Nordic Gravel Series Bergslagen…194km of Swedish gravel racing!

Join me at the last round of the Gravel Earth Series before the final. We head to Sweden, the land of Fika and beautiful lakes for a Nordic Gravel Series race.

——-

Even though I am considered a ‘pro’ cyclist by some, I am not paid a salary (yet!), and so wanted to start a buy me a coffee page where you can donate if you are enjoying my content and are keen to support me.

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/maddynutt

——-

Chapters:
0:00 Pre race
1:51 Race cam
6:34 Post race
7:47 A very good boy

Foreign though I am in Nora in Sweden for part of the Nordic gravel series and this race is actually also part of the earth gravel series sorry it’s called the gravel Earth series I should really know that and it is 194 kilometers of Swedish gravel and yeah really looking forward to it we’re

Here for a few days and then we moved to hamstad for another race afterwards our Swedish home Kara which slippers do you want great white or black they’ve really got me going so after our Recon ride we went on the hunt for some proper Swedish baked goods

And managed to find this little local bakery in Nora that’s only open on weekends and I got this yummy cinnamon bun I’m really hoping the weather continues to be like this pre-race activities felting I don’t normally have um it’s a race day and it’s raining So the race started with this 10 kilometer neutral section and we only found this out the day before the race pretty quickly obviously when the car released us from the neutral zone people really started kicking on and a front group formed and I found it just too

High like higher power to be able to stick with them and I found myself very quickly with a group of girls and there were a couple of men too but basically the majority of like a lot of the stronger women like found each other quite early on which was quite nice and

It’s really unusual in a mixed race that you suddenly find yourself in a group of women we then came into this single tracky mountain biking Rocky section that was really good fun and actually this is probably the most fun part though foreign it was actually too narrow to be able to

Move up which was a bit of a shame and I didn’t really time getting the position at the front before we got into this section but definitely a lesson learned from this because I actually can go quite fast through these sections because I quite enjoy the more technical riding

Um so I maybe could have broken the roof up a bit if I’d have gotten a better position Oh go go go go go go go come on girls go go go go go go none of us were really willing to put much work in because we realized that there was one woman up the road who’d got into like one of the front group of

Men and actually then we were just gonna be racing for second because we wouldn’t be able to catch that group so no one really wanted to put in any particular work on the front because everyone wanted to like kind of save themselves for any attack or anything later on

And it made the race a fair bit slower so the woman in front of us actually ended up I think taking 30 minutes off us because at various points we were just slowing down and we even had people catch back on to us because we really didn’t push the pace enough

We also actually found it quite hard to follow the course at points so this is one of those times where we went the wrong way just with all the lines on the map it actually was quite difficult to find the exact line that you’re meant to follow

We also came across a few of these barriers and the girls joked at the end that their Swedish barriers but normally in a race I’d expect someone to like open them up or take them down so tactically at this point I was actually feeling really strong like my

Legs were feeling really good I knew I was on good form I’d had a really good training block leading into this and I was kind of thinking when would be the best time to attack so this is about I think about 70k to go and I was just

Trying to time my attack at a good time and hoping that like one Rider would come with me and then we’d be able to work together so that we could work for second and third and it wouldn’t be like a spring finish so at this barrier one Rider kind of got

Through before we managed to all get around it and we got stuck kind of going under it and she just attacked after going through it and I saw her go into the distance and I just thought I cannot let her go like this is the moment to

Potentially get a break with someone so I just got absolutely outside all and just abs like attacked to make it back to her so this attack with the slight gate interlude lasted a fair few minutes and I managed to find her and then unfortunately my GoPro died at that

Moment just before I got to her but we worked together for a good bit before they somehow managed to catch us again I honestly don’t know how because we were going so fast but yeah so this is the end of the GoPro footage I’m so bad

I tried to put in a little another attack on my own just before the end last dig attempt to not have a Sprint finish but in the end it did come down to a Sprint finish and I just kind of held back like normally in a spring

Finish I burned myself too early but I held back sat on the wheels and I just scooched around on the grass around the side at the end and did manage to take the win of the Sprint finish so I came second Let’s see the update so we finished up our trip to Nora with a trip to a train Cafe and then a lovely spin followed by ice cream what did you go for um all three favors did you what’s this one and the best part was the fact that they

Served doggy ice cream and this doggy was so excited about his one