Our boy Caleb Bottcher just arrived back from a successful trip to the East Coast of North America to compete in several Cross Country events in order to gain valuable UCI Points, kilometers under the belt and experience in similar conditions to those he will be faced with at the 2019 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships held in Mont Sainte Anne 28th August - 1st September. Read on to hear Calebs perspective (in his own words) on the trip and how the trip difference this trip made to before heading away to World Champs in a few weeks.
“The main purpose of the trip was to race the Mont Tremblant and Baie St Paul Canada Cup and Junior World Series rounds, where I placed 17th and 11th. These events helped me to gain valuable UCI points ahead of World Champs. At Baie St Paul I had some great battles throughout the race but it was also annoying to be held up on the last lap which held me back from gaining a top 10 placing.
After waking at 3am the following morning, we drove for 7 hours to Highland MTB Park (back in the USA) where I placed 3rd in the Open Category. I backed this up the next weekend with another 3rd place in Open Men. An unfortunate crash early in that race cost me a lot of time and required me to chase back through the field without any front suspension!
The final weekend of the trip was the East Coast Junior MTB Championships. Here I had a really strong performance, riding away from the field and maintaining my intensity to finish with good lap time consistency. After winning the cross country on the Saturday, I managed to nab 15th in the enduro on Sunday; still running the same xc setup on my Blur, including high post hah!
During the month I was able to complete a good volume of training with quality rest being away from the usual stresses. The effectiveness of this training block was proven over the weekend when I smashed my existing records in my power tests! Also, the opportunity to train at Mont St Anne in Canada ahead of the World Championships in August was really exciting and a great confidence booster.”
