1. Last year, after the CV45, I said somewhere that I will go for CV90 next year. I almost forgot about my promise specially after what happened at Lida. But somehow I remembered it and it just struck me what Saadi once said:"A man always keeps his word..." which left me with a rather simple choice.
2. In the aftermath of Lida, there was only one thought that was daunting on me:"I just can't go out as a loser, I just CAN'T!" So I had to pull myself together and get back on that horse. If it ain't working, come back to fight another day, it is very important to choose those days wisely.
3. I fixed a solid plan of mental and physical preparation for CV90, none of them held due to factors mostly outside my power. On the day that me and my riding buddy decided to go for a long ride to simulate the 90 Km stretch, I got a puncture while riding on asphalt! A short while after changing my tube while were trying to bounce back from the downer, he got a puncture too and it turned out that his reserve tube which was brand new has a puncture in it as well! So we had to call up my guardian angel to come and pick us up in the middle of nowhere (details can be seen in here). In order to avoid such unpleasant surprises during the event, I handed in my bike to the local bike shop so that they can sort this thing out and I have been getting a little too much of punctures since I got my bike. The guy claimed that there was something wrong with my tires and suggested to get a new package of tire and tube which they had a special offer for Cykel Vasa. While I really didn't buy his argument and believed that there was nothing wrong with my Bontrager tires, I reluctantly accepted and went for the Continental package. The day after, I saw that I have a puncture again while the bike was standing in balcony! I always suspected that the rim tapes were to blame and have to be replaced as they really seemed low quality and badly placed to my great surprise having the quality of Trek in mind. So he did it this time and it held. This somehow proved that I was right all along and that tire change was really unnecessary imposed cost. Yet another bummer but I couldn't afford to lose my mind on that and tried to look at in a positive way: I would be riding with brand new tires and tubes and it felt quite safe. Two nights before the event, I came out of shower and was about to sit down to drink some water, BAAAAM! My back started to nag loudly. Jesus H. Christ! Why? Why now? The idea of this nagging blowing to a full scale back pain, which grounded me badly for two weeks last year, was not a pretty sight. I had to bite my way through.
4. On the mental strategy during the race, I decided to divide the whole thing in three parts, each of 30 Km: 1st would be the warm-up which turned out to be quite useful given that the weather that day was chilly, 2nd would be the struggle and I just have to fight my way through and 3rd would be just trying to get to the finish line and get over with it. This worked actually well with only one flaw which I had totally missed: The length is actually 95 Km and not 90! So when I reached 90, I still had 5 Km to go but I had ran out of mental energy, my body could surprisingly hold up for a good while or at least for the extra 5. This meant that I ran somewhat empty those last kilometers and this had a negative effect on my overall time despite my efforts down the stretch.
5. On the night before CV90 (staying in a hotel in Tällberg) and the on the bus ride to Sälen on the day of CV, I was feeling very sad and down. I guess there were many reason: the uncertainty of how it will go during the ride, the bad weather ahead of us (cold and heavy on and off showers), how my bloody back would react, the long distance of ride ahead, not being able to sleep enough and comfortably the night before and waking up very early in the morning (there is nothing in this world that I LOATHE more than waking up early in the morning and head out to somewhere, I really really hate that!) and many many more. I faced a dilemma of what clothing I should wear and I went for light version i.e. cycling jersey and a tight base layer without arms which resulted in me feeling very cold at times but I think it was a good decision overall. My back started to nag again in the beginning but when it realized that I don't give a damn about it, it just went away!
6. In the end, it went very much better than what I expected. I had very good time half way through and I could have finished under 4:30 if I had dared to push harder in some places but I was very unsure of my back and was a bit afraid of possible crash or something. On top of that was the mental factor that I mentioned earlier. But I did reach my highest speed ever recorded, 47.5 Km/hr! And it was sort of easier and a very fine trail to ride on, I really like that trail. Looking back now the CV 45 seems really short compared to this one. However in CV90, we skipped a very difficult hill which in CV45 caused me some problems last year.
7. I was slightly put off by the organisation of the race though. Now that there are such a large number of participants, the organisation has to be raised to another level compared to CV45 but it, in my personal opinion, didn't. Well, they claim that they had applied some improvements in the trail, but they could do much much better. For example, the showers and changing area were not really satisfactory for this number of people: few showers, cold water running at times, dirty changing area, not enough hooks/places for clothes and not enough toilets in the start. You had to stand in long queues for everything, from getting the food (which we gave up on when we got a sight of that) to picking up your race diploma and stuff. The Shimano Café which was the only alternative for food charged quite much for a very salty and quite bad buffet. The food offered from the race was not that eye catching neither. That in general was a bit disappointing given the relatively high entrance fee. I heard later from someone who takes part for a race called Giro dell Dolomiti in Italy which is a 7-day event on road bikes that they pay the same entrance fee except for getting warm food and much more for a whole week! Also, the giveaways were very shabby and little. We got almost nothing except and small plastic wrist band courtesy of Merida. The finish medal can be easily replaced with a more classy one. There are so much to improve in many aspects.
All in all, I am kind of happy with my performance, 4:35.43 was my official time. I got really euphoric when I got myself in the last stretch that is a couple of hundred meters from finish line and I was really happy as I passed that famous sign which reads:"I faders spår för framtida segrar" which means "In father's (i.e. Gustaf Vasa) track for future victories". I would have loved to see some familiar faces right there at the finish line but I didn't!:-( On the hand, I did get some good photos instead courtesy of happymtb.org. The whole adventure can be seen in here with additional data.
As for the next year, no promises right now! ;-)
Somewhere near Eldris
