We made the 4hr drive to Willingen and arrived around 1 or so at the team accomodation a short 4km's to the race course. First it was down to a sensational cooked lunch by the team chef. Thanks Lisa. Then I headed off to see a bit of the action at the race course. Unfortunatly I had missed Emma Colson and Jeni King racing but I caught up with Emma for a coffee before she left town and got all the racing low down. Then I ducked up to see a bit of the mens racing. The XC coures was aparently pretty boring and the start finish was in the middle of a paddock and it was freezing so I stood course side long enough to see Sid Taberly throgh in around 39th and found out later that Dylan Cooper got 96th or so. Amazing how strong these Euro riders are. So checked out a bit of the Bike festival which had huge set ups by every single bike brand you could name plus more. A fair few of the companies had their fully decked out semi trailors there so that was cool. Day 2 was race day for me. Unfortunatly it had rained most the night and was still raining on and off in the morning. Also I was in the 2nd start group which meant I had around 1500 riders on the course just 30mins ahead of me. Plus I was a good 500 riders back in my start group so after 30mins I finally got to the front guys only to then be hit with the tail riders from the first starts. Its sucke arse. It was cold, wet, muddy, windy and my bike was starting to get chain suck. Every climb had riders all over the place with no good line for overtaking and all the decents were the same. It was just plain s*** out there so at the 52km mark when I could register a finish, thats just what I did. Finish. I ended up 72nd out of at least a 1000 if not double that. I was some 25mins off the leader, but hey a good start possy would count for at least 15 of that so its not too bad. Think ill go back to beer though. Jorg unfortunatly had got a flat just 30km's in whilst riding with the lead group so his day was over. Anna went on to finish the 100km stage in 5th place and their star rider Ester Suss (current Marathon world leader) crashed with around 20km's to go and slipped from 1st to 2nd with big gear problems. Oh well bloody great effort by both the girls to even finish let alone get those results on such a crap day of riding. What ever happened to my Euro summer holiday I ask you. Well better be off, early start for Italy tommorw.