I have had a great week of holiday in Halmstad with my friends Joakim and Åsa, very relaxed with some outings to different places in the area, this is not a place where I have been a lot in my life. Lots of coffees and ice creams and nice weather, it has been such a nice week!
Malmö has this week hosted something they call “SM veckan” (The week of national championships). They have gathered smaller sports to have their champs in the same place and TV has been showing, to give smaller sports some publicity. A great initiative! Cycling counts as one of the smaller sports in Sweden and we had our criterium champs yesterday. The race was showed live on national TV, it was great fun! We did a 2,3 kilometre lap in a park 13 times. So just under 30 km. We were 20 girls that started and it was fast from the start. On lap 2 Marie and Sara got away, we were working hard behind to catch them, they are very strong so it looked like we were not going to catch when they had 20 seconds on lap 7, but then me, Monica and Madde worked really hard and on lap 9 we caught them. We were 8 girls coming to the finish, just before the last corner Madde attacked – I went to catch her and did and then when Marie attacked from behind me I reacted a tiny bit to late, Sara and Monica was on her wheel and I got a little gap to them, so was never really in the sprint for the medals and finished 4th. It was a hard and fun race!!
You can watch the race here on SVT play
Right now I am waiting for todays race, a small road race outside of Malmö.
2010-07-18 evening
The race this morning was a smaller national race, a flat course of 11 kilometres and we did 5 laps, it was lots of wind that made it hard. We put the hammer down from the start with lots of attacks to make the race hard. It felt like we were 3 girls that were a bit stronger so I thought it would be us on the podium today. On the second last lap we were only 7 left and from then we all worked well together to the finish and in the sprint it was Monica first, then me and then Madde, so I was right about the podium:-)
Tomorrow I am off to France for the “Tour de Limousin” a UCI 2.2 stage race over 4 days. Will be lots of fun!
Ringenloppet podium, me, Monica and Madde
My friend Jenny that came to watch the crit champs with her daughters
Cycling along the coast
Me and Åsa in Tylösand
Ice cream at Riccardos ice cream factory
Åsa and Joakim in Tylösand
Joakim and Åsa having coffee at "Utsikten" in Båstad
More pictures will come later!