Hardwood Canada/O Cup

Race report time!

After the "pre-ride of tears" from the previous Friday, I knew that if I didn't check out the course at least once more, I would pay dearly on race day. And so on Saturday, the Boy and I hitched a ride with DD and Prisca for another look at the course. I was worried it would be more crowded (it was... but my actual race felt even more crowded, so I guess it was a bonus for race preparations). It was tough to not succumb to the peer pressure of riding with the group that had formed, but I knew that I had to do things a bit differently and really focus on certain sections, so the Boy and I stuck to our original plan and struck out on our own. The good: I managed to avoid any major meltdowns (a victory within itself), reminded myself that riding was fun, and rode a few things that hadn't clicked the first time around.

Race day, and suddenly my intimate little Sr Sport category was part of this massive wave of women - at the Canada Cups, we started with the Master Sport women, creating a very busy starting corral. It was a little confusing when the race official doing roll call thought the senior women belonged in a different corral. Mild panic, but it provided me a good opportunity to get into a better position for the start, which was behind a lady whom I know to have race experience and I could see was not starting in her granny gear. (I kind of think that at this level, worrying about details like this is a bit silly, but I also know that I want to do my best and that the little things can really add up. And I know that a good start is really important - my feeling always being that you probably won't win a race with your start, but you sure as hell can lose it there.)

Anyway, start doubly important when there is a long two-part climb, and you are awesome at just such a thing and want to get into the single track first. Which is exactly what I did, avoiding the gal who clipped a directional arrow on the side of the course, making up a bunch of places over the first part of the climb, and then attacking to get a gap over part two. And then I got kinda overwhelmed by all the traffic in the single track, and I dabbed a few times and got swarmed by little trains of fast Masters racers (including the occasional girl in my category), and lost some places. The rest of the lap was pretty good - I wasn't feeling particularly "racy", lacking motivation to really chase or kill it on the double track, but just pushing myself enough, and trying not to kill myself in the single track. Awesome things I saw: this guy do a wicked endo on Coffee Run, Lee manage to do a nose wheelie off a jump on the inner loop and somehow manage to save it - based on language, I would guess that was not what she meant to do.

Lap two was much much better. I'll skip the section-by-section play-by-play, but let me please toot my horn to say that I rode the downhill section on Coffee Run that I had not yet done, as well as the bmx stuff at the end of the lap. The bmx stuff is neither faster nor slower than the alternative lines, but it's fun so I rode it both laps.


It's Wednesday, and my legs are tired from all the racing and riding. One more this weekend, which I'm already looking forward to, and then I get a sweet, sweet rest week, for which I have already booked a massage.