13 March - Gaerne Trophie

Every now and then while traveling you come across a great new place and you start to think to yourself, "it wouldn't be bad living here!" Thomas, Emil and I spent this week in the small town of Maser, and we were all super impressed. Firstly, all the people were so friendly. Like our hosts at the Agri-tourismo (like a bed and breakfast, but 80% of the food they serve comes from there own land), who are very keen MTBer's. Sidi, who is one of our teams biggest sponsors this year, had there headquarters just 2km away, and we spent a lot of time, both checking out the factory (i have some cool photos, which i will put up soon!), inviting us for dinner, and then taking us out to eat pizza in Trento, one more amazing city.

The riding is another thing we were shaking our heads at. Everyday we would head off through the ancient town of Asolo, and into windy roads through the vineyards, passing by fantastic castles, churches and royal mansions.
After our rides we would eat at a small restaurant “de Bastians” he would serve simple, but great food. My favorite was the giant ravioli with pumpkin inside. Perfect recovery food!

It was a great find, so great that we have all decided to use this place as our Italian base from now on to stay at between events. For anyone thinking of coming to Italy as a tourist, I would highly recommend it.

So, with another great weeks training with my team-mates, I was feeling good for the weekends event. Although it is just an E2 categorized race, it is still a big event for our team, and I wanted to do well. The first two laps Marco Bui and Roul Paulissen put on a strong pace, dragging my self and Fredik Kessiakoff along. The course had a terrific amount of climbing, totally 300m each of the 6 laps. In the en Bui had another amazing race, and won with ease. Roul and Fredrik blew up pretty bad, and I got stronger as the race went on to finish 2nd.



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