Had a blast at my last Cross Country of the season. A small national team consisting of me, Matthias Wengelin in Elite and Axel Lind as U23, together with Hjalmar Bengtsson as staff, was invited to come over and race.

It was all a great experience to go to China and race for the fist time. We arrived on thursday afternoon, then they closed the streets for us to roll through the city on friday morning, what a crazy feeling! Then off to the course inspection, again through the city of Guiyang with police escort. It was a bit too warm for my liking with temps around 35 dgr. The course was very intensive but good fun. This course and race site ( including the road to the race site) had been built only for this race last year.and it was hot hell. Felt pretty good and did 4 laps with Emil L and F Giger. The saturday we rolled down to the race site and we all joined the opening ceremony with each of the 38 nations represented. 10 mins after that, we were called up to do a short race. 28 mins + lap at a 2.20 min lap. It was tight and hard racing and I manged to get 4th, after being a bit stuck behind swiss Nicola Rohrbach during the last lap. So Emil and Giger slipped away and got 1st and 2nd, with Rohrbach 3rd. Wengelin got 6 th.

Sunday was XC time. It was even hotter and I really felt affacted by the heat. I got an OK start from 3rd row but I couldn´t push at all the first 3 laps and was lying around 10 th. Missed a bottle as well. (Not good in 35 dgr). Then I found my rhythm a bit and advanced up to 7th in the end. So definitely not a good race, but 7th is ok. Some UCI points and € at least..

After the race the was a good roof top party at the 5-star hotel that we were staying at. We all had a awesome time:-)

We left on monday for Beijing and had a chance to check that out a bit, crazy big city with some cool shopping. Early tuesday morning before the flight we took a trip to see the Great Chinese Wall in Badaling, an hour from the airport. Amazing to see!

Now my mtb season is over and off season/cross training season is starting. That means gym, running and probably some cyclo cross. Me like!

I have some super exciting plans for the upcoming season and year. Stay tuned ;-)