Last weekend was my first BC cup race. We drove three hours from Silverstar to Sun Peaks on Saturday morning to practice riding the course to prepare for the race. We got our passes, registered and hopped on the chairlift. I was surprized at what I saw on the top of the mountain. I had to wait in line again. Not only to get on the chairlift, but to get on the race course. Only one person at a time go and with around 175 people, it took quite a while. We probably waited at the top for around half an hour before getting our first run in.
The course was a lot faster than I expected and was mostly straight with a few ruffed up berms. It was in pretty good condition the first day and I rode it only three times to make sure that my hands were fine for the next day. Sunday, the day of the race, I rode the course twice and I was surprised on how much it had gotten beaten up. It was time to race. I went up to the top right after Caleb who raced forty minutes ahead of me. Unfortunetly, there was a huge delay after someone crashed pretty badly on the course and everything was held up for almost an hour. The bugs were horrible.
Finaly it was my time to go. Everything was going fine and I noticed that the course was even more beaten up than when I had ridden it a few hours before. I noticed this especially when I crashed from hitting a deep hole that wasn’t there before. As soon as that happened I knew I had no chance of winning, but I tried as quickly as I could to find my bike and continue. The rest of the course was slow going for me because my handlebars and breaks were slippery because of all the dust and dirt that got on them when I crashed. I made it down, and was disappointed when I heard that I was in 4th place. I ended up being 17th, 43 seconds slower than the fastest racer in my category. I may not have gotten first if I wouldn’t have crashed, but I certainly would have been a lot happier being in the top 5. Oh, well. Hopefully the race here in Silverstar will go better!
Even though you crashed you still learned a lot about the whole BC and Canada Cup race circuit. Perhaps the biggest thing you learned is that you need to time your practice runs so that you can be one of last people out on the course before the course is shut down so that you can get the most up to date status of the track. Planning ahead and expecting or anticipating where a course will become rutted is also a skill you will need to develop. You definitely have the biking part dialed, now you just have work out all the other details. You will…
I am looking forward to seeing your results on at SilverStar in a couple of weeks.