Sunday May 29th, I finished 34th place out of 39 in the Solo Men category Results, It took me 4 hours & 48 minutes to complete five laps and I went a total of 47 Kms. Total elevation gain was 4,183 Feet. My average heart rate was 168 bpm and max was 193 bpm. Check out my garmin data here.
This was a great way for me to kick off my seventh season of racing. I love this format because its simple complete as many laps as you can in five hours. I do not do well at this venue as it is pretty technical trails and short steep punchy climbs and on this day I did well as I enjoyed the course because there was some longer climbs mixed in and one cool new trail (squeeze my lemon) was built with awesome switch backs to decent on. On the first lap it had rained hard the night before so the course was very slick and lots of the climbs we had to run up them. My second lap was my fastest one as the course started to dry up nicely. On lap four my quadriceps and hamstrings in both legs started to cramp up pretty bad and then I lost momentum over the rock garden down low by the river and my leg could not move to un clip from my pedal and I crashed down into a big gorge and landed on my shoulder and thankfully only had some bruises and my bike was still attached to me so it was ok. By lap five I was in pure grind mode as I could barley even walk up two of the steep climbs no one could ride up. My goal was to complete four laps and I beat that by one lap. The temperature was 20 deg C. Thank you to my parents for coming to cheer me on at the finish line. After the race I sat with my parents and United Cycle Race Team members Cory D, Trevor C and Mike K.
The day before the race I organised Race the Ridge along side with Cory D, my mom doing the lap counting and all our great volunteers. It was a big week to get some details done for the race and on race day it was an 11 hour day to get there to get the course set up, volunteers ready to go and prepare the race as to the regulations set out by Alberta Bicycle Association. I did not even ride my bike for ten days before the race. This race used about five Km's of the course we used for our race and Kurt M of Hardcore helped us out to set it up so I knew the course well.
Thank you Kurt M, Geoff I, Steve M, Karen M, Mark R, Peter K, Gord B, Bob W, Keegan B, and Hardcore Bikes for putting on the race & all the volunteers for their efforts.
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| Pic by Leanne E |
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| Pic by fellow racer & Photographer Nick C. Check out his website http://www.redlinephotography.ca/ |
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| My salute. I'm almost at the finish line. Pic by my parents. |
