Monday 9 August 2010

Day 1 and 2

Quicky little update on some sketchy internet. Haha, yes, I've already failed with my daily updates.....me and computers don't get along so well.

Day one - Fernie to Fernie TT
Woke to the sound of rain bouncing off the tin roof, I roll over and look out the window...yikes. Everything is soaked and the clouds are low.....yet the Fernie forecast still says it's 12 degrees and sunny out...hahaha...right. The powder dry trails from the night before and slick and muddy, and it's by far my muddiest ride of the year. Today is a team TT, with competitors Wendy and Norm starting 30 secs in front of us and former pro XC racer Gretchen Reeves and her partner Cannon starting 30 secs behind us....great motivation on both ends.

It's a pretty fun course despite the mass amounts of mud and rain. We catch Wendy and Norm about 10 mins in on a really steep slick climb, and Gretchen and Cannon catch us about 20 mins later on a steep slick single track climb. It's a good fight as we can keep Gretchen and Cannon within sights for most of the race and push to limit the time gap. We finish 2nd on the day, 1:43 behind first and about 4 mins ahead of Wendy and Norm.

Day 2 - Fernie to Sparwood
Wonderful sunny day, no rain, but lots of deep mud puddles to make things very interesting. It's unfortunately a very road dominated day...72 km day with only 10 km of not too technical singletrack...not one of my favorite days.....but any day on the bike is a good day. Jeff and I make the selection with the lead group and are able to hang in with some seriously fast men for the first 30 mins of the race....which definitely burnt a few matches....but took us pretty far down the course. Off the start we have a 30 km steady climb for what seems like 1500m (well actually feels like 1500000000m) hahaha.

We put on a solid pace all day and finished 2nd again, only 1:34ish behind Gretchen and Cannon.

Treated myself to a massage...yippeee..doesn't happen very often at all. And early to bed tonight...I'm gasses!

1 comment:

Kate Aardal said...

Go Go Mical and Jeff!! Nice work, enjoy the riding through the rockies! I'm following from my office desk :(