BC Cup #1 & Island Cup #4

Last weekend marked the first weekend back at racing after some false starts to the season in March and April with the early season Island Cups.

BC Cup #1 was the Rat Race on the Sunshine Coast. The Sunshine Coast is beautiful--lush green forests set against a rolling coastline with small towns that seem to slowly fade into forest. From our island, it took 2 ferry rides and a total of 2.5 hours of driving to get to Sechelt where we were staying with the Short family. We left work at 4pm to arrive at 11pm ready for bed. The next morning we woke up, headed to the race course (we bummed rides all weekend....so getting to/from venues was a bit of a crap shoot...luckily, thanks to Jeff and Heather and Eric and Peter and Smoky and....all of our stuff, bikes, and persons got everywhere necessary...and all in one piece!).

No pre-ride possible, I headed out on a bit of the course to warm up, the trails were fresh with a solid climb, some mud, a creek crossing, and a start that headed up a fire road. I realized, during a long staging process, that this was the first BC Cup of the year....and with the starting "go" we headed off on the beginning of the BC XC season. The start was not as blistering as I expected and Melanie Vaughn, myself, and Stacey Spencer headed into the double-track climb together. A wrong line choice had me off my bike and running--thank you cyclo cross dismount/remounting practice!--and then I slowly settled into the climb.

Melanie took the lead at the top of the climb and I grabbed onto her wheel for the descent. It was fast, flowy, and relatively smooth with a few narrow bridges over creeks and logs to keep things interesting. The descent was so fast that it went by too quickly and I was back to climbing, losing Melanie's wheel as she climbed away. Through the feed zone part way up the climb--had some awesome supporters reminding me to SMILE! and then back to the climb, another short descent and then back to the loop point. Finished up 3rd, relatively happy about that...but there is definitely some work to be done!

The course was hard with a lot of climbing, but, because it was mostly single-track, even the climb was fun and challenging. The descent served as a great reminder of just how fast you can go on a mountain bike (I would have loved to watch the pro-men's field!). The race was tons of fun, and very well organized...but the post-race fun was short lived as we hopped back onto the first and then second ferry to make it home that same night.

The next morning came way too quickly...waking up I was not prepared to head back out on another XC race...but up to Duncan we headed for the Cobble Hill XC race. Tara and Mike Pollack put on an awesome event that burnt my already toasted legs and had me stretching it out on climbs and just enjoying the beautiful descents that (after this weekend I've officially decided) never last long enough! Another, albeit painful, third: two XC races in two days...I'm pretty sure that is a form of masochism!