the first dh part, which I heard that was more difficult that the one from the longer track. It was slippery because of the mud and the whet grass and the leaves. And it was very hard because there were a few tranches made by the water.

My wood Hayes was working well so I didn't crash. After that there were some water crossing and very muddy roads but I found my rhythm and I was catching the other riders. After a water crossing I saw something very ugly, a very steep hill (some say it was 25%). A race without push bike is not a real race :D When I got there I saw the guy in front of me but I couldn't catch him while pushing the bike. I caught him when I got on the bike but he passed me when I stopped at the last checkpoint.I caught him on the last dh part of the race. I was pushing very hard because i knew there were no more climbs, but I didn't see nobody in front of me  :(

After that we enjoyed washing our dirty bikes and our selfs in the pool :D

After that we had some very delicious gulyas :D

This was a very well organized race, a lot of checkpoints, nice people, nice track and great weather. This season couldn't have a better end :)
I've got a lot of pictures from Westend, from my friends and from other people watching the race. A lot of thanks for the pics, here are some more of my favorites:

More pictures here.