Partying & racing

Ciao tutti! Here's your special reporter from Genova indoor enduro! I am right now getting ready for the second timed practice and had some freetime to update my blog. Here in the photo is my friend Taddy Blazusiak who is the man to beat tonight! But before I go let me tell you a little about what has happened lately....

Two months have now passed since the last GP and I have spent this time mostly alternating with holiday and party. Last weekend we threw a party at my home town for my fourth world title but also for 20th anniversary of my enduro career! I wanted to celebrate my 20 years of sweat and dirt with some people who have helped me throughout the years. These people have played a crucial role at some point of my career and I wanted to thank them by having this special dinner together at a very special place (town hall) of my hometown Hämeenlinna. After the dinner we watched this funny video from 1991 when I as a junior took part of one of the hardest races in Finland. The party went on until the early hours at one of the nightclubs… At some point everybody were at the dancefloor and I am pretty sure some totally new moves were invented! My suspension specialist won the dance battle with his breakdance show spinning on his back in his suit in the middle of the dance floor! Only one cell phone, one camera and eyeglasses were counted missing the day after but thanks to honest Finnish people we got them back on Monday.

Thank god there’s a new season coming on, I’m not sure how much more partying I can take! Now I am in Genova, Italy for the first round of FIM Enduro Indoor Wolrd Cup. I have been trying to awake my hibernating body by riding hard a couple of times in Finland and last couple of days in Italy. I was testing my 2011 CRF450 with a 480cc kit on it on Tuesday near Bergamo at one very stony dry riverbed. It’s been raining so much that actually this normally dry riverbed had some water in it which made it even more difficult. It was a perfect place to test how the bike handles these extreme conditions and I was impressed. It’s completely a stock CRF450R with only that 480 kit on it and some revalving of the suspensions. The engine has more torque at the very bottom and is less edgy which is a huge benefit for me. We’ll see today how it handles at the indoor track! We just completed the first timed practice and I felt really good on the bike but had a huge arm pump going on after some laps so my time was only 10. fastest. Soon we will have another timed practise heat and then some hours to the first qualification heat. In the main event there will be three heats. There is also Indoor Trial World Championship here at the same time so our track is a little bit shorter than usually but very good anyway. The fastest lap time so far was done by Joakim Llunggren 58s. While we are off the track the trial guys do their race and we can watch so it's gonna be a nice event!