#rychleby

Last year should have tought me that it is hard to say when it is the end of the racing season. I was not riding much after race in Slovakia, mostly concentrating on bike riding in preparation for our Ericpol company annual Krakow-Lodz ride, which is 250km in a day.

After that all my riding was basically my everyday commute, which I try to do on uni once a week. But still Istebna was waiting for us. This time without Ericpol Classic a day before it was much easier and as I was not feeling any need to do hardcore stuff, I selected Mini distance, which was bit less than 20km. When we arrived it turned out that due to heavy mud the route is changed and is bit shorter, which finally turned out to be 18km.

The ride was good, but I didn't feel that strong as in Slovakia and I was happy to select mini distance. Route was entertaining and there was not too much mud as I was still enjoying sliding it on 13th kilometer. All of the race went quite smoothly and I finished the ride in just under 2 hours of what was most possibly my last race in the MTB Marathon series. Unfortunately the series I've started my uni racing 4 years ago will be finished and just a couple of individual best races will be kept. At least such were the gossips at the site. We'll see it would be to get onto some of the most hardcore routes once more. And that was supposed to be the end of the season, but it wasn't. End of October traditionally Maksym organized Muni Race - unicycling event at the Polish-Czech border. I had other plans for that weekend, so I knew I will not participate, but plans do change and it turned out that we got there with Ania.

This year the race was not only XC, but also DH. XC part was on Saturday on Rychlebske Stezky in Czech Republic and DH part on Czarna Góra bike part in Poland. When I got there I was not feeling much like racing, but still it was a good occasion to get some racing among the best in the world as we got Martin world XC champion, Maksym, Ben and Scott, who all were in top 6 at Unicon world championship in Canada earlier this year. Additionally there was Jakub, who was second in DH, so the pack was really top level. And probably even more than racing with them, it was pleasure for me to meet all of them again. Anyway the race started with all 5 us Schlumpfers getting in front and it took a while on the first big climb until I got overtook by first non-geared rider. I was feeling out of shape on the climb and I knew I could ride much more two months earlier, but I tried to take it easy and just go forward. I reached the top at 7th position, but then the trail got bit gnarly and I was dismounting quite often on the rocks. Still there was nobody behind me as I progressed, so I was not pushing too much.

Suddenly at one corner I saw two bikers standing by somebody lying on the ground. It turned out to be Ben who crashed badly on his hip and couldn't get up. Taking some of the passing unicyclists, Maks and our volunteers we hoped to get a "rescue team" that will be able to take Ben to the nearby road where we could take him into car and drive to the hospital. But it turned out it is hard for him to even move the leg, so we decided that it is wiser to call for ambulance. And as we helped them to transport Ben up to the road on the strecher I realized how stupid it would be to do that on our own. After we got him packed into the ambulance I decided to continue on the route even the race arrows were already removed. The beginning was still rocky and hard, especially that after the Ben's crash I was even less eager to push myself. But as the track was going down it was getting more and more flowy and I really enjoyed the end of the route. I did just the first loop as it was already really late and we needed to get Ben's documents and Scott to the hospital, but the route included also the second loop with the same climb, but different descent. It was optional and only a few riders decided to attempt the second one. We spent the afternoon at the hospital leaving Ben there with broken hip and getting Scott a nice cast for his thumb. Then there was time for relax with beer, Muni film festival, which great occasion for non-unicyclists to see some good muni movies, and XC award ceremony. Martin was the winner, with Jakub second (on ungeared uni) and Scott third (with broken thumb for most of the ride).

Next day we moved to Sienna in Poland, where nice DH routes are prepared on Czarna Góra. The weather was fantastic, but it was cold and some of the tracks were full of ice and mud.

Due to the conditions we got just one racing route instead of planned three, but it was still lots of fun, and some people got to harder route to see it out of competition. The ride was a mix of hard and bit easier parts, so I think all of us enjoyed it.