Well, well! Michelle and I have made it to Whistler. That means no tents tonight, no community shower trailer, no mass feedings, no snoring neighbors in tents that are 2 ft apart, I think you get the picture! This weeks racing..... Starting back at stage 2, ended all hopes of any GC contention when not 20 K in I was following Trebon and a block of tree, yes tree, flew up and took out my rear deraileaur. Took the hanger right off, through the deraileur into the spokes pulled out two spokes on my rear wheel, and broke all the housing off of the frame mounts. The old hanger was wedged onto the deraileur so bad I had to stand on the deraileur and reef on it with my multi tool as hard as I could to get it off. I then had to take the electrical tape that was holding my tube to the frame and tape my houseing back onto the bike. Needless to say the remaining 50 K I had a pretty ill shifting bike and was stuck behind all the slower people on trails that were fresh cut, tight, rooted, loose, and just made for a frustrtating day!
Day 3, good trails to ride. We made our way further north on the island and found ourselves riding some fast flowing singletrack similar to Wausau! It was good. I was patient and actually rode with Katerina and Catherine for the first part of the ride. When the trail headed north I bridge to the next group and settled in. With about 15 K to go I took off on another ascent and ended up blowing the course, which is very common considing you are riding the most tech stuff I have ever seen and trying to find ribbons that are hung in trees sometimes 10 ft up??? Not good when you are blind in one eye??? Needles to say I went about a mile down the trail before noticing and lost a bunch of time again.
Day 4, I would much rather forget. Loose trails that I think were just freshly cut with a DR chipper. The only other traffic that I think the trails saw before I got to them was the lead moto and the guys in front of me! Don't get me wrong some of it was good. Today was the day I was also determined to make back some time so I went with the lead group and settled in for the day. Everything fell apart when we were descending a loose gravel road section at about 60kph and I over cooked a corner going off the side of the road and landing in a creek bed full of large shale rocks. There I laid taking inventory and watching myself bleed from everywhere. I jammed my finger, cut my right knee wide open, and my left shin. The pain of the finger made it hard to grip the bar and I lost a ton of time agian pushing my bike through the rough stuff! And I mean rough stuff. Us in the midwest have never seen conditions like this! Every trail has multiple dropoffs, bridges 10 sometimes 15 ft in the air, and descents that you ride with the saddle plastered in your chest! If there is anything that I am taking away from this it is tech skills! Long overdue for me! So back to the stage. I ended up finishing and so mentally depleted that I could of packed it in and gone home! I ended in the medic tent that night with them wanting me to go to the ER for stitches. I refused since one was my knee and there is no way to ride with stitches in the knee. Oh yeah and I forgot to mention that this day started with a 4:30 am wake up call, 2 ferry rides(that were awesome), and 2 bus trips!
Day 5, curve ball! They put in just an awesome day to be a bike rider and made me thank myself for not giving in! The day started with some nice singletrack climbing and followed by a 45 minutes descent all the way to the ferry terminal. Everyone crossed the line with smiles from ear to ear and all wishing we could go back up the hill!
Day 6. Today we rode the Test of Metal Course in Squamish with some extra K's thrown into the mix. Lets just say I want to move. This trail system was just awesome! We had 5000 ft of climbing today followed by some killer tech, but not too tech in my book singletrack! Today was also my best day for sure by finishing in just a tad over 3 hrs. It ended up good enough to be 5th on the day. On the downside of today I blew out my rear shock, which is not good with what tomorrows ride sounds like. Whistler, sounds like some more North Shore riding. They are calling for 30K tomorrow(short day, suck) that has only about 500 meters of climbing but supposedly some wicked rock face descents! More to come on this...
Sorry for the long post, but had to catch up on the race. I am bruised and can hardly walk. I am beyond being sore and am wondering how the tour riders due this for 3 weeks! To go with the bruises I have cuts everywhere due to the nature of the trails and all the brush that you are plowing through. The finish line is not far off though now!!
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