Tuesday 17 April 2012

Cumberland XC

Quickie update from the weekend y'all!!! Best trails around are found in Cumberland!!! So this makes for one of the toughest and but funnest Island Cup courses.......though I really haven't experienced a bad course here on the Island. Yup....riding here is better then absolutely anywhere. After hammering out the Tour de Victoria clinic ride saturday morning, I packed up the truck and headed up Island to visit Amanda and the rest of the amazing Wakeling family.

I got a very cool tour of the Eatmore Sprouts farm....it was really neat getting to see where all the sprout magic happens and definitely makes me appreciate these greens even more...BEST Sprouts ever. We raided the family garden, chowing down on fresh kale, broccoli, mustard greens (evil Amanda forced a giant really spicy leaf on me) and cabbage. Met and fed the donkeys, had a sketchy cart ride down the side of the farm with only a hair net as a helmet, and ate the most amazing home made pizza ..... with squash squashed on it. YUMMMMMM!!! What a great way to spend the weekend.

Sunday morning was race day and I headed up early to do a pre-ride of the lap. Nothing like an hour tough warm up of singletrack to get you pumped for the hard fun singletrack there!! Off the start my plan was to stick with Jamie Cameron again as long as I could (without getting our handlebars caught up again), but this plan failed really fast as I definitely couldn't hold that wheel. Each lap started with about 12 mins of hard, steady gravel road climbing, that kicked up really steep at the end. I found myself just out of reach of the group in front of me, leading out a large group of people hammering up the climb. It was actually perfect timing when Jason Binab, another Pro City Racer, past me and I was able to grab his wheel and take advantage of his climbing strength. I hung on as long as I could, opening up a small gap to the amazing Wendy Simms and Dawn Anderson. Amazing because she's pushing me hard yet again after kid number 2 not even a year old!!! I wonder if I'll be as fast as these two ladies if I have kids??

Getting in a train of 6 guys through the singletrack we hammered through the technical trails....and yes, I definitely gave more then a few yippees and yahoos on the new Tea Pot! A quick stop at my feed table to change bottles and we were off up the climb again. The second lap got a little more strung out and going into the third and final lap I found I was starting the last climb with just one other rider. 3 minutes up the gravel road climb something started "jumping" slightly on my new bike and literally as I looked down at my rear wheel to see what was going on I watched my rear derallieur wrap up and around my cassette ripping my whole drop out off. Yikes!! Fast way to end my day, but I'm really glad it was all downhill back into the start/finish.....I didn't want to climb that hill another time...lol, actually I kind of did, that singletrack is worth the pain. Needing my mechanic to get over his jet lag (hahahaha) so he can figure out what I did to my poor bike :-(

Other then the obvious mishap, it was a great weekend. Nice little EBOOST wake up, Honey Stinger Organic Energy Chews for warm up and Energy Gels for racing, and my fantastically comfortable Sidi Dragon MTB shoes on my new Superfly 100 from Trek Pro City after eating tonnes of the most delicious Eatmore Sprouts......the only way it could have been better was if I had my partner in crime with me.

Thank you UROC for the awesome Island Cup XC race, and huge thank you to the Wakeling family for the wonderful weekend :-) I love my friends!!



Photo from Amanda Wakeling (aka Sport Bean)

No comments: