02 April - Liquigas Cup, Nalles

Instead of taking the auto route through Italy and stressing with all the speeding traffic, I decided to take the mountain roads through to Nalles. This road goes from Switzerland, up over 2 lovely passes, one of which I had to drive the car onto a train, which then took me through the top part of the mountain. Nalles is really more like Austria then Italy, and so they have much nicer bread! The hotel we stayed in (hotel Wilma) had a area with swimming pool, sauna, Turkish spa, etc.. that was fit for kings. Very luxury! The hotels we stay in are very random, sometimes they are fantastic, other times real shit holes!
Well, onto the race. It was the same course as last year, and a pretty decent field once again. The start was a very steep asphalt road, lasting almost 3min. This was too fair for me, and I was about 30th by the top. I’ve been trying to work out why I have such trouble at the starts, but its very tricky. So, playing catch up again, I weaved my way past riders until the final lap, and ended up in 6th place. I really should have been on the podium today, but that’s racing. Up front it was Julian and Marco until Marco punctured, then it was Julian with a huge gap… and he won his first race for the season.