We're in Mont Saint Anne again (must be about the 100th time i've been here..) but for the first time i'm doing the world cup marathon.. yip, i've gone completely bonkers i know. I don't know if its just because my XC starts suck, or if i truly like the idea of suffering for 5-6hrs, but marathons have tempted me for a while. The atmosphere is more laid back and 'real' somehow.. less bling bling and 'hey look at me' around.

The week before leaving was a bit stressful.. I packed up the rental house and moved everything into my new garage (the house will be ready in August). Can't wait to finally get settled somewhere again.. moving around all the time sucks!
Then I did a media weekend in Champery (alpine bike park www.bikepark.ch ) for Mavic which was more like a hangout and freeriding weekend, plus some techy info on the new 07 CrossMax's... 150g lighter, 20% stiffer, less friction etc etc... actually, we've been riding them for the past few world cups and we all agree that they feel very good indeed.
I also logged roughly 25hrs on the bike.. so perhaps i shouldn't have been too surprised to catch a small cold on the plane. I was still getting over it on race day, but figured i'd start and see how i felt... we'd preridden the last 30km and it was really good fun, so i didn't want to miss it.

We started off in down town Quebec.. I made all sorts of bail out plans, taking away any kind of race preasure. I rode my own pace and had a great time, leaving a big front group to battle out the podium. The track was seriously awesome.. true mtbing for 95km! The steep climbs and rough tracks never stopped. I was SO happy to be on a full suspension.. a great maiden voyage for my new six13 scalpel :) It did awesome, especially up the rocky climbs where i left the rear shock fully active and was killing the local punters who i was riding with, yea.. Coming across the line in 4.30hr i was 10th, 19min behind the winner, Alban Lakata. I even won some prize money for the first time in ages. Peter had a great race... was in 5th with 10km to go, but then stepped it up to finish 2nd, cool for the team!

Now its time to reelaaax.. nothing much to do here but watch movies (speaking of which, we saw Madagascar the other night.. hilarious!!!!) Back to work this weekend for the real deal...  ¶ 6:52 PM