This weekend we headed to Edmonton for Nationals (for Drew) and the Jim Horner UCI cross race. We flew in way too early on Friday and spent the day building bikes, whining about the cold (everyone who lives east of Vancouver can laugh at me here), and checking out the park the two races were being held at--which was 5 minutes away from our accomodations at the all-inclusive Achuff House (thanks Andy!).
Edmonton (for those Americans following this) is actually a really neat city with a huge amount of parks. If you work/live downtown or in town you can ride to single track, mountain bike worthy trails in an inner-city park in about 10 minutes and ride for a solid 2-2 1/2 hours. Banff and Canmore are within a couple hours drive, and the sky (at least while we were there) always seemed to be sparkling blue. The downside to Edmonton, though, is that it is cold in the winter, and not all that warm in the fall (although the temperature was relatively moderate and hovered between -2 degrees to 10 degrees Celcius while we were there).
Friday we got actual course practice on the largely flat course with lots of twists and turns in grass, a run-up for the women (most men were riding it), and some fast swooping off camber turns. Just before leaving Victoria I got a new Pro CX fork which dropped 1/2 a pound off of my bike, so I spent Friday getting used to it. Having a carbon steer-tube means that it isn't quite as stiff as my beefy aluminum steer-tube, but the fork had very little chatter, dampened vibration like a dream, and all around felt great--and awesome upgrade to my very stiff, full aluminum Empella Bonfire SL frame.
Saturday, after a bit of a pre-ride, I settled in to watch Drew and Tyler Trace race. Drew had a bit of a slow start, and sat towards the back of the race until the 4th lap when he attacked and passed 10 people in one lap and kept hunting wheels down until he ended up 9th at the finish, finishing up about 20 seconds behind Craig Richey and Kris Sneddon. Tyler was in the top 5 for the first 3 laps of the race, but eventually drifted back to finish 6th.
Heading into the race Sunday I was wishing I wasn't fresh-legged and had gotten to race the course at full-speed the day before, but had a great start and worked to stay in a group with Mical Dycke, Kelly Jones, Loni Klettl, Melanie Vaughn, and Jaymie McGowan. After a bit of a pile-up on the second climb (which featured two low-lying logs that were hoppable, but gave some people troubles) I was fighting for 6th position until Loni, Nical, and Kelly attacked and gapped me in the corners in the field (guess what I'll be working on next week!). I settled into 8th with Melanie right on my wheel, but crashed just before the run-up and lost a spot. Jaymie hammered up to ride just behind me for the rest of the race to keep me on my toes until the finish where we sprinted for 9th place--my second sprint and second successful sprint-finish in a cross race! (the last being star-crossed last year). I finished up 9th, which was pretty exciting since this was my first UCI level cross race--up until now I have solely done BC Cups at the Elite level. This means I have UCI points for the call-ups at the USGP's in Portland in December!
At the front of our race, Wendy Simms rode away from the group with Pepper Harlton and Dawn Berg rounding out the podium. It was a good day for BC women as 6 out of the top 10 were from BC and 4 of 6 from Vancouver Island!
The men's race started out fast with Geoff Kabush, Mike Garrigan, and Tim Heemskirk (fresh legs) pushing the pace. Their laps were exciting to watch as they flew through the fields and hopped the barriers, finishing up with Geoff in first, Tim in second, and Derrick St. John in third.
Full coverage, results, and photos are available on canadiancyclist.com. Thanks to Andy Achuff for accomodations, and to Dave Roberts for the above photos!
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