Kategorie: 2008

Last friday (17.10.08) my sponsor Frontworx organised a downhill day with me for their business partners. The weather was great not too hot and no rain. Semmering bike park was choosen and the rental bikes were ready to be ridden by the brave businessmen. After a welcome breakfast everyone slipped into the knee pads, back protection, gloves and of course the helmet and so the action started. First of all I explained the important basics and then we all rode the family track. After everyone got confident with the bike- we dare to try one step further and rocked the freeride track. I had the feeling everyone enjoyed it much and this group was also very motivated to learn and try new things. No broken bones and no broken bikes….just happy faces. included my one…

Frontworx

Volker and I

Volker in action

Its getting colder and colder in Austria. I am already thinking about riding my snowboard soon and I am klicking throught the online shops to get a new snowboard pants. The fashion has changed a lot and the prices too. So expensive but also so nice too. hmm hard to choose. I haven ridden my snowboard since nearly 2 years. Last year I was in NZ and injured before I could jump on my board and last last year also injured. So i my plan is to make it this year. I have already planned a weekend with my friends. and I think i will see the bratislava Indoor BMX hall sooner than I want. My hometrack is still okay to ride, Just the early darkness sucks. Markus is working until 3 and at 4 its getting already dark so I cant train with him lots. Markus worked on his pumptrack a lot and it’s in a very good shape now. Good fun to ride and so we also ride with the floodlights.
I have a new trainer. Lukas is his name and helps me with all the condition I have to work so much on my endurance. What i am doing since end of september. Spending hours and hours on my hometrainer pedalling to nowhere. I dont like it but it has to be done …Maybe I would have been already to Paris who knows…I am nearly through all my neighbours DVDs and I don’t know how many tears have been rolling over my cheeks because greasy romances. Harry and Sally, Maybe or maybe not, little miss sunshine, holiday, barfuss, kein ohr hase…. and so many more. Apart from pedalling I am going out and have fun with my friends and my brother.
At the moment my ant’s dog Annabell stays at my place so I go for long walks with her like in the old days when my dog was alive. so yes thats it…

jep it’s boarding time. and so my friends and I went for a ride.at Kitzsteinhorn. A nice place to let the season begin. It was just for 2 days but it was worth it. The first morning was okay. It was very cold. I mean for me it was very cold… I had about 5 layers on… After lunch it was getting better and better and we had blue sky and sun. NICE NICE NICE..We spend few hours in the park but I was such a newbie. I wouldn’t say that I was ever a very good jumper at all but hmm 2 years away from boarding I forgot a lot of styles. In the evening I was so tired from all the riding that i felt a sleep about 8:30 and the others went out. I heard in the morning I didn’t miss anything so it was okay that I was boring person..who just wanted to sleep. We stood up early the next day because the weather forecast said fresh snow.. So good powder lines..And it was so. Blue sky again and fresh power. YEAH….Apart from one broken clavicula and 2 broken hand bones we stayed all in one piece…I wish seppi and stef a good recovery.

Kathi I and steff….my best friends

So now I have to go back on my bike. see you LENE

This weekend I competed in Rotorua. It’s located in the North of the North Island. It’s the Queenstown of the north Island but more Maori culture and population. On the Rotorua homepage it is called a distinctive smell, in my words the whole city smells like millions of rotted eggs because of the geothermal heat. But apart from that which didn’t bother me anyway it’s a nice place. We (Hamish, Blair, Jeremy and what’s his name and I) stayed in a cabin located to a very nice lake.

It was a nice cabine for 5 people, we were a harmonic group and I was happy to stay with them. Thanks to Blair  for organizing the accomondation…

We arrived on thursday evening, did a XC ride through the rotorua bike paradise.  Which is just a paradise on a xc bike or a light freedride bike. I didn’t enjoy it that much on my downhill bike, rolling around in the flat. But it seems to be a high frequented xc bike area because the trails were hard like concrete and there are heaps of organize shuttles. On Friday we walked down the downhill track and it took us ages. When it didn’t rain the sun was burning down. So we were wet all the time.

So on Saturday were the official training day. I felt not good on my bike and didn’t find my rhythm…The shit was I kept on not finding my rhythm the whole weekend. So I don’t wanna explain to much now what happened or what not happened. I ended up last which sucks (4th place) but I can’t change it know. I am back in Wellington now and the weather was crap so I took a day of and can hopefully train tomorrow.

See you LENE

Aja yes Kai, got 5th I am so proud on him! Good work Fuff…

After the weekend I booked a flight up to Auckland and spend some easy last days in Wellington. I went for a last DH run with Hadley and for a xC ride with Chris. Said to everyone goodbye and packed my stuff the last time for this trip. So at the moment I am in Auckland at Kai’s place and waiting for my flight back home. Auckland- L.A.- London and then finally Vienna where my parents will waiting for me. Losts of people are waiting for me and I am very excited about seeing them all again.

To sum it up… I had a absolut great time here in New Zealand and wanna say also thank you too: Kai, James, Jordan, Dan, Donna, Leon, Chris, Hamish, Dave and Gail Judson, Byron, Rita, Cevin, Ben, Susanna, all the organiser who helped me out, my sponsors.

My smile for everybody who helped me.

Packing up my bike and hoping it doesn’t get lost

With one dry eye and one wet eye I left Wellington on the 28 Feb midday.

Leaving good friends, who I had embosomed to go home and see the best friends again…I had a awesome time in NZ but know it was time to go home the races were finished and my budget too.

It was a good journey. I had no long waiting durations between the flight, no lost bike or bag and okay seats, good food, nice weather so a very good view out of the window

and so good entertainment on board. Heaps of good music and films. And I was so surprise when I watched an NZ movie, called „the devil dared to me“ to see one of the Junior Rider as one of the main actors. First moment I thought “ wau he looks very similar to the kid I know from the race series..but then I saw his name and could believe it – Zach Baker is not only fast no he can act too.

Now I try to find my day rhythm here, until now it works pretty well and have to sort out many things for the starting World cup season and today I have my official Frontworx contract signing meeting. We didn’t have time before I left.
See you LENE

Now I can say that I have acclimatized. Everything works well here not very exciting, but yes of course what can easily trump the last months. The last week I hanged out with my friends, who I haven’t seen for ages and trained a lot. It was nice to speak about other stuff than forks, brakes, titanium springs, the world cup schedule… Both girls don’t bother about biking so it was quite relaxing, giggling around and doing other things. I had also a chat with my trainer and we talked about my coming season and so I am working basically on my endurance and torso strength. The weather doesn’t offer other opportunities than cross country riding and sitting on the home trainer. But the other day I did a new XC round with some friends of mine and it was just great. Really nice tracks and some good downhills. So I have not so say that my heart beats for downhill but XC riding is a part of it and tracks like these are making the training easier.

Yesterday I spend nearly the whole afternoon in my cellar. Very cold so well prepared with 5 layers of sweatshirts and T-shirts I worked on my bikes, cleaned my work shop and built up my new 4 Cross bike from Morewood. It looks really hot and I did some laps. It feels good but I have to work a little bit on the weight. Today I wanted to do some real training runs on my hometrack but it is raining at the moment and you can’t ride there when the ground is wet… too sticky.

But anyway it’s easter Sunday so it’s family day. I have already got my easter rabbit and a present. A perfume which I have tried at the airport in London and my mother took a smell at this little perfume cards you can use to try it.. the girls will know what i mean. In 3 hours I can tell, we will sit in the dinning room with big bellies, caused by my mothers‘ fabulous cooking, and talking about the family members who are not here, I will have to answer the New Zealand questions, my aunt will amuse us by her lovely stories and my mum will laugh and cry because she is so funny and my father’s half brother will enrich us with his life anecdotes. So yes I am proud to be a member of this family. Happy Easter see you LENE.

Today my friends and I went for a ride with our 4 cross bikes. „Trainings group number one“ are they called. And yes it was good training, lot of mud and lots of good drifts. I had the chance to test my Morewood and it’s great. Just great.

Sponsornews:

Yesterday I was for a XC ride with my sponsor frontworx. The meeting point was clear and so everybody arrived in time. Volker, his girlfriend and 2 other assistants and I were ready to climb up the hill to enjoy the downhill afterwards. I must be honest I did this tour just 2 times. So I had a map with me just in case.. But better than a map was the one who showed me the tour and he was at the top with his friends nearly at the same time we were there .So we got save back to the car and did not get lost… This would have been quite embarrassing….The weather forecast wasn’t good but it didn’t rain and the day was excellent.

Materialnews:

I not riding any longer Marzocchi. I change the sponsor and now I will ride Manitou. I have already got my new 4x Fork „Minute“. It’s light blue – Apart from the good looking and I tried the fork today and it’s Wicked!’#+`0?

Today my Sombrio riding gear arrived and what should I say special like everytime. The jerseys have on the bottom (left) on the inside a little square of cotton rag stitched off for clining your googles. I really count myself lucky to get this well delibereted clothes. Thanks to sports-nut by the way.

My first race will be the 4cross in Koppl on the 26 of April. So heaps of time to test my bikes.

see you LENE

This weekend a bunch of racers went on a journey to compete against the austrian and interantional 4 Cross elite riders. The bunch was BMX King (Markus), R2D2 (Thomas), Hannes (He is newbie in our 4X group so we haven’t found an nick name yet) and my humble self, Miss DH. Bursting of motivation and excitment we drove to Koppl Friday evening to be fully relaxed on Saturday (the race day). And we all had a very funny evening. I just can say I could feel my abdominal muscles caused by my non stop laughing…

Arriving in a rainstorm on friday evening the saturday could just be better. And so was it.  No rain, no wind and some sunrays. The track was in an excellent condition and every rider enjoyed it. At least how I could tell. The first corner was very narrow and so it came that the spectateurs got presented a show deluxe… So also in the woman final. I was second in the qualification (1st Anita 3rd Angie…)I had a good start and Anita for her circumstances a bad start (normally she has good starts) but she had the inside line and so we ended up elbow on elbow and Angie made her own way and won. We „fought“ in every corner but we could past her any more and I could past Anita. I enjoyed the race a lot and I was very happy about the amount of female riders. It was very good 4X with high level. In the men class won the german rider Sascha Meyborg. Markus came 5th and R2D2 7th and Hannes 13th. To sum up we enjoyed all :-). We are looking forward to go on journey soon again. My next stop without the group is Val di Sole, Commezadura (1-4 of may). It is the pre event for the World champs and I hope I can profit by the pre practice. see you LENE

I am sitting on the steps of the hotel arena in Maribor and have a view of a bunch of young kids lying on their backs in the gras and doing weird excersises. But yeah it looks like good fun…

I came back from Italy on sunday night and was to tired to write something in my blog… BUt to sum up it was a good weekend and I learned a lot for the rest of the season. I really enjoyed the 4 cross riding and to compete. I had very good gates but i have to work on my passing stragety. I was leading the first straight but didn’t know what i can get out of it… ( On Thusday I was training on the bmx track with one local girl and she introduced my in the passing secret.. so I hope I can use some advices for maribor) The downhill track in Commezzadura was hard and long and I was running out of battery, because of too much 4 cross and downhill training…. On sunday I couldn’t hardly walk so i don’t have to tell that i rode very shit. I ended up 15th and that’s crap. But I had the chance to ride on the world championship track and had my riding on the other days was good. So I can be satisfied.

No I am in Maribor it was the first training day and the 4 cross track is difficult. It has no rythm. so at the moment it’s not good fun but i will see how it goes tomorrow. The downhill track is still the same and I can’t await to ride tomorrow.

bye your lENE

The 4X qualification is over and i think I finished 9th (not sure) I am not happy about my result I could have done better and should have jumped this jump but hmmm always tomorrow.

I will take it easy and what comes will come.. Yours LENE

Pedal Pedal pedal… was crossing my mind on Sunday at 15:12:30 when I looked on the clock –  ready to race when the light turned into green. I would lie saying I wasn’t nervous… my family was there to watch, which is very very seldom and who knows me knows that I am very comepetive person.. At the end I stood on the podium 3rd position (national ranking) and 4th (international ranking). To sum I had an okay run..Just okay because I managed to cross a corner so that I nearly overflow it and so I lost few seconds. Maybe I could have beaten the second placed woman Anita Molcik, with whom I was close the run before and the day before, but not Petra. She had a good time.

The race was very well organized and the weather was running always on the edge…All the time grey clouds were hanging over the „Zauberberg“ but the expected rain never appeared. A new starter fiel record was established I think I heard the speaker saying more then 300 starter. Also a storied number of girls/women competed and a lots of international riders  appeared (US, FIN, Japan, AUS, HUN, ITA, CZE, POL, GER …..had a lot of fun and enjoyed riding on this brilliant track. This weekend I will be in Windischgarsten (AUT) I don’t really like the track but yeah I will see how it works out. See you LENE

Pic by Kevin Kontschieder