Everti's Duncan Island Cup

Drew cresting the climb to claim his beer prime!

Saturday evening, while assembling an Ikea Dresser that came in about 200 pieces:
Drew: Are you pumped to race tomorrow?
Me: meh
Drew: That's not a very good attitude...you should be more excited!
Me: Well, it is hard to get excited when you never know if there will be many girls to race against. It is only so fun to try to race against guys.

Apparently someone heard me....the racing gods?...because the girls came out! On the start line in the Expert field I lined up with Melanie McQuaid (3 time XTerra World Champion) and Wendy Simms (Multiple time Canadian Nat'l Cross Champion), along with a well-weighted list of local girls.
The start of the race headed up a gross, steep, loose fire road, teased me with a turn onto singletrack that led into a long climb that alternated between singletrack and doubletrack paths. At the top of the climb the trail headed down a steepish, loose-ish grade that threatened (when approached with too much speed) to toss you off the trail in a two wheel drift (proved by some of the earlier wheel tracks!) and then onto rolling fresh-cut trail. The singletrack descent was tight, twisty, working singletrack that demanded attention to maintain any speed...and was rough enough to discourage seated pedaling.

Cresting the top of the climb...smiling because I know it is all down hill from here!

The first descent was a bit of a shocker after trying to keep Mel in sight on the climb, once I got out of the fresh cut, I spun out my legs on the short fire road, caught sight of Wendy behind me, and ducked into the last section of the descent, fun and fast and swoopy (with a bit of dry dust to test my slick tires!) this section made me smile from ear to ear. Wendy, with her super-human skill, caught up to me and her smooth lines were deafeningly silent and I let her go by, in the hopes that I could wheel-suck and learn a thing or two.

Around the lap point and back up the climb, I spent the next 2 laps around various guys, trying to make sure that I held my place and kept my pace nice and steady. Each descent got smoother and faster and by the end of the race I felt like I had re-mastered riding real trail...(it is time to spend a few more hours a week on the mountain bike instead of just the road bike!)

Drew sporting the new Dyna-Sys gear from Shimano and drinking his prime prize

I finished up the race in 3rd place, 1st local-level girl, and happy with my race performance overall...Drew finished up in 1st and won the hill-climb prime for a 6-pack of beer! We headed home to some yardwork and a night at the movies to see Ironman 2 - so much fun, and highly recommended! Next weekend we'll head up-island to Nanaimo for BC Cup #2, woot woot for NOT having to take a ferry!

This would have felt good over the rougher fresh-cut!

In other news, Everti has announced their dual-suspension prototype for 2011...Mike Pollack has had the honor of testing it out...and so far, all I've heard have been rave reviews! As built, the bike weighs 26 lbs and is full ti front and rear!