But before I could start to Canada, I had to qualify in a national competition at the Postalm/Salzburg, where the Austrian and Swiss participants would be selected.

I arrived on Friday, where I had to walk to the hut. But we wouldn’t sleep inside, we had to set up a tent. Yes, we spent the night outside, but before that we sat down in the hut and got to know each other: 5 men and women from Austria plus 5 men from Switzerland participated in the qualification. Only the best men and women from each country will be granted a spot in the final in Yukon/Canada.

The following day was the first day of the competition, a tough one, which we didn’t knew yet. Sleep deprived, it was quite chilly in the tent, we crawled out of it to start the day with a good breakfast. Nobody told us so far, how it will went down today. At 08:00 we started with a nice little… 15km long run. Uphill! After about 1h 45min I arrived at the finish, but there wasn’t much time to recover, we had to ride downhill for about 15min to the next challenge: cross over a about 40m wide canyon on a rope.

After a short lunch break we had to do a little game of skill, during with the coaches started to grin… we all been standing in front of the hut as one of the coaches pointed to the mountain in front of us and said: “you guys see the cross on the summit with the flag? We see you there, go!” And everybody started running, crawling and climbing through the forest. When we arrived we had to went back where the next challenges waited for us: log cutting, “brain games”, log throwing, Car slalom, Car pulling, Zorbball, driving with a quad and my favourite discipline: changing the tires on a car At the end of the day we completed 14 challenges!

On Sunday we started really early again. First we had to ride the bike for about 30min till we reached a fixed rope route at the Postalm. Next Challenge is to finish this trail as fast as possible. Afterwards, next was Uphill with Mountainbike all muscles were already sore, but we made it to the meeting point and last Challenge on the program: archery, which I really liked, cause I had some training

Then, after 17 challenges, the winner was finally announced. Everybody was really curious, at first they announced the participants for the Swiss team, then for Team Austria. When they called my name I was speechless! Me and my teammate Martin Zach will be representing Austria in the Fulda Challenge 2012 in Yukon/Canada!

We already met last weekend to prepare for the versatile and difficult challenges which we probably will face in Canada. Peter Widhalm and Lisa Fail, who both been to the Fulda Challenge last year, also been there and helped us out in every way they could. We prepared with car slalom, skijoring, cross country skiing, climbing, snowshoe hiking, sled pulling etc.

For more Information go on their Website FULDA CHALLENGE 2012

for my Profile klick HERE

Finally, I want to say thanks to all the participants, the organizers and coaches of the Fulda Challenge for the great time during the qualification and the training camp, you are the best!

bye

Photos by Krewenka, Lisa Fail, Angelo Brack, Martin Zach

Have a look here TRAILMASTER 2011 on Pinkbike.com

and here a Video

Thanks also Maria Knoll and

Daniel Roos

for this nice Photos! : )

Bye

Åre – Sweden / Whistler – Canada / Leogang – Austria

—

As I got a phone call by Rob J and he asked me if I would like to join him for a Photo challenge in Åre / Sweden, I just thought “YES”! It was always a dream of mine to visit Sweden, and now I even have a good purpose doing it.

Mattias Fredriksson, one of the world’s best photographers, organized the “Scandinavian Photo challenge” in his hometown and invited other photographers like Markus Greber. Team Germany consisted of Karen Eller, Rob J, Flo Berghammer and myself. We had three days to take pictures and put together a slideshow, which got evaluated by a jury at the end of the week.

Åre is a nice little village with lovely people, cranberry juice, good food, lots of good bike trails and also some little bloodthirsty beasts, the “Knots” (mosquitoes). Sweden is a country where at this time of the year the sun seemingly shines nonstop, except for maybe two hours a day, where it gets a little darker. Despite my short stay in Åre, I had a great time with Markus, Rob, Karen and Flo, I definitely will be back for a longer visit. Here is the slideshow from our trip to Sweden:

http://dirt.mpora.com/news/scandinavian-photo-challenge-2011-team-germany.html

Unfortunately we couldn’t stay for the final, cause I had to go to the Freeride Festival. I did not compete in the race, but I had the honor to be one of the judges for the “Dakine Airstrike”. After that I went home for a short time and then I took off to Canada.

It is always a pleasure to meet the guys from Norco, they are great! As soon as I arrived in Canada I went to the presentation of the new 2012 Norco Bikes in North Vancouver. The next couple of days I was busy with testing the new bikes at the Canadian Bike trails. Later we went to the Norco Media Launch in Whistler, where also at that time the Crankworx Festival took place. It was really busy but we had time to ride the Bike trails and meet the hairy locals… it seemed that it was too cold for them in the mountains, so you could see them everywhere, in the City, the Bike park, just everywhere… and with locals I mean the many many Bears!

This year I met a lot of familiar faces in Whistler. Even tough it was really crowded at the Crankworx Festival, I met a lot of people from Europe at the trails or in the City. Unfortunately the two weeks in Canada where over way too soon…

A couple days after I got back home, I went to the Canyon Oakley Youth Camp in Leogang / Austria. I already been there last year, so I was really excited that Rob J invited me back for this year. 108 Kids took part in the Youth Camp, some of them for the 3^rd or even 4^th time. The weather was very nice so we been able to ride the bike every day. In between the action, the technique training, the games etc. we had visits from some special guests like Timo Pritzel or Guido Tschugg, who showed the kids some tricks and spent some time with them.

See you soon, bye

Here it is my new Sweetie, the VW Amarok! I love this car, it’s just great and has a little bit of a “Canadian Style”.

The local car dealer Drive Patterer organized the car for me, the decals on the car did Malerei Wieser, the special plugs for my bikes on the wooden floor in the back where made by Metallbau Ball.

The car is just great and perfect for my travels through Europe. So right after I got the Amarok I went to BERLIN for the Maloja Summer Cataloge Shooting 2012. Never have been to Berlin before, so I was really excited about that. It´s a crazy city with a lot of grafittis on every house, as you can see. I really enjoyed the time in Berlin with the Maloja Family even when it was busy all the time, we always had time for fun and laughed a lot! Happy to be a part of it.

After the shooting in Berlin I drove 5,5h hours to the next event, the Dirtmaster Festival in Winterberg.

This Year Karsten from Norco Germany located lower on the hill, next to the Schwalbe „House“. The Weather in Winterberg was again just perfect and nice, lots of people came to the Event, I think it’s getting bigger and better every year. The 4x track not really changed from last year but it was still very fast and not that difficult. In the qualification heat I had a good run and qualified first. Opposing to last year we started on Sunday and with sunshine : ) I felt good in the first heat but I can´t explain what exactly happened in the first corner,  just remember that I crashed and then stood up to grab my bike and kept on riding… after this crashed I managed to finished 3^rd in the final. But that’s just 4x, were everything can happen. The tough part is, that I injured my wrist when I crashed, it’s still not fully recovered.

On Monday I drove home and was really happy that Mislav drove the most way, thx for that! I spent two days at home and then went off to the first Worldcup of the Season, Leogang 4x!

The weather forecast was rain, rain and rain. But it was not that bad for the track, Gudio Tschugg made some changes compared to last year. I felt good on the track but maybe still rode with a little „brake“ in my head, cause I didn´t want to crash again. The week right after the Worldcup was the Ladies Session and that was also really important to me.

So on the qualification day I made only few runs cause it rained the whole time, finished 9th place from 19 women. Pretty happy with that cause everything is possible on the final day, even with a really tough matchup. Labounkova (winner of the Worldcup in Leogang) and Buhl (2nd place in Leogang) were in my heat so I checked every possible line… but it wasn´t possible to pass them till the finish. But I was still happy, loved to ride in the Mud fest and haven´t been much on the 4x bike this year. So overall it was a good weekend.

A reporter, Richard Wimmer, followed me and 2 other Austrian guys through the weekend, there will be a story in the next BIKE Magazine : ) here is a link from the other footage of him over the weekend:

Worldcup Weekend Leogang by Richard Wimmer/Bikeboard.at

It was great to meet friends, family and to enjoy the whole racing atmosphere after a long time! Thanks for that great weekend!

It was time to head off to the Spielberghaus in Saalbach! There I met the Norco DIRT Team and we had to take a shoot together (thanks to Victor Lucas).

Spielberghaus, I love this place! Quiet, funny – nice People, riding the bike… always happy to be there!

to be continued….

The Qualification round went okay, I was a bit out of breath during that round but I managed to qualify with the 3rd best time for the ladies : ) All was good and I was ready for the race.

It was on the same day, we started at 21:00. First heat went great and I qualified for the finals. I was standing in the Gate and I felt like I was in a movie. Crazy but I knew what I had to do in this Moment! First out of the Gate, first to finish!

Yeeehaa I’m pretty happy about the win and still have a big smile on my face : )

Watch here the Video from the Race -> 4x Nightsprint Riva/Bikefestival

FACE – last year I met Boris Krauß from Rider´s Illustrated. I already knew his work, his comic heads are everywhere ; ) like from Guido Tschugg, Tibor Simai,… very famous here. So he wanted to have a women´s head in his collection and after weeks of work we finally got a perfect and funny (comic) look-a-like of mine. I´m very happy and excited that Boris choose me for that! Big thanks to him! Check out his work on RIDERS ILLUSTRATED

SWISS – On the Road again, off to Solothurn to the Bikedays. It’s the first time for me there, the City was really nice – it´s the oldest Barock City in Swiss and it has such a special charm. The Bikedays grew since the last years and now they are the biggest Bikefestival in Swiss with 22.000 Visitors over the weekend.

Indiansummer, the Swiss Norco distributor had the Idea to do a little „Workshop“ for the Ladies. So we made one on Saturday and one on Sunday. On Saturday we had a little problem with the Shuttle up to the Weissenstein, so we had to wait for quite some time. We used the time to ride on the pumptrack, which was just a few meters away. Pumped it for a few rounds and then finally got up the hill. The Track up there is not that long but really cool, a flowy trail with roots, berms, drops, doubles, step sections and also a little northshore tree. Just perfect to learn the technical basics to feel more comfortable on the bike.

(more Photos on Indiansummer.ch or on their Facebook page )

I had a lot of fun with the ladies and I hope they had too : ) Everyone got a MALOJA Headband and also a Norco shirt from Indiansummer right after the Session.

Thanks Ladies for joining the Workshop, more to come soon! Also thanks very very much to Indiansummer, who took care of me and let me feel like I’m at home : )

Cya soon!

Here is a update  of what happend the last few weeks.

Got my new Norco VIXA which I assembled together right away, my daddy shuttle me up so I could do some test runs – I love the new bike!

The new SKINS Stuff also arrived – put it on and went for XC Tour, the new collection feels really good!

Then I flew to Stuttgart to meet the Guys (Philip & Oli) from VG Mediastudio and did some stuff for the upcoming project : ) (Look HERE for a little preview)

Work is crazy too right now, Tirecraziness everywhere but it is still fun! I also watched an American Football Game in Graz cause my Brother plays for the Graz Giants, position offense line. There I met Tom Öhler, he did a performance during the half time – a great guy and awesome trail rider.

RACING TIME!

Friends were telling me that there is a DH Race in Avce / SLO, so I decided to pack my new stuff (the Vixa and the brand new MALOJA  gear that just arrived) and went straight there.

AVCE  is in Slovenia, it’s a 2h drive from my place but I would never have found it if I wouldn´t have followed my friends (Canfield Brothers Team). It is in the middle of nowhere, but in the near of it is a clear river where you can see to the bottom, a really beautiful place.

The first time I walked the track I liked it, but I also had a lot of respect. The track looked fast, a lot of jumps and also some drops where I knew I needed good suspension. But after the first few practice runs I really liked it, it was just so much fun!

It was a really nice day, good weather, nice funny people (like the Panda Shuttle) and I will never forget the „Ken Block“ Shuttle…

My qualification run was kind of a mess – made mistakes, crashed, lost my chain… so all up on the final run.

After the start I made some more mistakes but then I said to myself „Angie can you focus NOW“ and it worked. The run was good  (even I didn’t hit the one jump) and I was happy that I made it to the finish without a crash and sat on the Hotseat for a few minutes ; )

At the end of the day I finished 5th overall (from 11 ladies) and got a Gold Medal too cause I’m now the Carinthian Downhill Champion 2011. I’m really sad that not more carinthian ladies are riding, but I’m working on it to change this!

Big thanks to the Canfield Brothers team for providing me a place, Bine for support and photos, Herminator the best mechanic, the Photographer for the nice shots and of course it was amazing to see all my friends there again after a long break!

We planned 2 Sessions together, starts at 11:00 on Saturday and on Sunday. It´s for free, 10 Ladies per Session, we ride for fun, upgrade your technic and at least you get a very nice MALOJA Headband

For more Informations take a look on INDIANSUMMER or write me a Mail : )

Hope to see you there!

Bye

Last Summer at Crankworx I met an amazing Photographer IAN HYLANDS and I had the big pleasure to shot with him! So we talked, shot a bit and then he put a little Story together for Pinkbike.

Click on the Link to see it – Pinkbike Women who ride -

Pretty stoked and happy with that! Thanks IAN for the great day and support for the women! ; )

Bye

31 days of action, yoga, bears, suhsi, shopping, party, sightseeing & of course endless riding through Canada/USA written down on a 8 page article in the Magazine! Crazy!!! : )

BIG Thanks to Boris & Maddin for their time and giving us a place for the story ; )

Check the homepage www.mtbrider.de

By the way they also organize the BIGGEST Bikefestival in Europe! It will take place from 02. – 05. June 2011 in Winterberg/Germany – more informations here

www.dirtmasters-festival.de

See you there!

Bye