Archives For Getting Faster

Grip 2 Damper Review

May 14, 2019

Ever since riding a Fox Fork starting in 2013, I was hooked. Back then, I was on a Fox 40 with the RC2 damper. This was before the air spring came out, so it still had a titanium spring keeping me up. I was amazed with the support and how much it was able to keep me up in the travel, yet still being smooth. I had previously been riding a couple different Marzochi 888 forks, which were really good and ahead of their time when they were new, but I could definitely tell a huge difference in weight of the two forks, even though they were both coil. In 2014, the air version came out and things kept on improving, getting lighter and smoother. Fast forward to mid 2018, the new Grip 2 Damper became available to me, and I was so excited to see what it was all about.

Visually, the forks aren’t that much different, until you start to look a bit closer. The high and low speed compression dials at the top of the fork have been visually updated, but still provide the same function. Some might notice the rebound cap is a bit longer than usual. This is to make room for a high speed rebound adjustment, in addition to the low speed adjuster, which we are all used to.

My experience with the Grip 2 damper were limited to a Fox 36 at first, but now I have it on both my DH and Enduro bike and I couldn’t be more impressed with the swap from my 2016 40 with that year of RC2 damper to the Grip2.

There are a lot of other reviews and videos about the actual technology change and the build of the Grip2 Damper, so I won’t focus on that. I’ll focus on my riding/racing impressions, how I set it up, and what settings I’ve found to work well for the different types of riding I do.

Here is Fox Explaining the technology behind the new damper.

First Impressions:

After installing the fork on my Rocky Mountain Instinct BC, I started riding up to Mt. Fromme from home. On the flat road right outside the house, I noticed that the fork would bob through its travel just my pedal stroke. I have never never experienced that from any fork, even some Rockshox forks, which are known for being super smooth. Even at the (much) higher air pressures than recommended for my weight that I like to run, the fork is so sensitive through the beginning of the travel that it cycles even while pedaling casually along a flat road. I was amazed and slightly nervous that it may not have had the support that Fox is so well known for. Boy was I ever wrong.

After a few rides of dialling it in and playing around with air pressure and compression settings, I settled on 8PSI higher than on my fork with the RCT damper and 5-8 more clicks of high speed compression to get the right balance of support and suppleness. The high speed rebound adjustment took a little longer to figure out what was best for me.

I’ve seen/heard a few riders say that they don’t find much difference in the feeling of the fork when they adjust the high speed rebound. There are 8 clicks of adjustment for the HSR, less than LSR, but I found that it was all I needed. It did take longer for me to figure out what exactly I was adjusting and how it changed how the fork behaved on the trail. Simply cycling the fork through it’s travel at stand still will not help you figure out how you should set the HSR. I actually spent a full day in the bike park just dialling in both high and low speed rebound to where I liked it.

The fact that I thought maybe fork wouldn’t be as supportive as the previous damper was foolish, and I was instantly relieved and a little bit surprised that a fork could have such good small bump sensitivity and be able to hold me up nice and high through brake bumps and under braking.

 

Longer Term:

I’ve had the fork for around 9 months now and I haven’t had any reliability issues. A lot more other people now have the fork and I haven’t heard of anybody having issues out of the box so far. I’ve been continually adjusting my pressure and compression settings to adapt to different terrain and riding styles throughout the 9 months, and I couldn’t be happier with how the fork has been performing. Lower oil services are just as easy before, the only difference being it uses a 5wt oil that’s teflon infused for the new damper on the damper side fork leg. The air side still uses 20wt Gold oil.

 

In Biking, Getting Faster, Reviews
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Natural Pain Killers

November 17, 2018

I recently crashed on a trail I hadn’t ridden in years; which by the condition of the trail, hadn’t been ridden by anybody else either. Ned’s on Mt. Seymour was a trail that my brother and I rode a lot when we first moved to the North shore. I don’t think I’ve ridden the trail in 3 years, if not more, but the day was so rainy that any other trail would be washed out and full of puddles and running water. Since Ned’s is basically just a river full of rocks, it is pretty good in the wet, in fact, the rain washes away all the dust and dirt from the rocks which makes them quite grippy. This was the same for the wooden ladders. Since nobody, or very few people had ridden it in recent years, the rocks were still grippy, but the wood was slippery. My front wheel washed out as soon as I touched the wooden ladder on a relatively fast section. Since the trail was mostly rocks, it wasn’t a soft landing and I stuck my hand out and my palm hit a big rock. It was pretty painful and got very swollen and bruised, which usually doesn’t happen when I have big impacts, so I was a little worried something may be wrong.

After 2 X-rays over a couple weeks the Dr determined nothing was broken, but it was still pretty tender. I started doing some research and learned that the use of Advil and other similar drugs can interfere with the healing process if used long term. Several articles suggest that athletes shouldn’t use these drugs over long periods of time and should look at natural pain killers instead. I went to a health foods store and picked up some things that may help me heal a little quicker.

 



The Curcumin reduces inflammation and research shows can be better over long term than more mainstream drugs that do the same thing. The Piperine helps the body absorb both the Curcumin and White Willow Bark, which helps reduce pain and is safer long term than Advil.

This is sort of an experiment to see if these help my hand get back to normal quicker and I’ll keep you updated with the results!

In Biking, Getting Faster, Learning
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Race Season 2018-What Happened??

November 9, 2018

My 2018 race season has come to a finish. It hasn’t been an easy one, and for the first time, I didn’t see much of an improvement in my DH Racing Results. As I learn more about enduro and how to train for it, I have seen improvements in the results in that discipline, but a lot of that fitness based, which I had specifically focused on in the “offseason”. Here is a bit of a reflection of the 2018 season and some observations of why maybe my speed seemed to hit a bit of a plateau.

The first two races of the 2018 season were two of the most difficult that I have ever done. I’m not talking specifically of the technicality or physicality of the races, but the fact that they were on another continent and it my first time being outside of Canada/US made it a little more difficult than driving 5 or 6 hours to get to another MTB resort in BC. Food, water, sleep, elevation, and the conditions were all a factor, plus it was my first internationally sanctioned race. I’ve written in much greater detail about my racing in South America, so you can read about them below. I’m not saying that my trip down south made me slower, in fact, I think it did the opposite, but it was a new experience and took almost a month of pre-season riding/training on my local trails out of the year, which I’m not used to and usually get most of my local riding in during this time.

Once I stepped off the plane, I had the option of racing the following weekend in Port Angeles. I opted out of that race and took some recovery time, as well as some time try to get some DH laps in. When I left, there was a lot of snow still on the trails. When I came back, a lot of the snow was gone, but it was a really cold and wet spring, so I couldn’t get a whole lot of training in on Cypress, the mountain used primarily for my DH training.

My first DH race back was the Pro GRT in Port Angeles. I always love going to Port Angeles because it’s a nice little town, the race tracks are always fun, and the crowds go wild. I was feeling pretty decent in practice, but only being on the DH bike a few times before the first race had a bigger impact than I had thought. I ended the race pretty near last on a run with a few mistakes, but I didn’t think I would have been that far behind. I was pretty devastated. The new experiences and conditions I dealt with in South America didn’t help me go as fast as I usually had which I had thought they would have.

The next few races were Canadian National Enduro Series rounds, so it was back to the little bike. I was stoked to get a lot of time on my new 29er on my local trails in, so the DH bike wasn’t used that much at all except for a couple days in the bike park in May. At the CNES races, I really struggled with my fitness. A lot of the courses were really physical and the long climbs and hot weather in the spring took their toll and when it came to the DH stages where I knew I was strong in, I didn’t have the energy to perform at my best. I learned a lot about nutrition and hydration from these experiences, and didn’t have issues with mechanicals or things like that like I had in previous enduro races. I tried to take positives out of every race and use them to learn how to become better in the next races, but I was getting pretty discouraged getting on the lower end of the results sheet, something I hadn’t really experienced in the past few years.

2018 was a busy season, not only for me personally, but for the business I’m working for, Endless Biking. We had more rental bikes, more lessons and tours going on, and that required me to work more than the 3-4 days during the race months than I was used to. This resulted in less riding time than I was used to. While racing enduro, I was always trying to get fitter and maintain the fitness I had improved, so I was constantly trying to go on longer harder intensity rides, rather than shuttling or bike park focusing on getting faster on the downhills. I knew I wasn’t getting as much speedwork in, but I needed to focus on fitness to prepare for the Whistler EWS, which was my main focus for the year.

July was a full on month with DH races almost every weekend. Working Monday to Wednesday, driving all day Thursday, and racing throughout the weekend made it a bit difficult to maintain my “enduro fitness” that I had developed over the spring and early summer months. Before I knew it, it was a week until crankworx and the course for the EWS was about to be released. I went up to Whistler for a couple days to ride all the previous years race trails to try to get a sense of how this years race would be. Right before I left to go back home, I got an email with the course release and I was happy because two of the trails that I had just ridden were going to be raced the following week.

The big day finally came, and I was pretty excited and a bit nervous. You can read the full race recap here, but long story short, I wasn’t feeling as fit as I had hoped for, and that definitely became a factor in this race. Not only were the transfers pretty hard, the stages were even more physical, and I was pretty beat up and disappointed with my performance by the end of it.

After the EWS, I didn’t really want to ride that much. A week after was Canadian Open, the DH race at crankworx. The first practice run in, I had a crash and banged up my left leg pretty bad. The rest of the practice session I just rolled down to try to look at lines for the race. It wasn’t until the third practice day until I could really push for speed, but my leg felt pretty weak still. I wrapped it up good and tight and decided I was going to ignore it on race day. The practice of race day actually went pretty well and I felt fast on track. My race run was average on top, but towards the bottom things fell apart a bit and I started noticing the pain again. I was way back from where I knew I should be in the results

2018 was an up and down year. I got to travel outside North America for my first internationally ranked race, experience new countries and cultures, and race against the best in the world. I was fitter than I had been, and even though I struggled to maintain it throughout the full 7 month DH and Enduro season, I’ve gotten closer to my goals than I’ve ever been. There are some reasons why 2018 was also one of the hardest seasons physically, mentally, and results wise, and I’m still racking my brain trying to figure out why some things happened the way they did.

One thing I struggled with throughout the season, especially towards the end was crashing. Starting the season off in totally different terrain and conditions than what I’m used to makes me not so surprised or disappointed I tasted some Chillian and Columbian dirt. When I got back to racing in Canada, I struggled to find the limit of pushing too hard to cause mistakes, or not pushing hard enough and going slow and getting frustrated. Towards the end, the Whistler EWS. The rain the night before messed with my head a bit, and I tried to ride everything like it was dry, which obviously didn’t work. The physical fatigue also played a factor in how many times I went down.

Reflecting on the year, I also noticed that I spent so much time making sure I was fit enough to race enduros to their full potential, that I wasn’t riding enough fast trails, like the ones on Cypress. I was training mostly on Seymour or Fromme. It sort of clicked that I should have done more riding on the fast trails on Cypress when someone from Vancouver mentioned that the only “race” type trails we have on the shore are on Cypress when we were down in Chile. That’s something I’ll definitely need to work on for 2019.

In Biking, Cardio, Getting Faster
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Garmin Edge 520 Review-Why You Need One

September 8, 2018

Last year after I started racing enduro and saw a few other people using them I researched and ended purchasing a Garmin Edge 520. It’s a device that you attach to your handlebar that tracks distance, speed, elevation, and more data like that. The device is usually used by road bikers, and there are plenty of general overviews and reviews of them out there, but I’m going to be talking more about the MTB use of the device and what I use it for to become fitter and faster.

The device in general is well made, waterproof, and easy to use. I have had to get one replaced because I put it on the front of my seat post on my DH bike, which I hung up on a stand at the Whistler Bike Park and ended up damaging the screen. Fortunately they have a crash replacement deal where you send in your damaged one and for $100 they’ll send you back a refurbished one. A whole lot better than having to buy a brand new device! The screen is definitely the weak point on the device. I have seen many damaged due to relatively low impacts and they do scratch very easily.

There are so many different data fields that you can record and have show up on your screen. You can customize everything and put it where you want it to go as well as individually chose what system of measurement you want each field to display. If you want your distance in Metric and your elevation in Standard, you can do it. I chose to display Distance, Elapsed time, Speed, Time of Day, Temperature, Heart Rate, Calories Burned, Total Accent and Elevation in that order. That isn’t a random choice of data fields, each one is chosen to give me the information I need to make choices in the way I’m riding.

During the EWS race in Chile, they provided the distance, elevation, and elevation gain for each stage and liaison. On the longest one that was the most exposed, I was able to gauge my pace, water, and food because I knew exactly how far away I was and how much further and higher I needed to go before the feed station. Temperature is probably the least important field, I just like bragging about how hot it was during a ride.

You can upload maps to help you get around just by using the device, but I haven’t used that feature yet. I think it would be really useful for road riders who are riding in new areas of town, but I don’t do that often enough to use the feature. You can also do that using Trailforks for mountain bikers. Maybe one day I’ll be surprised and wonder why I haven’t tried it out yet. There are also options to display and record things like Power output, Total Decent, Direction, and others things like that which I’ve tried using, but didn’t see them useful for what I need during racing. Cadence is something that is helpful during training so I can get used to pedaling at a certain speed so that when I’m racing it just comes naturally. Unfortunately the Cadence sensor doesn’t fit on my mountain bike, only my road bike.

Even though I got the device with a Sportchek discount, it wasn’t exactly cheap. The watch I have is able to record Heart Rate, Distance, Speed, and will show you a map of where you went with elevation after you upload it to the app, but I wanted something that I could easily see during a hard ride. Plus the battery wouldn’t last long using the GPS on my watch, where as I’ve never ran out of battery on the Garmin even during 8 hour rides using all the features. The benefits outweighed the cost of the device, in my opinion and I didn’t regret the purchase.

Another reason why I take it on every ride is that it directly records and uploads your ride to Strava where you can compare you times to your previous attempts at the same trail or segment and to other peoples times. Sure you can also use your phone, but during a long ride, using the GPS tracker can really cut down the battery life. Some people make fun of Strava, but as you may have read on my How Strava Helps Me Go Faster post last year, using it can be beneficial.

If you’re a strategic racer/rider like me and like knowing how much further or higher it is to the next feed station during a hot hard race, I would recommend this device. If you like to log your rides, it’s easy to connect the device to Strava and automatically upload your rides so that you can see how fast you were that day without eating through your phone battery. The only problem I have with using the Garmin is that I haven’t quite gotten used to electronics mixing with mountain bikes, and have forgotten it on the charger at home during the EWS race in Columbia. I also had lost it the day before the EWS race in Whistler and definitely could have use the information that it provides to better gauge my effort on the steep liaisons. Those aren’t problems with the device itself, more with the dork who’s trying to use it.

In Biking, Getting Faster, Reviews
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Crankworx-DH Races

August 30, 2018

The Monday after the EWS race, I woke up and my shins were so sore I could barely walk after getting up. I knew practice for Garbonzo, a 12-14 minute DH race with plenty of pedaling didn’t start for a few hours, but since I’ve been racing it almost every year and the course not changing, I thought it would be a good idea to take a day off and do a couple practice laps on Tuesday morning before the race. I was feeling alright in the middle of the day, but in the late afternoon I started to feel really dizzy and light headed. I went to take a quick nap before dinner and after I got up, I realized I had a fever. I took some Tylenol and went to bed super early, hoping that I would feel better in the morning so I could race, but that wasn’t the case. I decided to pull out of the race so that I could continue racing later on in the week. I probably could have put together a decent run, but I knew that I would be ruined for the following days after considering how physical the Garbonzo race is. I took another rest day and my fever went away that evening.

I knew that I could race the Air DH, even if I wasn’t feeling 100%. The race is down the most famous trail in the world, A-Line. 5 minutes of pumping, jumping, and some sprinting in between. I did some practice runs in the morning and was definitely nowhere near where I knew I should be as far as energy and speed goes, but I wasn’t about to take another day off. I planned to keep it smooth and fast, not taking too much risk and really trying to have a good flow. I knew I wouldn’t be able to pedal everywhere I should be, so I tried to carry my speed through the corners as best I could and keep it super low over the jumps. I was actually really impressed with how well my race run went considering the circumstances. The only area where I messed up a bit was that I didn’t go for a natural gap near the bottom right before the tech section. I do it almost every tome I ride A-Line, even for fun, but I didn’t go for it in my race run. It could have been I was too tired to put in the extra pedal stroke required to clear the gap, or I didn’t think I needed to take the risk right before diving into the tight trees. Either way, I ended up improving my time from last year by 2 seconds, even with not being able to put in nearly as much effort as I normally would have been able to. 2 seconds doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but on such a smooth and wide open course, it is a significant improvement under the circumstances.

After Wednesday, I put away the Enduro bike and dusted off the DH bike. I have struggled with Canadian Open in the past. Crashes, concussions, and mechanicals have always hindered my results here. I was improving physically every day, but still wasn’t 100%. It’s also worth mentioning that the smoke that had rolled in on Sunday was getting worse every day. Last year, the smoke was bad up until the first weekend of Crankworx, but after a short rain shower, it went away. This year was opposite. Every morning we woke up with sore throats, scratchy voices and headaches from the air quality. It was the same for everybody, however, and it wasn’t bad enough to cancel any practice sessions or other events so we all pushed through it.

The first practice session started Thursday evening. This year, we had an extra day of practice, but with the sessions only being 2-3 hours long, and considering how long the lineups were, you could only get 2-3 runs in per session. I was one of the first to get to the top and drop in, and on the first corner, there is a gap onto a rock. As I launched out of the corner, as I had been doing for years, my right foot came unclipped from my pedal, and I landed on the rock with my shin/leg/hip taking all of the impact. I got myself off the track and took a few minutes to calm down to evaluate the damage. Nothing looked too bad at first but when I tried to get up, my left leg could barely hold my weight. Usually when this happens, it is fine and you can still ride, but this time I had lost strength in my lower leg and when I tried to ride, it was nearly impossible to keep my heel from dropping, which is really not a position you want to be riding the entire DH track in. The pain was also pretty bad and I couldn’t really take any big hits, but I was determined to make the most our of my practice and still did as many runs as I could, just limping down the course to see what it was like. Even though I couldn’t hit any lines or hit anything at speed, I thought it would still be helpful to be on track, so I finished up the day.

The next day was better and I was super relived. The pain had gone down so I could actually ride the course with some speed, but it was still quite swollen so I still had to if I avoid any big impacts because I knew I still didn’t have much strength. I wrapped my leg and ankle up tight to try to keep my heel from dropping too much and it seemed to work alright, but I still didn’t have a lot of strength to keep my foot in a good position. I focused on finding lines for this practice session and hit the jumps at the bottom of the course. There were still a few that I wasn’t comfortable doing but I knew I could do them in the following days once my leg got a bit stronger. I was still struggling with speed and getting a bit frustrated after how the beginning of the week went and really wanted to finish on a good race. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to improve that much and even with an ankle brace that I had put on the next day, I still wasn’t able to perform how I wanted.

My last two practice runs actually went really well and I nailed some of the lower lines in the technical trees which I was struggling with earlier, but I didn’t have the endurance to put it together in a full run and hit them well in my race run. I came down with a run that wasn’t horribly riddled with mistakes, but one that I wasn’t proud of, even with how I was doing physically.

It was pretty hard knowing that I didn’t have any really good performances at this years Crankworx, having some sort of issue with each event. I’ll take the positives I can and learn from them to be even better next year!

 

In Biking, Getting Faster, Where I Ride
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Crankworx 2018-EWS

August 26, 2018

It was that time of year every mountain biker looks forward to in the summer. Crankworx, the biggest gathering of lovers mountain biking in the world. People travel from all over the world to Whistler for the 10 day event that’s all about life on two wheels. Luckily I only had to drive an hour and a half.

Unfortunately we couldn’t seem to do that right, with one of the tires on the camper trailer that I recently build delaminating on the highway 20km outside of Whistler. After a while of scrambling trying to fit the spare tire off my 2007 Ford F350 onto the axles of a 1975 Ford F350 truck bed and realizing that the bolt pattern wasn’t the same 42 years later, we managed to limp it up to the camp ground without causing any accidents.

This year I was competing in 4 events at Crankworx, the most I’ve ever done. The EWS, Garbonzo DH, Air DH, and Canadian Open DH. This meant that I didn’t have a single day where I wouldn’t be practicing or racing. That’s a lot of riding! The EWS was the first Sunday, with practice being on the Friday/Saturday prior, Garbonzo race was Tuesday with practice on Monday, Air DH was Wednesday with practice on Tuesday, and Canadian Open race was Sunday with practice on Thursday-Saturday. 10 days straight of Practice/racing! Unfortunately it didn’t go quite to plan.

Friday Practice for the Enduro was just one stage, Top of The World. Late in the afternoon from the Peak Chair, we started on the other side of a new suspension bridge that crossed over a bit of a valley in the mountain. Being scared of heights, I wasn’t too happy about that, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Practice went well, I had ridden all of the trails at least once before and just needed to dial in some final lines to be comfortable to go fast on Sunday. I knew that the TOTW section of the stage would be the hardest because there was a long uphill fire road sprint in the middle, and near the end was really flat so there was lots of pedaling required there. Further down, it got steeper in the garbonzo zone and I just had to focus on being smooth and consistant. This stage was the final stage and we estimated it would be around 22-25 minutes, which is the longest stage that I’ve ever raced in Enduro.

Saturday practice was a full day, practicing stages 1-4. Some EWS rounds you can shuttle to the top or near the top of the stage so that you can keep your legs fresh. Not here. The two trails on Blackcomb mountain had a really steep climb to get to them, most of it being on a dusty rocky fire road, which didn’t make things any easier. I specifically bought a 30T chainring for this race because I knew by the time race day came around, I’d need an easier pedaling gear compared to the 32T which I had for most of the season. It was quite nice to spin up there a bit easier with the smaller chainring, but the road was still really steep and took a lot out of you. I would have preferred that we practice stages 1-4 on Friday and 5 or Saturday instead so that we could recover a bit on Saturday morning before practicing the final stage in the evening like we did on Friday.

I had ridden 3/4 stages, two of them on Blackcomb, and the other one in the creekside zone of the bike park. 1 and 2 I was sort of looking forward to and not at the same time. They were fast, rough, and fun in places, but also there were lots of punchy uphill sections that I wasn’t too happy about. Stage 3 was in the bike park and I knew that I would have a pretty good time on that one because there wasn’t any uphill. There was one stage that I hadn’t ridden that was quite a ways outside the bike park on the opposite side of Whistler than Blackcomb. It was a pretty cool trail, with some tight stuff in the trees, some traversing, and another fire road sprint up into the finishing corners.

The summer had been pretty dry so far and there was a little bit of rain in the forecast for Saturday, but it ended up absolutely pouring right before we were going up to do the final stage so we took refuge inside a restaurant while the gondola was closed due to lightning. I was a bit excited for the rain because it had been so dry and dusty that everything was pretty loose and slippery, but it was raining a lot and I was getting concerned that it would still be muddy by race day. I hadn’t ridden in the rain for quite a while so with only practicing one stage that was mostly deep in the trees, I didn’t really get my wet riding skills back. After finishing practice late in the afternoon, rebuilding my bike, and making sure everything was ready to go for the next day, the start times got sent out and I saw that I didn’t start until 10:40. A bit later than 8:00 or 8:30 which was when I was expecting to start! What a nice surprise.

I was a bit nervous in the start gate this race because I knew the climbs were pretty tough and the liaison times that they give have historically been pretty short for the Whistler EWS rounds. I started out going pretty fast because the first part of the climb was pretty easy compared to when we got to the fire road on Blackcomb. The directions were pretty confusing on how to get up to where we needed to go and a Sunday in Whistler during crankworx isn’t the easiest to navigate dodging all the tourists not paying attention to where they’re going. I once I made it to the point where I knew where I was, I relaxed a bit and prepared for the steepness to come.

I usually ride with a Garmin device that tracks distance, elevation, time, speed, HR, and a bunch of other things that are quite helpful when you’re in the middle of climb and want to know how much longer it is to gauge effort, water, and food levels. Unfortunately, I thought I had dropped it during the tire incident 20KM outside of whistler on the side of the road because I couldn’t find it once I got to the campsite. I didn’t let it get to me, and since I had ridden mostly all of the liaisons, I knew how far and how hard it was going to be.

At the top of the first climb, I was tired, but not totally out of it, and I had almost 10 minutes until my start time to cool down and get ready for the first timed stage of the day. The first stage wasn’t the greatest, my legs were really tired and I could barely make it up the punchy climbs and struggled to keep it smooth for the downhill sections. My feet and hands were aching by the time I got to the bottom, but I didn’t have any crashes, so I was ready to get the second climb out of the way and ride the next stage, which I enjoy a bit more.

At the top of the next stage, I noticed that a bolt on my linkage was coming loose, one that I had to take the rear wheel off to tighten. I thought It was a bit weird since I had been through the entire bike the night before and was sure I tightened everything. Luckily, again I had about 10 minutes to get everything sorted before starting stage 2. I was a bit more tired at the top of this stage and wasn’t feeling too good. Going from sweating like crazy pedaling up, to not moving while waiting in line for 10 minutes freezing cold from being all wet wasn’t something I dealt with in my other EWS race experiences.

Stage 2, Crazy Train

The top of stage 2 went better, than 1, but there was a huge hole that had developed right out of the start gate that sent me off track. I laughed it off and continued on my way. Even though the climb to stage 2 was 15-20 minutes shorter than stage 1 and them both finishing on the same road, stage 2 was longer and by the bottom I was even more sore and tired than stage 1 and ended up having a stupid crash, washing out a loose corner. I didn’t hurt anything, I was just annoyed that It happened. The two stages on Blackcomb weren’t that wet at all, and were still quite dusty. I was relieved that it wasn’t super slippery and this gave me confidence going into the next 3 stages.

The liaison to stage 3 was mostly flat, going 10km around a lake to get to the Creekside zone of the bikepark. I was curious of why they chose the route they did, I thought there must have been an easier way to get to the chairlift, but I guess they wanted us to get in some scenic road riding in! The directions weren’t all that clear, and I didn’t have a whole lot of time to make it over there so I pedaled pretty hard just in case I took a wrong turn or something. I made it to the bottom of the chairlift where the feed station was, stocked up on some food and went up the lift. One thing that annoyed me was that we had to stand in line with the normal bike park riders. Usually there’s priority for racers, but for some reason there wasn’t and the line ups were pretty long. Being a weekend in Whistler, it was pretty busy and I was getting really nervous that I would miss my start time. Fortunately I made it up the lift and down to the top of the stage with a few minutes to spare.

Anthony feeling strong at the top of Stage 3

Stage 3 was where problems started happening. I noticed the same bolt had come loose so I again had to take my wheel off and tighten it. This wasn’t a big deal because I had time, but if I hand’t, it could have come all the way out on the next stage and my race would be over. I noticed it was a lot wetter on this side of the mountain, so I took it a bit easier, but not easy enough. The roots were really slippery and there were a lot of them on this stage. I crashed 3 times on that stage and got passed by my team mate. They weren’t horrible crashes, but enough to cause some discomfort for the rest of the day, hitting my shins on all 3 crashes. I was frustrated at the bottom but knew that there were still two long stages left, so I pedaled on up the stage 4.

After tightening the bolt that came loose again and getting a little bit of a relaxing break, I dropped into stage 4. Everything was going quite well and I rode a bit more cautious and it paid off for the most part. I landed a blind step up gap perfectly after going super deep in practice and almost riding off into the bushes and made it to the traverse without any issue. The traverse was more exposed and was a lot more slippery than the other sections of trail and I slid out and crashed on a high line I eyed up in practiced that had a big root in the middle. I was a bit tangled up in my bike and lost a lot of time trying to get back up and running again, and almost got passed by my team mate on the long fire road climb. I was going to let him pass, but when I looked back he was still too far behind me. I finished the stage annoyed again, but relived that I didn’t have to pedal or rush up to the last stage because it was all lift accessed.

At the top of the final stage, it was pretty cold, so we all huddled inside the bathroom building at the top of the Peak Chair taking turns drying out our gloves on the heaters. I was pretty nervous about the bolt that kept coming loose on my bike because the final stage was almost double the length of anything else we had raced and it had almost come completely out after the first two stages. I borrowed some electrical tape and wrapped it around the bolt as tight as I could so that if it came loose, It hopefully wouldn’t come all the way out. This worked.

After making my way to the start line on the other side of the suspension bridge, I was partly relieved and partly nervous about the last stage because of the top part being so physical. I knew that once I made it past that part, I could flow my way down to the bottom.

The top of the trail was weird, we had to race down a fire road into the top of the trail, which you could see a long ways down, so It made me a bit dizzy going from a super fast fire road, to traversing down trying not to get too close to the edge. I made it through most of the top part no problem, but for some reason on a corner, I went over the bars. I wasn’t expecting it or knew what happened so It was pretty painful and took a while for me to get up. By the time I did, I could see my team mate catching up while I was getting back on my bike. I knew that the fire road sprint was coming up so I mentally prepared to get passed. I took the lower part of the climb easy, trying to tuck and hold as much speed into it as I could and went harder as I got to the top. I kept looking back ready to pull over for Anthony to pass, but he never got that close. I continued on and tried to put as much room between us as I could in the next sections. During the traverse near the bottom of the TOTW trail, my shifter cable broke, and I was stuck in my hardest gear. I wasn’t too bothered by this because I knew there wasn’t any mandatory pedaling left. I flowed through the Garbozo zone and hit all my lines really fast and was happy with how things were going considering what had happened so far. Unfortunately, as soon as I got to the bottom of the Garbonzo zone and to the top of the main bike park zone, my chain got caught up on my frame due to no tension in the cable. This made it impossible to pedal at all and my cranks were stuck in between up and down and flat. Not ideal! I flowed through the bike part section of the track as best I could and tucked down to the finish line.

Overall, I wasn’t as happy with how I performed this race. I struggled a bit more on the climbs than I thought I would, and didn’t seem to recover that well in the time before I dropped into the stages, except for the last two. During the first two climbs, I was having doubts as to if I wanted to keep racing Enduro while grinding up the steep fire roads, knowing that I wouldn’t have a lot of time at the top to recover. I had a lot of stupid crashes, nothing too major as far as injuries go, but enough to be really sore the next day, not the best way to start off Crankworx. The only stage where I can say that I really impressed myself was stage 5. I got a bit sketchy in practice on some TOTW sections but dialed it back during the race and was able to carry a lot of speed through the flatter parts without expelling too much energy, which I was struggling with in practice as well. Maybe it was the fear of being caught up and passed again? Maybe it was the relief of pressure after I wasn’t able to pedal and accepting it?

I was happy that I finished my 3rd EWS with no major injuries or mechanicals. Even though I was unhappy with my results, looking back, It was a really good experience to be pushed that hard and gives me even more motivation to be fitter, stronger, and faster for next year.

 

 

 

In Biking, Cardio, EWS, Getting Faster, Strength and Core, Where I Ride
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EWS Chile: Part 3-Race Weekend

May 3, 2018

Day 1 Practice:

Day one of practice started at 9:00 with all five of us piling in the rental truck and heading over to the bottom of the lift where stage 1 finished. The recommended route was that we go up to La Parva and take the lift from there and pedal over to stage 1 from the top, then take the chairlift and pedal back to the top of stage 2 where the team managers/mechanic/drivers would pick up the riders to take them back up to the top of stage 3, which started at the parking lot just above our accommodations in El Colorado. Since we didn’t have a driver or anyone to pick us up at the bottom of stage 2, we drove to the lift at bottom of stage 1. After completing it, instead of taking the lift back up, we drove back to the house to grab our rental car and dropped it at the bottom of stage 2 as a retrieval vehicle. There was a lot of waiting involved for those who weren’t driving and retrieving vehicles, but it was better than pedalling up the long hot roads. Save that for race day, right?

Click on the image to take you to a better quality version to be able to zoom.

Stage 1 wasn’t the highest point of the race, but it was pretty close. the views were quite amazing. Riding on the North Shore is deceptive because you never really see how high you actually are because of all the trees. In Chile there aren’t any trees on the mountains so you really get a good idea of how high you are and how far you’ve climbed.

Top of stage 1

The final push to the start line.

Stage 1 started off pretty steep and really loose and with no warm up, it was a bit of a shock. It went along the mountainside for a while with a couple of jumps, then went straight down and traversed across to another ridge. After this point, it kind of felt like the race organizers just taped off a 12′ wide section of trail and called it a race track. Very loose and rocky and since we were one of the first ones to ride it, the ruts hadn’t formed yet. Stage 1 would be the shortest of the race, but there was a long pedal section near the beginning, so it was in no way easy on the lungs. This being my first EWS and only being allowed one run per stage compared to 6 runs per day in a DH race, I thought that taking it slower and easy would be smart so I could see everything and get a sense of where I could go faster on race day and where I needed to be on the brakes. Even going slow, I had a crash in a super loose corner. Luckily it was sand like dust, and it was super soft to fall in, but I was surprised that I could have crashed going that slow on such an easy corner.

Stage 2 was hyped up to be the longest stage in EWS history, being 11km long and dropping over 1800 vertical meters. The part that wasn’t often spoken about was that it also had a 70 vertical meters of accent. That may not sound like much if you haven’t raced enduro, but imagine looking at a 70m tall building and having to ride up to that point during a race stage. The stage started off with a short-hike-a-bike from the top of the La Parva chairlift and finished all the way down on the 16th switchback of the road coming from Santiago. The first few minutes were probably my favorite part to ride of the whole race. It was super rocky and technical with lots of lines in some sections. Unfortunately, one of the guys in our crew put a big crack in his wheel and was unable to finish the stage. We were still high enough where he could ride down the road back to our house and put on his spare wheel. He wasn’t the only one having wheel/tire issues; there were lots of people spread out along the top section fixing flats. After crossing the dirt road at the bottom of the La Parva lift, the trail became less rocky and more dusty and ran along many different ridge lines with lots of awkward tight corners. There wasn’t really much worth mentioning here, so I’ll get to the good stuff at the bottom.

The last minute or so of the race was the most exciting. After 20 minutes of the top steep rocky sections and rough ridge traverses, your hands were already not feeling so great, but that didn’t matter. The hardest part was still to come. The trail started getting steeper and faster, and as soon as you hit some vegetation, things got really steep. This is the only section we walked before practice and I was glad we did. There were quite a few lines we found that prevented a potential crash from riding it blind and going the wrong way.

follow the finger in between the rocks

On race day, we would be riding up over 8.5 km on the same road we took to drive up to Farellones. Very long and very hot. After a long wait for the truck to be retrieved, we headed up to the top of stage 3. Stage 3 started with some open flat turns that went into some massive berms filled with huge rocks and ruts. Anthony had a crash there and took some skin off his hand, which didn’t seem too bad, but turned out to be not the greatest thing to happen on our trip. After the berms, the trail linked to a bike park trail that was similar to the top of stage 2 with lots of loose rocks, drops, and some gap jumps. There were two pretty big climbs near the finish line at the bottom which was a good way to finish up the day. There was a choice; you could either ride up on the dirt road back up to the race village or take the extremely slow chairlift which took the same amount of time to ride your bike up the hill. I took the chairlift.

Day 2 Practice:

Day two of practice started at the top of the La Parva lift and was one of the more physical stages, and also the most technically difficult for me. I really struggled with all the tight flat corners near the bottom that seemed to have no good “line”. It also had some wide open pasture sections where there was no tape for hundreds of meters. That was wild! One minute you’re racing an EWS and the next you’re riding your bike through a huge flat horse pasture.

The transfer between stage 4 and 5 was my least favorite. It was a mix of hike-a-biking through mountain valleys, getting all sorts of prickly things in your shoes, and trudging through muddy cow patty filled fields. Not the most fun, or sanitary, but I guess that’s just the way it goes!

Stage 5, the shortest of the race, started from the bottom of the main race village. The top part was steeper with some really tight switch back corners filled with dust and rock, then it went through a stream. Even when you’re in a place where it hasn’t rained for 5 months, your bike still gets muddy. The bottom part was very loose, hard-packed dirt with slippery corners, which ended just up the road from where stage 2 finished. Only 6km of switch backs to climb this time! Again, we were able to put our two vehicles to good use and drove up for practice.

Stage 6, the second longest and second most physical, started from the highest point on the mountain, above stage 2. From the start line, you could see the race village and the finish line. You don’t get that in mountain bike racing very often.

Middle right of the image you can see the race village, with the finish line. Yeah, we had to go all the way over there.

Similar to stage 2, the top of stage 6 was a bit more rocky and technical, but also had some super fast wide open sections. Unfortunately, one of the guys in our crew got a front and rear flat from the same rock. As I helped him fix it, two other people did the exact same thing. I didn’t end up finding the rock, I just hoped I wouldn’t hit it on race day. The stage was overall pretty fast, except for one part where it sent us along a ridge that was super loose and dusty with huge rocks, making it hard to hold on. After the ridge, it went down into the valley, but of course, this is enduro, so It has to go up. The stage continued on the other side of the small valley after the climb and got really fast and rough. I really enjoyed this part, and pinned it even though I had no idea where the trail went. Stage 6 joined up with the top of stage 3 in the open flat corners and finished just after the huge rutted out berms where Anthony crashed.

Even though it was sunny, it was cold up there!

Other than the wheel and tire issues with two of the other Canadians, up to this point we had no major mechanical issues the whole week. I couldn’t thank Jean Christoph and Peter Gustafson from Fox enough for what they did for us in Chile and Columbia. They went above and beyond for us, even outside of our suspension needs. I was very humbled and feel like we got Factory treatment even though we were just privateers!

Fox Techs adding some volume spacer to keep the front end a little higher

We got lucky with an awesome sunset the night before race day as we cooked up some steak for the next couple days.

Race Report Day 1:

Luckily Anthony and I started right after one another, me being in front, so we both had to be at the race village at 9:15 to get our timing chips and stickers and start the day. In EWS racing, they give you 5 stickers for your bike which you can’t remove, otherwise you’ll get a 5 minute time penalty. One on the front triangle of your bike, one on the rear triangle, one on each wheel, and one on your fork. That means if you break something that the sticker is on, you either have to deal with it by riding on the broken part or take the time penalty.

We got a shuttle up to the base of La Parva and pedalled to the chairlift. It was a nice warmup to start the day. We got to the top of stage 1 to see a huge amount people at the top; a lot more than we were expecting. Apparently, the race was half an hour behind and they had sent the email to notify us at 9:30. Really helpful, especially since we didn’t have cellular! We were waiting at the top for about an hour before we dropped in, but luckily we had some sun and good company so it wasn’t so bad.

Stage one went alright for me, I didn’t push as hard as I could have on the long pedal, but I passed the guy in front of me right before it got narrow so I didn’t lose too much time from that. The time gaps were only 20 seconds between riders so we were all really close and most of the time, able to see each other. I survived my first EWS stage with no crashes or mechanicals! Only 5 more to go. Anthony had a minor mishap, breaking a shifter cable, which didn’t cost too much time and he was able to change it in the gondola on the way to stage 2.

After a couple chair lift rides and a bit of pedalling (with one lift having to hold your bike out in front of you) we made it to stage 2. I was a bit nervous at the top thinking about riding 11km non stop down hill. For reference, most of the trails on the north shore are 1km, maybe 2 if you link up a couple from top to bottom. My time came and I scared myself really good a few times in the first 20 seconds, almost sliding out on a couple of corners. I decided to go for it and ride like I normally would at home. I learned pretty quickly I couldn’t do that in the Chilean dust, and had to tone it down a bit, but the technical top section went pretty well after that. There were a couple moments where I second guessed my choice of tire pressure and felt like I should have gotten a flat tire, but luckily I wasn’t one of the ones on the side of the trail putting in a tube! I was able to pass the guy in front of me, but it took a while longer than before. He didn’t seem to want to move over. The flatter section in the middle went ok. I was still passing people every once in a while and took the smoother sections easy to rest my hands and feet to try to save them for the bottom. Looking back now, I still don’t know if it would have been better to pedal in these sections, or just take them easy like I did. I got close to the final steep section and could hear the crowd that was there. They went nuts as I was riding through and it was hard to focus on the lines, but walking them before practice definitely helped keep me on track and I was able to make it to the bottom without any major issues. I feel satisfied with how I did on such a long stage. Looking back, it was probably one of my favorites and one I felt I rode the best. Only one major mistake and no crashes.  I think I could have pushed a bit harder on the flatter sections where I chose to rest my hands, but other than that, I think I rode pretty well.

The part I was dreading most about the whole weekend, the 8.5 km climb to the race village, was next. There was a feed station about 1/4 way up the climb where I planned on refilling my water and getting some snacks and stuff, but I was also conscious of making the start times. In EWS racing you get a sticker on your bike with all your start times. You have to make it to the top and start at the time on the sticker, otherwise you’ll get a time penalty. I was worried I wouldn’t make it since I wasn’t used to having a time where I had to be at the top, so I ended up not waiting for any of the guys I was riding with and riding right past the feed station without knowing. Yes it was mostly my fault, but it could have been marked better. It was tucked right behind a little cafe on the side of the road as I learned as I got 3/4 of the way up and asked somebody else how far away it was. Whoops. Luckily I wasn’t super low on water and had enough to make it to the top without getting dehydrated. It was a shame too, because I was over 45 minute early for my check in time before we headed up to stage 3. Lesson learned I guess.

I filled up on water and snacks and got through the time check and hopped in the shuttle to the top of stage 3. I only had about 5 minutes at the top before my time, but I was watered, fed and rested, so it didn’t bother me not being at the top for a little longer.

The top of stage 3 went ok, not quite knowing how much to push on the flat open corners based on how easily it was to crash, but I carried good speed through most of them and made it to the bike park section. On the two steep climbs is where I felt I lost a lot of time. Anthony didn’t catch me, but I felt like he was getting close after I crossed the finish line and he crossed less than 20 seconds later. We both slowly moved towards the chairlift to go back to the village to time out for the day.

Day 1 of racing was over, and neither Anthony or I had any crashes or major mechanicals. Unfortunately for one of the other riders staying with us, he cracked his rim on stage 2. He was optimistic for the next day hoping that a tube would hold air so he wouldn’t have to take a 5 minute time penalty for removing one of the stickers and replacing his wheel. Unfortunately, his wheel didn’t hold together and he would have to pull out of the race after stage 4 the next day.

Race Report Day 2:

After checking over the bikes, good food and a good nights sleep, I woke up the next morning not feeling as good or fresh as day one. I guess pushing the lungs hard at high altitude will do that. We were suppose to receive our start times for day 2 at 9:00 the previous night, but even checking right before bed at 9:30, they still hadn’t come. That was a little scary going to bed not knowing if you had to start an hour earlier than the first day, but fortunately the start times were almost exactly the same as day 1.

The short climb through La Parva seemed a bit harder than the previous day, but was still a nice warmup before stage 4. I wasn’t really thinking much about stage 4 and the issues I had on it during practice, but maybe that was a good thing.

Right out of the gate, I could feel my lungs hurting and knew it was going to be a rough day. The top technical part went alright but once I got lower down and caught up to the guy in front of me, I really struggled to pass. It was quite tight and he didn’t want to pull over to risk ruining his time, which annoyed me. Unfortunately, it didn’t annoy me enough and I ended up following him for quite a while and Anthony came up right behind me and made a very aggressive pass on both of us. I was a bit stunned and thought I should do the same, but before I could, another Canadian from behind me did the same thing and passed both of us. We were now all in the flat open pasture with no tape, and I had finally had enough of the guy in front of me not moving over so I shifted into my lowest gear and sprinted past both of them and all the way up until it went back into the taped section where it got a bit more technical. Then, I crashed in the first corner, getting passed by both of the people I had just passed. To make things worse, I had also twisted my handelbars and tried to ride them like that until I crashed a couple more times and got passed by some more people. I accepted my defeat and pulled over to straighten my bars. I made a couple more passes as I made my way down, but was very disappointed and angry of what happened. I noticed Anthony sitting by a bush near the finish line with people asking if he was ok and he seemed to shrug it off. I was annoyed and in some pain myself but knew that the transfer was difficult and we didn’t have very much time to make it, so I knew I had to hurry up if I wanted to make my start time, especially considering how much I had lost in that stage.

I made it again, with only 5 minutes to spare to get my helmet and gloves back on to start stage 5. I noticed Anthony wasn’t behind me when I started, and I was wondering if he had been a bit too casual with the transfer and missed his start time by mistake. I didn’t find out until the end of the race that he had pulled out of the race because of crash that he had lower down on stage 4.

Stage 5 started off well and I tried to put stage 4 behind me. I caught up with the guy in front of me rather quickly, but this time there was absolutely now way I could pass with the trail being so narrow. He almost crashed a couple of times so I got excited and thought I was my time to make a move, but it didn’t happen and I had to eat his dust all the way to the bottom. In the middle of the course or even lower down there were places that I could have passed, but I wasn’t nearly aggressive enough. That annoyed me that I made that mistake again and that It was costing me so much time. You would have thought that I would have learned by now, huh?

This time, I made sure I didn’t miss the feed station before the 6km switch back climb, and I took it a bit easier knowing how long it took me the first day. I was surprised I didn’t see Anthony at the time check but continued on up to the highest point of the mountain to finish the day. A truck ride, a seemingly very long and hard climb through La Parva, a chairlift, and hike-a-bike later, I arrived at the top of stage 6, the final stage of the race. I had 50 minutes until it was my time to go, so I tried to have a little nap, even setting my alarm in case I actually did fall asleep. I didn’t, but the rest felt good and I was ready to get on it for the longest and hardest stage of the day.

I caught up with the guy in front of me pretty quickly again and struggled to pass. Luckily for me, he crashed soon after I caught up and I was able to make the pass without seeming like a jerk and continued at my pace. Similarly to stage 2, I felt satisfied with how I rode 6: smooth and consistent, not going too hard and burning out on the long uphills, going fast where I could, and taking the smooth sections to rest my hands and feet. Stage 2 and 6 should have been the ones I struggled with most because of the length and all the pedalling, but I felt like I rode them the best (funny how that works). The crowds were going wild at the huge berms near the bottom of the stage and I crossed the finish line jump relieved that I had finished, but also a bit worried about Anthony. Shortly after I finished he showed up and explained that he had to pull out of the race.

After hanging out at the race village and waiting for the rest of the riders to come down, we headed back up the house to pack up to leave for the airport the next morning. Anthony was obviously disappointed with the race because it was the only one he hadn’t finished. I was glad I finished, but was disappointed with some of the mistakes I made and the whole of stage 4 where I lost a lot of time. Looking back at it now, I realized I just need to be less “Canadian” and be more competitive and pass people as soon as I can. For my first EWS I was pretty happy with the experience overall, of racing on a new continent and was excited to get on the plane to see what Columbia had in store.

Our last night in Chile left us with a stunning sunset which I won’t be forgetting anytime soon.

 

 

 

In Biking, EWS, Getting Faster, Where I Ride
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EWS Chile: Part 2-Farellones

April 24, 2018

I was a bit surprised that our overloaded little rental car was able to make it up the steep mountain road full of switch backs up to Farellones, the ski resort about an hour outside of Santiago, Chile. All I could think as we went around the 38 tight, steep switchbacks was “I really don’t want to change a flat tire right now”. After a few minutes of driving around looking for the accommodations that we booked, a friendly local called the owner of the place we were staying and we got better directions. It seams Google maps isn’t as accurate down in Chile as it is up here in Canada.

Imagine all of this, plus two huge suitcases full of parts, and 5 days worth of food for two hungry racers. That’s what we had to fit in this little car.

The owner of the place we were staying warmly greeted us and warned us of the elevation and said to take it easy because there were lots of stairs as we got started to move all our stuff into the ski cabin like house. At first, I kind of laughed in my head, I’d like to think of myself as relatively fit for a mountain biker and I have had experience being at altitude so I thought I’d be fine, but boy was I wrong. I was a bit worried as I got to the top of the first staircase and I was already breathing hard. I wasn’t sure how I would make it through 2 days of racing at even higher altitudes than the base of the ski resort where we were staying.

Views from our first evening in Farellones

After unpacking and getting settled, Anthony and I decided to ride around the resort. Farellones was split up into 3 different little villages. Farellones was the main ski resort village, where the race village and all the team tents and pits were, and where race started and finished on both days. A little higher up the road was El Colorado, where our accommodations were, and La Parva, which was just across from us in El Colorado. We rode over to La Parva to see what there was to see and to see how bad our lungs would feel after a little bit of pedalling. It was a lot cooler in Farellones than in Santiago, especially at night, which was nice, but a couple of the race stages finished lower down where it was still in the mid to high 30’s so we had to be prepared for some very warm climbs.

I couldn’t find a better map, so here is the race map that shows the layout of the whole village

We got to Farellones on the Monday before the race, so the next few days were spent getting the bikes ready, exploring a bit more, and doing some riding on the only trail we were allowed to ride to get one last chance to get used to the dust before practiced stared on Thursday. A few other racers from Canada, friends of ours, had a problem with their accommodations and there was an empty room at the place we were staying, so we ended up staying at the same place, which was very nice after not speaking to anybody who knew much english other than each other!

While riding, we met some other racers from the city who were shuttling the trail and offered us some shuttles. They were very nice and spoke a bit of English, and it was nice to ride with some locals who knew how to deal with the conditions!

After some final preparations to the bikes and a big cookout to get all the food ready, we planned out how the shuttles would work for practice. The other riders who were staying in the same house as us rented a truck which was very helpful because we could shuttle as much of practice as we could and not get worn out for the race. 

 

Luckily, it was the shoulder season, so other than the EWS, there wasn’t much going on in the village and it was pretty much empty. More space to work on bikes!

When they won’t let you on the airplane with a bike stand as your carry on, a strap and a staircase can work just as well.

In Biking, EWS, Getting Faster
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EWS Chile: Part 1-Santiago

April 17, 2018

I don’t usually wake up at 3:00 AM, but when I do, there’s a good reason. This time, it was to get to the airport to catch a flight to South America to race my first Enduro World Series (EWS).

Quick tip for setting important alarms: Make sure it’s not daylight savings time. The clocks switched over at 2:00 AM, and since it was spring, they immediately switched to 3:00 AM. This meant that if you set an alarm at 2:30 or 2:45, it wouldn’t go off. For some reason, I decided to set two alarms, one at 2:45 and one at 3:00, so my 2:45 didn’t go off. Luckily my 3:00 went off and I was able to get up and load everything in the truck on time. Unfortunately for my team mate Anthony, he only set one alarm at 2:45 and awoke to me banging on his door expecting him to be ready to load up and leave for the airport.

Evoc taking care of our bikes on the flights down south

We made it with plenty of time to spare and started studying up our Spanish with a pocket guide from the library. Little did we know, we’d need it a lot more than we thought…

Good ol Texas…

We had almost a nine hour layover in Houston and our gate wasn’t even announced so we decided to walk around the whole airport. It was massive and took a while to get to every end. I haven’t been in airports much so it was quite the experience with some parts of the airport looking more like a mall. After almost 9 hour exploring, smelling Texas BBQ and playing card games, we hopped on the last flight to Santiago, Chile. The flight was over 9 hours and since it was so long and the airplane was a bit bigger than the one to Houston, I thought it would be a bit more comfortable than the other flights. Boy was I ever wrong…

The bigger plane had just as much leg room as the smaller ones that I had usually flown on. Not so good for two guys who are 6’3″! The 9 hour flight was pretty hard for me, especially since I wasn’t able to sleep. We flew overnight and arrived in the morning and got our first glimpse of Chile’s landscape. It was definitely different than what I had ever seen before! There were no trees and hardly any vegetation, even on the mountains!

After getting our bags and going through customs, we met our first challenge; finding a way to get to our accommodation. Our bike bags wouldn’t fit in a normal taxi, and the bigger vehicles were really expensive to rent. We tried to negotiate with the rental companies, but they barely spoke any english, which was a bit surprising to us, especially being in an international airport. After giving up on that, we decided to leave and see if we could find something outside the airport. As soon as we stepped out of the airport, multiple people were grabbing at our bags trying to get us to try to fit into their taxi. Never being out of Canada/USA, this was a bit alarming to me, but I realized that it was just how things were in South America.  After a while of trying to fit our bags into small cars, we negotiated a deal with someone who had a van that would take us to our condo.

After waking up at 2:45, a 5 hour flight, 9 hour layover, and a 9 hour flight, I was ready to unpack a bit and relax to prepare for the upcoming week. Anthony had other plans though, so we set out for a 14km walk through the city to explore and see what there was to do within walking distance. The city was surrounded by mountains on all sides and was completely flat, except for a few “mountains” (hills) in the middle of the city, which made getting around pretty easy on bike or on foot.

The part of the city which we stayed in was nice compared to other parts, with many parks with green grass and tall trees, old buildings, street markets. I’m not a fan of big cities, and Santiago didn’t really capture what I imagined South America would be like. The city was just a dirtier, hotter, more European version of Edmonton or any other big city, in my eyes. One thing we heard from a local is that you shouldn’t be out past 10:00pm or after the sun had set, especially in the parks. There was also a large police presence everywhere we went. Which made us feel safe, but at the same time, left us wondering why there had to be so many.

Since I am not a seasoned traveler I was a bit surprised by all the stray dogs that were laying around in the sun. The people looked and dressed much like we do in North America. One interesting thing I noticed pretty quickly was how much affection couples showed for each other in public. In the parks there were couples laying in the grass kissing, or hugging on the street while waiting for the lights to change, things that would be uncommon or weird to see in Stanley Park!

Taken on the top of one of the hills in the middle of the city

After getting some food and lots of water, we headed back to the condo to eat, build up the bikes, and get some much needed sleep. The condo was a bit smaller than the pictures imply, which made building bikes a bit interesting, but we made everything work and we were ready for some riding the next day! According to our research, the water in the city was safe to drink, but had different minerals than what we were used to, so we stuck with bottled water just to be safe. The first few days we were there, I drank 6 litres every 24 hours! The temperatures were in the mid 30s and very dry and sunny, so it was a bit different than Vancouver with it being 5 degrees and snow on the ground when we left. It didn’t take long at all for me to climatize, and I think the 6L of water every day helped! By the second day, I wasn’t even noticing the heat.

We slept in a little more than we thought we would the next morning, so we ended up going out for our first day of riding during the hottest part of the day. We decided to try the place that was closest to us, since we could see it from our condo and we noticed it had a gondola. Of course, being the enduro racers that we are, we rode over to the mountain and up on our bikes. There was a bit of a tourist section at the top with a big Mother Mary statue at the top with an excellent view, so naturally we took a lot of pictures.

I didn’t know what to look at, the view or the beautiful bikes…

Look at all that lovely smog

The only picture I got of the actual statue… What a horrible tourist I am!

Anthony had a small wipe out and got his first taste of the local dirt and a feeling for how the conditions would be for the race the following weekend. No rain since November makes for some very dry and slippery conditions! The mountain in the middle of the city was pretty cool and the view we had riding on the way up of the whole city were definitely worth the climb rather than spending $3 for the gondola ride. There weren’t a lot of trails on this mountain, but it was a good first day on the bike and it was nice to have something that we could easily ride to!

After our first ride, we rode around the city to get an idea of how much a rental car would be so we could go to different areas and eventually up to the mountain where the race would be. Luckily, Santiago was flat, so it was very easy to get around quickly on the bikes. We also did some shopping to stock up on food for the next few days of riding.

Most of the stores in the cities were similar to this one, just a 50×50′ square building with rows of food. Of course there are things that we don’t have up here and stuff that they don’t have down there, but most foods were reasonable or way cheaper than groceries back home. One thing that was more expensive and harder to find was peanut butter.

The next day, we ventured out a bit further to another mountain on the edge of the city. We were using an app called Trailforks to find riding zones that were close to us. There weren’t many good mountain bike shops around so we weren’t able to get any advice on trails or locations to ride until we got the rental car. Luckily, Trailforks works without cell service, but you can only see the mountain bike trails, you need data or wifi to see where the roads are. It didn’t take much time or effort to ride 10km to the base of the mountain and with a little bit of luck, we found the right roads through all the fancy houses and started riding up the mountain towards the trails.

The climb was long and hot, but the view at the top was pretty cool!

The next day we got our rental car and went to some bike shops that sold mountain bikes in search of CO2, which we couldn’t bring on the plane, and advice on where to ride next. We found a shop that sold Rocky Mountain and even though we could barely understand eachother, told them we were racing the EWS the following week and wanted to know some good places to ride to prepare. They showed us where to go and we ended up riding in a “bike park” for the rest of the day.

Definitely the best meal I had in South America. Some kind of beef and rice dish with some really good sauce. So good!

After riding and exploring every day since we had gotten there, we took a trip without the bikes to a city on the coast called Valparaiso. This city was a lot nicer than Santiago and was more of what I thought South America would be like. Very colorful, cobblestone streets, lots of culture.

A short elevator that takes you up to a different part of the city. It costs 3 cents for a ride up.

I don’t remember what this dish was called in Spanish, but it was like a Chile version of poutine. French fries, beef, some egg and onions.

After walking around the city a bit, we drove along the coast and saw these huge sand dunes that seemed like they came out of nowhere. There were 5 or 6 big ones in a little sections along the ocean just on the side of the road.

“I can see Australia from up here!”

 

We got in a couple hours of surfing in before they closed for the day and made our way back to Santiago in the dark. Our little rental car wasn’t really meant for the highway with it being so small and the tires being so thin, but we made it back without any incidences and it was off to bed!

How did we manage to fit all this stuff in the rental car? It took some squishing and not much foot room for either of us, both being 6’3″. It was a standard which didn’t help either! Another day riding on a mountain nearby gave us some good views and even more time getting used to the slippery Chilean dust.

There was no shuttling or chairlifts. It was really cool to see how much elevation we actually gained on our bikes. We usually don’t get a good perspective in BC because of all the trees in the way!

On the way home from that ride, I started feeling really tired and not so well. Being stuck in traffic in 35 degree weather with no AC didn’t help and I was glad to get home and to bed. I didn’t sleep much that night due to feeling sick and stayed in bed the whole next day. I’m not sure if it was something I ate, or maybe some bottled water I bought. I’ve heard of people taking empty water bottles and filling them with just tap water and selling them in the store as purified bottled water, so that could have been what cause my involuntary day off the bike. Luckily I was feeling a lot better that night and went out to get pizza with Anthony. I got to sit there sipping a coke and water while he was eating a delicious looking pizza…

Fortunately, I had one more day on the bike before we headed up to the race village. I had absolutely no energy and had to push my bike up most of the uphill where I usually would have been on my bike, but it was good to get out and ride some more.

Our travel day was mostly spent in the city packing up our bikes and luggage in the tiny car and going to the store to get everything we needed for the 5 days we were up on the mountain. The car was even more packed than before because we had all our luggage/spare parts and enough food to get us through 2 days of practice and 2 days of racing.

In Biking, EWS, Getting Faster, Where I Ride
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Living My Dream

February 24, 2018

Here is the first video in a series I will be doing called Living My Dream. More to come very soon!

 

In Biking, Getting Faster
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