The Romance is Gone....

All summer at the 45minutes of suffering mark in mountain bike races, the ones that have really hurt, a brief flicker has come into my head “if it was cross season I would be done suffering.” Well, cross season is here!

Two weekends ago marked the first BC Cup cross race in Fort Langley (yes, this post is a little late...). This is one of the few race courses I haven’t ridden, so I was a little nervous, but mostly excited to start the season off with a new race course. The course is located amidst farm land and starts on an all-out fire road with a 90 degree turn onto another all out fire road, 90 degree turn, another fire road into a muddy bridge, a rough tire-eating broken cinder block section of fire road, through a set of barriers, some twisty muddy corners, and up a 45 second run-up, through some twisty singletrack, down a loose fire road, into a roller-coaster tree section, up a sharp climb and back through the lap/finish area.

The B men went off in front of us. A minute later with the Masters women lined up in front of us, we started. A quick start, heading over the barriers Alison Sydor was in first, Jean Anne McKirdy second, Sarah Stewart third, Kelly Jones fourth, and myself in fifth. Up the run up I attacked and passed Kelly, tried to pass Sarah, but settled into fourth.

With a crash in front, Sarah, Kelly, and I were separated from Jean Anne and Alison who weren’t seen again. Sarah, Kelly, and I rode together for another lap until up the next run up I tried, unsuccessfully to attack Sarah. In an all out sprint up the run up Sarah and I gapped Kelly and continued on.

I hung on to Sarah for as long as I could, but I didn’t recover quickly enough from the run up and Sarah powered through all the flat sections to gap me. About this time I glanced down at my clock to see that only 15 minutes had gone by—all this suffering and still 30 minutes left? I rode the rest of the race in no-mans-land to maintain my fourth place position finishing the race as wrecked as if I’d raced a cross country race.

Drew finished up in 4th as well after a slow start, a frustrating battle through the masters men field, a bridge up to the lead group that included Tyler Trace, Craig Richey, and Kevin Noiles. Tyler and Craig gapped Kevin and Drew to sprint it out a lap early because of the mistaken commissaires but came around in the final lap in the same order to finish up with Tyler in first, Craig second, Kevin third, and Drew fourth.

Monday morning I headed off to Montreal for the Bicycle Trade Association of Canada’s Trade show--it was a week working with Shimano and checking out the latest and greatest for 2010...but more on that later.