Last year, Panorama was my first race in the Jr. Expert Category. I remember not liking the course that much and struggling to find speed. This year was the same.

Everybody was excited about how much they liked the course and how fun it was. I didn’t find it all that great. On Saturday practice I put holes in two of my tubeless tires, so that really cut off a lot of my limited practice time.

I think I spent more time walking and watching other people on the track than actually riding it. I thought maybe that would be a good thing since I usually only do 1 track walk and maybe only watch a section or two to see how other people do it. I don’t think it worked out for me because when I tried to ride it, it took a long time for me to get up to speed. Walking it really slowed things down.

I put down an average race run, something that was safe and with a few mistakes. 5 seconds back from the win didn’t make me feel that good, but that’s just the way it goes.

National Champs didn’t go as planned. On Friday, the course was super dry and blown out and it was only day one. The new sections that they had cut in weren’t doing too well, and I was getting ready to just try to make it down the mountain. By Sunday it would have been so much worse if it hadn’t rained on Saturday night. On Sunday morning, the course was perfect. There were only a few little dusty sections and I was excited to put down a good run. Maybe a little too excited… I went too fast over a jump and got caught in a rut before a berm and flew off the track. Needless to say, I lost some time, but still ended up 9th and unhurt. I was disappointed because I was on a really good run too!

I was excited to return to Silverstar for the 3rd Round of the BC Cup. It was one of my favorite courses last year, and didn’t disappoint this year!

It was dry and dusty, but it had much more traction than Whistler last weekend. Friday practice went awesome and I found a lot of my lines after the first few laps. Saturday however, didn’t go so well.

I did one warm up run in the morning, then I got three flat tires in a row. I only had time for two more runs after that, so I only got three full runs in on Saturday. The course was changing and I didn’t have time to ride a lot of the new lines that were developing, so I wasn’t that prepared come Sunday. I had a chat with C4 Coach, Cory, and we discussed some lines they found on a track walk while I was fixing my bike. I went up and walked the lower half of the course and decided where I was going to go the next day.

Again, Sunday practice in the morning was frustrating because people were getting hurt and the course holds made the course clogged up with riders. Luckily, I got the last practice run of the day on a clear course and was able to see what I could do later on in the day.

My race run was the best of the year so far, with only one big mistake on the top and riding slightly slower and cautious on the lower part. It saved me from crashing in one corner. I was 7 seconds off of a time that I wanted to get, which is a lot, but again, I can see where I can make up that much time, so I’m excited to get to the next big race and keep progressing in my race runs. I got first place in Sr. Men, which made me pretty happy, but not close to satisfied because I know I’m capable of much more!

Ah, Whistler, the best bike park in the world. You’d think that there would be a pretty good race, especially if it was also a BC Championships race. I was surprised when I heard that there were only about 180 riders racing last weekend.

The course was awesome, and pretty much everything I would want to ride on a Whistler lap anyways. Unfortunately, it was burning hot all weekend and that made the course super slippery with dust and blown out corners. What made things harder still, is that all non-expert/Elite categories only had two hours of practice on Saturday. This was also a little bit of a good thing because I didn’t feel guilty that I went to the lake on Saturday afternoon to cool off because I couldn’t practice!

My race run didn’t go so well, I entered some sections too fast and ended up sliding around a lot. I ended up getting 4th, just 6 seconds off the win. I knew exactly where I lost that time, so I felt better about it. I also noticed I was only 1 or 2 seconds behind a few really quick guys who I was miles behind last year. My confidence is gaining!

Like Kamloops, the Sunshine Coast DH course was quite flat and involved a lot of spinning the legs. In practice, I was constantly switching between my GT Fury and Force. In the end, I decided to race my DH bike so I could really push hard in the corners, even though I sacrificed some rolling resistance and pedal efficiency.

The course was fast, flowy and quite fun to ride, but difficult to race because there were no sections where you could make up a lot of time. By my race run, the course was getting a little loose because it was so dry and the holes were getting bigger. I was hesitant to push the corners a lot because they were so loose compared to practice, so I probably would have been better off racing my Force.

In the end, I got first in Sr. Men and got to stand on the water cooler (podium).

A little while ago, I got my Freelap Timing System from Todd Schumlick, and I used it on a full DH trail for the first time. I must say, I don’t want to go riding without this again. Being on the clock all the time forces you to push everywhere and I saw my times continue to go down with each run. I can’t wait to use this more! It was definitely worth it.

This past weekend, we took the trip down to Port Angeles WA for the first NW Cup, also a Pro GRT. It was the closest thing to a world cup and there were a lot of top world cup riders there.

The practice times were split up between the different categories so we found ourselves waiting around a lot for practice to start. There were also different courses for the different categories meaning that the courses didn’t get beat up nearly as much as they usually would.

Berm before the finish line

I got first out of 54 riders in my category, nearly 3 seconds quicker than second place.