The Schwarzwald and a little trip to Lithuania

I write this time from the comfortable home of Julian and Jana in Freiburg. We arrived here two weeks ago and have spent our time enjoying a few good beer gardens, weaving our way through lots of the dark singletrack forests of the Schwarzwald and enjoying the sights of picturesque Freiburg.


Within about 5 minutes here you can be out in the forest and away from the city. There are two bigs hills on either side which make good climbs: the Schwarzkopf or the Rosskopf. Both are over 500 m high and are covered in a network of rideable tracks. The first weekend here Julian and Jana headed off to a wedding in Manheim while Chris and I had a lazy weekend biking and watching movies on their projector.


We headed out with Julian for some interesting orienteering training on Tuesday evening. (Some controls were stray and the planner seemed to have decided to avoid the forest?) We wandered into town one weekday to the market around the majestic Muenster cathedrale and sampled some delicious cheeses, breads and fresh berries.

On Thursday morning we caught the train to Frankfurt early in the morning and flew to Vilnius in Lithuania for a 3 day mountain bike orienteering event. With the world MTBO champs looming ever closer we thought it would be good to get an event under our belt. Rob and Marquita picked us up at Vilnius airport and we headed off through rolling green countryside to the event area.


We ended up spending the first night on Àpple Island: a tiny island made into a campground in the middle of one of the hundreds of lakes dotting the countryside. The island had heaps of apple trees and some little bungalows to stay in. We headed to the event centre in the morning after some exciting mini golf.



Each race started from more or less the same place in the middle of the forest where the accommodation also was, an area of attractive pine forest, rolly hills and loads of lakes everywhere. The track network was also vast and it was extremly easy to entirely whisk past a track without even noticing so you really had to have your wits about you.

The first race Chris and I both cam back buzzing with how fun it was, but also how easy it was to make mistakes if you go a bit fast or lose focus. That night we slept quietly in Rob and Marquita´s van while they had a room in the accommodation because we were feeling a bit stingy. The next day was a long distance (about 1.5 hours). Chris had a much better ride and was only an amazing 5 minutes down on the top guys. I improved and managed to definitely not come last, despite a head over the handle bars crash which swiveled my seat backwards and left me feeling a little dazed.

That night we had an authentic sauna and then rushed into the cold lake with all the other competitors before a bonfire and beer.

The final event was another middle distance and I took off a bit too fast and did a couple of very good legs and a couple of very not good legs...I think the lesson for me unfortunately was slow down and read the map a bit more. I did manage a good finish split though (Chris and I had spent some time practicing ride through punching that morning) so we had the finish shoot fully sussed.

(Chris tried to take this photo before I finished the race, but I was sooo fast he missed me and had to settle for an aftershot (-;)

Chris finished up with a really good 5th place overall, which considering his vast MTBO experience - about 3 events!) is pretty good I`d say. We spent another night on the lovely apple island, before Rob and Marquita dropped us home and we flew back to Julian and Jana´s. Julian had baked us a delicious apple crumble....what a yummy coincidence!

Just to get your taste buds wet these are the exciting line up of events you can expect for upcoming blogs entries over the next month:

1. A weekend spent frolicking around the hills of Switzerland at a MTBO there this weekend.
2. Two weeks spent in Poland, training hard and seriously (?) for the dramatic and exciting event of the World MTBO champs!
3. A week and a bit spent in Sweden attending the wonderful wedding of Aaron and Sara and generally catching up with our Kiwi friends, as well as maybe a wee sea kayaking trip around Stockholm tucked in on the side.
4. Chris challenging retention of his title along with Dennis of ´World Rogaine Champions`in Estonia, while I stomp around for 24 hours with Julian and Jana stomps around with Sylvia and many other Kiwi´s also come to stomp around in Estonian swamps....

Hope you are all eating plenty of apple crumble!
Em