A nice weekend in Poland. It was a great event, where the city downhill took place in Ustron on Friday and the Polish local downhill cup series took place in Palenica bike park on Monday. It is a very nice event and I went there with the aim of enjoying riding a bike and gaining a little competition experience before the bigger and more important competitions.
The weekend started on Saturday with the city downhill. There was time to train for a few hours and then race right after that. For me, it was more like a fun race and a light warm-up before the real downhill. The track was easy and short, some stairs and jumps and that’s it. We trained in dry conditions and right before the first start it started to rain, which made it a bit more interesting because we had no idea how slippery the asphalt could get. Fortunately, it didn’t rain much and the asphalt was dry again for the second run. We were able to do 2 race runs and the best was counted. In the end I finished 3rd, could have done better, but still I was satisfied and I was able to stand on the podium for the first time this season.
On Sunday, we got to know the downhill track for the first time. The track wasn’t very long or really anything difficult, but it was very fast. It can be said that it is an ideal track for training. Again, the feeling on the downhill bike was very good, I quickly got used to the speed and with each run I just tried to gain more and more speed. On Monday, the day of the competition, we were able to do 2 race runs again and the best was counted. I was the fastest in the first run with a time of 1:39.58 and beat the 2nd place by 0.67 seconds. The second race I was able to improve my time and keep 1st place. My winning time was 1.36.98 and the difference with the 2nd place was 3.26 seconds, which is quite significant.
I was completely satisfied with this weekend, couldn’t have asked for anything better, and after the unsuccessful first stage of the European Cup series in Croatia, it gave me more motivation to keep going!
Thank you to all who have already supported me this season and let’s continue in the same way, it’s going to be an awesome year!