Wednesday, July 9, 2008

BC Bike Race

I was planning to give an update or two during the race, but that fell by the wayside once it all started and we realised how hard this thing actually was! If we weren't racing, then we were either being transported to the next stage, eating, cleaning and fixing the bikes or spleeping. Repeat for 1 week and that is the BC. It all kicked off in Shawnigan Lakes, about 1 hours north of Victoria BC on Vancouver Island. Our little party included Tim Bennett (my partner for the race), his wife Jo, Nick Both, James Kennedy (the other Flight Centre duo), Steve from San Francisco who was teaming up with Jo, and Rowena (James' wife who did an amazing job of getting food ready each day, staking our camping spots and running around for us, all despite being 5 months pregnant!)


Shawnigan Lakes School (start of day 1)
Our competition was pretty daunting, Trek VW, Kona, Mona Vie Cannondale and Gary Fisher Subaru pro teams had sent 1 or 2 pairs each, as well as 2 Canadian teams stacked with their World Champ and Olympic reps. The 90km Day 1 got off to a very bad start, with organisers sending the race through a freshly mown field, with the long grass casuing mass casualties to derailleurs, including our own Nick who lost a lot of time and both Trek riders who simply hopped onto their spare bikes. Tim and I were then sent the wrong way with then leaders, and after making our way back to 4th we then made a big wrong turn of our own fault. After that we were behind about half the field, and with Tim suffering a bit from dehydration we limped home in 7th place, a long way behind in time. Day 2 was 125km, which was taken at a very cruisy pace until a hard climb at around 85km. After that it was on for young and old, and we made up for yesterdays losses by winning a sprint finish from Trek and Kona!

Go Tim go! Winning Stage 2

The next couple of days were more of the same, with two 2nd place finishes and more singletrack each day. By the end of day 4 we had moved up to 3rd overall after our bad day 1, but doubted we could improve much more. Day 5 was another bad one for us, with a couple of flats we dropped back to 4th on GC and were getting pretty shagged after driving ourselves into the ground each day.

The final two days at Squamish and Whistler took us through some of the best singletrack on the planet, but it is all very technical and tough work to get through fast, and each day we were counting down the km to the finish which couldn't come quick enough. In the end we bumped our way back to 3rd overall, which was a fantastic result given the level of the guys we were racing against. Thanks to Flight Centre, Scott and Schwalbe tires for giving us support for this race, it was the toughest race I have ever done and every little bit of help makes the difference when we are trying to mix it up with the big guns.

Life in the box on day 7 at Whistler

One of the many log rides which are typical on BC trails

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Great result AJ. I'll be adding that race to my 'to do' list.