Well this past weekend was the start of mountain bike season
with the first O-cup taking place at Woodnewton. Having just recovered from my knee injury
part way through the week I was a little nervous of my shape coming into the
race. But way more excited to let that
bother me :P
I drove to Newmarket Friday after work and there Katlyn and
I stayed at our friend Elyse’s place, her and her family were amazing hosts
this weekend, I greatly appreciate everything they did for us! Saturday Katlyn, Elyse and I drove over to
the course for some preride laps. It was
great to see everyone again, so I spend a good portion of the morning
socializing with everyone. Then I went
for a lap with the Tufrack team. After I
waited for the Wolfpak boys to arrive to do some more laps, but they were late
so I went and did one with Elsye and Katlyn.
We went over lines and got to know the course! The course was awesome, dry and tacky,
perfect condition even though it rained all week. It was going to be a fast race as a few sections
were taken out of the race due to rain. When the guys finally arrived it
started raining and it was already late so I dint feel like hanging around much
longer so we went home for food board games and hot tubing at Elyse’s place.
Race day came and we got there to watch the 11:45 races go off;
it was cool to be back in the race environment!
Got my warm up in with new team mate Eddie Skala on the warm up track,
then off to the start we went! The field
was another big one with guys from Quebec coming down to race and some big
names like Derek Zandstra (National Champ), Adam Morca, Peter Glassford. So I knew it was going to be a fast race! I
managed to get myself halfway up in the start gate. Then the race was off had a solid spot
entering into the first single track, top 15 I think, much better than last year’s
start!! There was a big group with all
the fast guys, I held on to them for about 2/3 of the lap I think then got
dropped, but was pretty happy with that!!
I saw my buddy Jon Slaughter just up ahead of me, maybe 10seconds, so I started
to chase him down! Coming through the
lap section on lap one I dropped my chain and 4-5 guys passed me, including
Chris Fruetel. So I was back on the
chase, caught them around the Lap.
Starting Lap 2 we had an unreal amount of lap traffic to go through
which made it hard to make moves as they would be slowed down by lap traffic in
the next single track. Ryan Atkins, Mark
Windfield and I broke off and got away from the rest and then they got away
from me with the help of lap traffic.
Rode steady for the rest of the race until lap 5 where I crashed twice
in the single track and Chris and Scott Lynch caught me again. So I put in a hard effort to catch them. Scott had gotten away from Chris so it was
the two of us and man we had an epic sprint finish, Chris got me by the width
of our tires :P Great race though on his
part, it’s great to see him fast after an unlucky season last year!
Overall a great start to the season all things considered!! Looking
forward to the next race!! Thanks to all
my sponsors for the support along the way: Honey Maxx, Clif Bar, Schwalbe,
Niner, Inception Cyclery, Wolfpak Racing.
You can see pictures here: http://apexphoto.zoomphoto.ca/v5/event_gallery_search.php?frmIndex=28&submit=Search&event=19232&photog=apexphoto
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