The World Cup Traveling Circus

The moon rising over the Scottish Highlands

Me and Melissa doing a little training in Fort Bill

Jaymie analyzing mine and Buhl's urine samples before and after
training...and yes, she's doing it on our kitchen counter...ewwwww!!

The World Cup Circuit is a bit of a traveling circus, in my opinion. ☺ Each week that there is a race hundreds of brightly colored vans full of tents and racers arrive in peaceful little mountain towns and take over for the week. Tuesday and Wednesday see the pit areas come to life as each team and support group sets up their pop up tents attached to vans, motorhomes, and even huge trucks for a few of the teams. For some of the teams, the racers travel in luxury, flying from place to place showing up once the pits are setup and just in time for practice, as someone probably even stands in the horrible registration line for them. For others, all of the “to do” is done by them. I’m traveling with Fionn Griffiths whilst in Europe, and even though she is one of the best in the world at both 4x and DH, she does it all on her own. She runs and manages her own race program. She’s got a sweet van all pimped out and able to carry around 4 people and 8 bikes, as well as a full tech area setup! She was kind enough to invite me along on her program for this summer. There is no way I could have come over here and made it to all of these races without her help!

Fort William has the BEST crowd and spectators ever!!

Anyway, the rest of the week pretty much goes like this: Thursday, register with barely enough time to get up the track and walk the DH track, then rush down to get to 4X practice because it’s probably already started! Practice 4x for ~1.5 hours, which in my opinion, is never enough time considering the magnitude of the courses that we race on. Friday see DH practice starting at 8:30 till 2:30 for everyone and then times run practice for the top 20 women and top 80 men. After that is more 4x practice and 4x qualifying. Saturday is filled to the brim. DH practice is in the morning and then DH qualifying is in the early afternoon. After that there is a bit more 4x practice and then 4x finals. Sunday has a little DH practice in the morning and then DH finals at 1:00. After all of that, everyone scrambles to tear the pits down, shower, eat (sometimes) and then find out where everyone is celebrating with whomever was on top of the block for the day! Monday usually sees a late start as people make their way home from wherever they found themselves at the end of the night and recover from all of the celebration. Pack up the rest of the traveling circus and move on to the next spot. I’m sure the locals are happy to have us, but they’re probably also very happy to see the entourage heading out of town! ☺

Melissa, Jaymie, and me. I'm so lucky to have such amazing friends!

Ah, the crew at the afterparty