Provincials Course

When I first saw the schedule for O-Cups I didn't think I was going to be able to make it to this race seeing as ExpoCycle was the same weekend. But as luck would have it the bosses had a function to go to on the Saturday night as well so we wouldn't be leaving until Sunday anyway. So it was all worked out that I could go race. Josh and I went up and pre-rode the course on Saturday, which was a huge benefit because some of the lines were pretty tough and knowing what was coming up was a big benefit. We scouted some lines made some decisions on which of the hard lines were actually faster for the risk involved, it was a great afternoon of riding.

On to race day, I was super nervous, I am a pretty good climber but there was a lot of climbing, I am pretty good at single track but this was tough, a big long rock garden, some big optional drops, and some really tight corners. I was a little worried about going down somewhere during the race.
Off the start the pace was high, at the top of the first climb I looked down and my heart rate was up over 190, but into the single track it slowed down a bit because we were pretty tight after the first climb. The single track was super fun during the pre-ride, but it was a little tougher when you are trying to recover from pushing that hard up a hill. After the first lap I settled in to a good hard pace, just being able to see a few guys in front of me and hearing a few guys behind me, going into the third lap I was passed by a few guys, caught them on the climb and there was a group of 4 of us riding together one of them being the course designer/builder. Had I known that there was a course designer curse I may not have been following him into one of the single tracks. The one hard line that we had figured was the quicker line with the least risk, Scott went down right in front of me, I knew once he was down he was hurt, grabbing his ankle, I jumped off my bike, picked his bike off of him, warned riders of a rider down, and yelled back to the people in the double track there was an injured rider.

Back on the bike I just basically rode as hard as I could again and on the last time up the big climb I saw the injured rider coasting down the hill with one foot off of the pedals. I wish Scott a speedy recovery.

Not quite the result that I wanted for the day I ended up 13th (two guys went by me in the last lap). I don't think I am in as good as shape I was in about mid season, but I will try to get some of it back looking forward to the final 8 hour race coming up in a few weeks. I just came off of a couple days of rest of sorts, and now to have some fun on the bike to get ready for the big race.

Big Congratulations for Senior Expert Winner, Josh!! and for the big overall WIN!! He worked hard for it and pushed his limits as far as they could go.