Опубликовано: 30 сентября 2011 г. In September of 2011 I and all my family decided to go to Russia for a couple weeks. The main purpose of the trip was to visit my wife's relatives but all of my friends were full of enthusiasm to see me after two years of my absence from Saint-Petersburg. The tickets were terribly expensive. The price for three of us could be compared to a price of a carbon full suspension bike equipped with at least XTR parts. But that is the price you pay to live in a comfortable Saskatchewan. The flight was long we stopped in Toronto for a day. What can I say? Crazy drivers! Looks like I am getting closer to the farmers style of driving like we all drive in Sask. trying the new team jersey My friend Ilya Dyachkov kindly allowed me to use his mountain bike during my trip. He gave me a nice 6-series Trek fully equipped with XT-XTR parts, Crossride wheels and nice Michelin tires. I can not say that I enjoyed the saddle of the bike but I could do nothing with it. Trying the new equipment The fast cyclist and the very nice person Ilya Dyachkov Planning my biking activity during the trip I realized that I would not have too much time for it. But the main aim for me was to visit the Saint-Petersburg mountain-bike festival hosted by my Russian bike club "VeloPiter". It is the annual event where all the bikers from North-West region of Russia are invited to participate. The festival consists of various events: bike orienteering, cross-country racing, trial stages and some other disciplines. In the past I did some bike orienteering but I had not touch the map and the compass for at least two years so I decided to skip that event and start from the "parallel slalom race". At the mountain-bike orienteering start The race was invented by my friend Andrey Gorev and the idea of it was to get a face-to-face battle of two riders. The course was really short (maybe two hundred meters) and was made like two loops: the inner and the outer loop. The course was made so tricky that the fastest way to go through it was to cycle the outer loop and to run the inner one! The Olympic system (plus the lucky loser rule) was used to determine the winner. I won the first round but was fairly disqualified for running through finish line. After that I continued the competition at a loser's side of the tournament schedule and won two or three rounds. After that I was eliminated by my friend Igor Bondarenko who finally got the 2nd place. The winner was another friend of mine Andrey Galafeev. Disqualified and surprized Running is the key to win the bike race! Bloody fast winner Andrey Galafeev I was not upset with my defeat because I was practicing my Russian as a race commentator. Ladies are working, Oleg is talking! After that the stage of tour-trial was hosted. The idea was to find out the most technical biker whose driving skills are the best. Lots of bridges, logs, narrow places and you can not stop or touch the ground. If you do that you are roughly penalized. It was fun but I did bad as usual. Trying to squeeze under the barrier Going down on a slope in between two logs. Will fall soon Two seconds later The second day was all dedicated to cross-country racing. I did not take part in the long "experts" race. It was 90 minutes and it was too early I wanted to get more sleep. I decided to race in a "tourist" category with a 60 minutes limit. The course was short (about 1300 meters long) but hard. Up-and-down all the time, two hardcore uphills: one climbable on bike, another not climbable even in theory. That means that running was a sad mandatory. Igor Bondarenko (4th place) is running up the hill The star of Saint-Petersburg racing, the 48(!) year old Grigoriy Lalin won the experts race. He made about 18 laps, got a flat but still finished first. You can not beat the old guy - he is getting better every year! Then it was a time for the ladies start. Good battle through the entire race and a pleasure for all men to see girls pedaling hard. What a pleasure to look at! The final race of the day was mine. In spite of a flu couple days before I was ready to fight. So were all the other guys. I was first after the first lap but then I checked the pulse ratio and realized that if I'm gona finish this race I should probably slow down a bit. Anyways after one hour of suffer my average pulse was 179 with a maximum of 187! at the start fighting hard for the podium place God damn singletracks! Couple crashes, couple swear words, a huge log in a rear derailleur (minus 30 seconds to deal with it) and I hardly finished third. The main aim was achieved: to take a BCW jersey to a podium! Here we go! Nice days, nice events, nice friends! I wanna come back in another year! C U later! 0 Поделиться сообщением Link to post Поделиться на других сайтах
Опубликовано: 30 сентября 2011 г. Comments are very welcome but try to use English here, plz! Lots of Saskatoon people will read this topic! 0 Поделиться сообщением Link to post Поделиться на других сайтах
Опубликовано: 30 сентября 2011 г. Should you have posted it at www.velorussia.org forum 0 Поделиться сообщением Link to post Поделиться на других сайтах
Опубликовано: 30 сентября 2011 г. (изменено) vvsar писал(а) Fri, 30 September 2011 12:34Should you have posted it at www.velorussia.org forum I have no idea where is that forum and if I do have an account there. But if you want you can post a link there, eh? Изменено 30 сентября 2011 г. пользователем O`K 0 Поделиться сообщением Link to post Поделиться на других сайтах
Опубликовано: 1 октября 2011 г. Gitler kaput 0 Поделиться сообщением Link to post Поделиться на других сайтах
Опубликовано: 1 октября 2011 г. Respect men.Start up capitalists will envy. 0 Поделиться сообщением Link to post Поделиться на других сайтах
Опубликовано: 2 октября 2011 г. Nice! Take me to yourself!!! 0 Поделиться сообщением Link to post Поделиться на других сайтах
Опубликовано: 3 октября 2011 г. Скобарь писал(а) Sat, 01 October 2011 20:40Gitler kaput )))))))))))))))))))))))))) Zzhosh', scuko! ))) 0 Поделиться сообщением Link to post Поделиться на других сайтах
