Huskvarna Mountain XCO - Spontaneous race!

Result: 10th place

Bike: Trek Superfly 9.9 SL, RocketRon/RacingRalph LiteSkin 2.25 - 1.3bar

I do very few pure XCO races... like I've done ONE: Last year's Swedish champtionships. And for multiple reasons: One being that there are few close by. The other being that I suck at really technical tracks. However, today there was one not too far away (ok, a three hour drive) and I had been told it was on an ok technical level (I turned out to be extremely technical). So, this morning, when I woke up, I decided to drive up to Huskvarna on my own and participate in Huskvarna Mountain.

Results: Huskvarna Mountain

Race story:
I got up to the race location just in time to do one practice lap. The track turned out to contain quite a few sections of a and b-lines (and one c-line even!). Two of the a-lines were doable, the rest (2 or 3) where really dangerous (to me at least). Had I had time to do more practicing I may have found the courage to do more of the a-lines. I have to get back to that course and try it again.
So the race started (I started from the last row) and I pretty much started overtaking people from the first few meters. Everything went fine but, of course, every time I took a b-line I lost a few places. There were how ever plenty of uphills so I managed to take back some places there.
In the last a-line of the lap I sort of chickened out halfway through and laid down on my side (dangerous!). This was really really embarrassing and I had to pick up my bike and run the rest of the section (with people being upset behind me). The rest of the laps I took the b-line here.
Anyway, after 50 minutes of racing I finished in 10th place... which is something I was quite pleased with. Now I just need to learn some tech skills so I can go down the a-lines in the future.

Conclusion: XCO is really scary (on difficult tracks like this one) but also an inspiring challenge