The team spirit crew

Ok, this is ridiculously exaggerating as a header. Last Saturday we had the NC for three disciplines, only one of which I was in. The decision not to ride anything else was rather clear as after the U6 in Sweden and the illness I hadn't ridden my bike barely at all. I did two standing starts on Friday and completed my man two duties in the team sprint (or spirit?) on Saturday.

We had a good laugh doing the team sprint with three enduro blokes, and being the only with experience in team spirit at all. Our man one, Hiski, you notice him by his hugely muscular stature, did his job more than well. Well, not quite as muscular as some may imagine, but what the heck. Me with my sprinters (or chicken?) legs, as man two due, had a bit of a struggle with the illness, but at the end it didn't hurt such a short performance as much as I was afraid of. So there I delivered our man three, Mikael, to last leg of the rides. Mikael, with greater endurance and time trial abilities, was a natural pick for his role and therefore he was our strong finisher.

In the morning, I was sure that we will ride a straight up final, but it soon was apparent that there will be finals and qualifiers. We qualified third for the bronze final, which was fair enough. Our first team scored a national record by margin to the second team. Placing in top four was a good one for us, as it was the very first team sprint for us as a team. In the final we managed to improve our time from the qualifiers notably, as we managed the technical performance a tad better after one practice ride, and won a bronze medal, which after all coughing felt pretty good. It was first elite medal for Hiski, and first sprint medal for Mikael. I was all too glad to get a bronze and ride solid rides.

As a conclusion we could have done a bit better times, by practicing more together without adapting our training programs much, but we would stand no chance with the guys who train sprinting. All in all, this was funny project ending nicely on podium in third spot. Thanks boys!


Also, Juhana won his first jersey in points race! Congratulations, I'm proud of you!