The Swedish national series “Kalas cup” started this weekend with a time trail on Saturday and a road race on Sunday in the city of Landskrona in the southern part of the country. Most races are down south at the moment so my temporary home is with my team manager in a little village with the funny name SexdregaJ I left on Saturday morning to drive the 2,5 hours to do my first time trail of the year, it is always a bit nervous before you know if you can get everything out of the legs or if it will just feel hard and difficult. I really like time trailing so I was looking forward to it. I started off good and overtook the girl in front of me already after 3.6km and the next one after 6km, we had a strong head wind going out and that suited me, I pushed hard until the turnaround point at 7.5km. From there it was a bit easier but unfortunately I did not get that high speed that I wanted but I was still satisfied with my race when I came to the finish and had averaged 41.14km/h! When I was still in the lead by 30 seconds when Marie Lindberg from Red Sun cycle team finished many thought I would win. But then the last starting girl came on a record time and beat me by 9 seconds.

The road race was a short story, we only did 60 km on a lap course, 6 laps of 10 km. On the second lap Marie attacked, I went with and soon after Martina Thomasson and Madde Olsson (both Svanesund) came up to us. The four of us worked together all the way to the finish. It was a very tricky and technical finish, 3-400 meters from the finish is a sharp corner in to a cobble stone section to the finish. Marie attacked from behind about 1-200 meters before the corner and Martina went to chase her, I almost passed Martina but did not managed, so lost the second spot by half a wheel.

So second and third this weekend also meant that I am laying second in the series overall. Next race in the series is in 3 weeks time.

Now I am back again in Sexdrega to wash and repack to leave again tomorrow. First to Czech republic with the national team. We are doing the UCI 2.2 race Gracia Orlova from Thursday to Sunday, you can follow the race on

http://www.gracia-orlova.cz/index.php?ln=en&id=0

We will stay in Prague on Sunday evening and fly from there to China via Paris on Monday. In China we will do a 3 day stage race Wednesday to Friday and then race a world cup on Sunday. So very busy 2 weeks ahead.

Podium after the time trail, me, Malin, Marie, Martina and Camilla

Thanks Jan for this nice picture you made me after the race!!

Marie and me in a break away

Flying on my Felt:-)

The sprint...

Podium after the road race, Martina, Marie, me and Madde.