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!
