Never fails to be a challenging muddy race. All week I was watching the forcast for Sainte Anne de Beaupre, the small town at the base of Mont St Anne, and all week the forecast called for rain everyday, with 30-40 mm on saturday and sunday..yikes. But everyday I checked, the rain was pushed back another day...but I kept the mud tires close on hand. Just light rain during the night, but the course was drying up great and come sunday morning everything looked in awesome shape and the Bontrager Revolts (great all around dry to tacky tire) stayed on. Just as we were called to the staging area and the skys opened up. Oh my goodness rain.
The start was the very typical World Cup start, 55 starters sprinting into the first corner. They got rid of the start loop this year and there was no big climb off the start to string us out, so by the time we hit the first singletrack we were all off the bike and climbing over eachother trying to gain a spot...it was pure World Cup madness..very euro style. As we all strained ourselves through the single lane the race quickly became very spread out.
The rain hadn't soaked into the ground yet, so most everything was rideable, but as the race wore on, the raining stopped and the mud started turning into chucky peanut butter...vera slickery. The sketchy rock garden descent stayed in surprisingly good shape through out the race, though there were some really good stories of really good crashes. After the race I found out there was a "chicken line" cut the night before around the rocks..oh well. I managed to clean the section everytime, but on lap three the berm at the bottom after the downhill claimed my front and rear tire at the same time and I slide through the berm (about 15 feet) on my rear. It actually was kinda fun..hehe.
I had a solid day all in all, faded a little at the end....oh yeah, but my highlight of the race was chasing the current World Champion jersey of Margarita Fulliana down to the finish line......hehe. I was definitely motivated to put that notch into my belt, but didn't catch her and finished 23rd on the day.
Today I got up early, ran into fellow team Canada rider Ryan grabbing hish bike from the mechanics and we road up the ski hill access road in the pouring rain for about an hour. Too bad the fog was so thick we couldn't see anything because it probably woulda been a great view. From there we started down the DH world cup course..hehe, that was a little short lived, and found a more xc friendly trail. It ended up being a wicked 30 min downhill through some pretty nasty mud...oh my poor clean bike... Thank for the wicked ride.
After a crazy long travel day (not sure how a 3 horu drive turns into 7 hours of travel.......) we made it to Bromont...land of the best hot chocolate....which I'm looking for tomorrow.
Super big thanks to the entire CCA staff that helped out at the race...you guys rock.
Oh yeah, huge congrats to Kika for winning her second World Cup!!!!!!
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