Jeff's Sporting Life: SingleTrack 6 MTB XC Race 2016: Stage 4 @ Kimberley, BC

Tuesday July 26th, I finished 39th place out of 46 in Solo Open Men Results, and in the timed descent I was 149th out of 163 overall solo men Results. It took me 3hrs & 22mins, It was a total of 36 Kms. Total elevation gain 3,796 Feet. My average heart rate was 156 bpm and max was 181 bpm. Check out my garmin data Here.

Single Track 3 day version was finished yesterday so today was just the six day racers. I saw a chance to pounce and attack off the start gun on the mass start as it was a very long climb up. I got up well past half of the entire field of racers and was on as my legs and lungs were feeling so strong and powerful. There was a section of rocks that some had to walk on, including me and I would imagine the group behind me would have been backed up on that section. Then there was a really fun fast and flowing short descent with high berms and pump track hills. We climbed back up for a couple km's and that led to a really technical steep and rocky loose dirt descent where you white knuckle down. I navigated my way down safely on it and then on the bottom smooth part I hit a tree stump and flew over the handle bars and landed hard on my right shoulder. I sat up and was in great pain as I could not even lift up my bike with my right arm so I spent a couple minutes to collect myself as lots of racers past me. I road one km to get to the first check point/aid station and I went straight to the medical girl and she checked to make sure nothing was broken and she suspected I had suffered an AC Joint sprain so she taped my right shoulder to hold the bones together. I continued on and just wanted to finish off the stage. Every bump and root I went over was really hurting my shoulder especially on the descent's. I some how clawed my way back and passed lots of more racers up the long switch back climb. All and all I had about a 20 minute loss of time from the crash and I was on pace to finish 34th but was really proud to gut it out and claw back to finish where I did. After the race I got treatment on the shoulder and got it re taped at the medical trailer.

The temperature was 24 deg C. A huge thanks to Transrockies for putting on the race and to all the volunteers for their efforts. I stayed at Best Western and it was great.