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Two, Two and Two |
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Written by Andrew Freye
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Tuesday, 29 May 2007 |
 2 races, 2 days, 2 countries:
Round two of the Canadian Cup was held at Bromont. There is a lot of history behind Bromont and mountain biking. I heard the 3rd world championships were held there, besides that Bromont has been the home to several world cup races, and even the masters world cup a handful of times.
With this kind of history you can expect some great mountain biking. The course was amazing! Lots of short steep open climbs and ripping fast down hills. It wasn’t straight up and straight back down like a lot of other New England courses, this one kept you on your toes the entire time. The climbs were not long enough to kill yourself, and the down hills were not long enough to get your muscles cold. In my opinion this was a real mountain bike race.
Kirk Turner, John Burns and Mike Joos all made the trip up to race in the elite category. The condo I stayed at with fellow Bikeman.com teammates was huge! Turned out I waited to the week of the event to get a place and the smallest place available was a huge 3 bed room, 3 story condo. The price wasn’t too bad, it would have been nice to get another head or two in with us to bring down the price. We arrived in Bromont Thursday afternoon and spun out the legs. That evening the four of us watched Wedding Crashers (which came with the condo, and was one of 2 dvds in English). On Friday we got to finally check out the course and did a couple of laps. I even saw my old high school coach Todd Wheelden out for a spin.
Race Day, lets just say some days you’ve got it and other days you don’t. With that type of an introduction to the race you can pretty much tell I didn’t have a good day. During the warm up a cleat came off my shoe. Not good. I am running these Shimano pedals from the 90’s and they aren’t looking too good. I started off in the 20’s and was fading back to high 30’s. Going into my 5th lap (out of 6) my body just shut down at the bottom of a decent. I got real cold and puked a little. I guess my body was telling myself to stop pushing. I listened to it and called it a day. I was pretty bummed about it. I would have like to have finished, but some days you just don’t have it. Turns out Wheelden (aka wheels) had it in him. Wheels took a big win by about 2 min in the old man expert class. Not to bad for your first race of the year! Congrats. I also don’t think I would have been able to finish. Turns out those pedals from the 90’s were about to explode. The left pedal’s bearings blew and there is about a quarter inch of play side to side in it. Now its time to cross my fingers and hope the new Times actually come in the mail.
That evening everyone parted there ways and headed on home. I made it back to Winthrop around 10:00pm. Just enough time to shower up and get ready for another days race! Yeah that’s right I headed east to the first stop of the Maine Mountain Bike Association in Camden, Maine. This course is under 3 miles long and the experts did 4 laps. Seeing how I had gotten in late and was pretty tired Saturday night the El Santo didn’t get any attention. In the parking lot I was getting a lot of grief for having a dirty bike; even though it was raining and the course was a complete mud bog and our bikes were going to get caked in mud in like .2 seconds I didn’t think it really mattered.
Well this race went a little bit better than Bromont. Off the start I was in second place behind local Pro Matt Boobar. Boobar had a 15 second lead on me after lap one. Going into lap four the gap had grown to about 45 seconds. My legs were feeling mighty heavy, but I wanted to give it my all. About 200 meters from the finish line I had closed the gap to about 20 seconds and then I slammed my knee into the handle bar! You know when you go over a wet bridge or root and you unclip unexpectedly and boom your knee hits right on the knee cap making square contact with the handle bar. Yeah that pretty much ended the race. Lucky enough for me I had a big enough gap on 3rd place and I pedaled with one foot into the finish line finishing in a respectable 2nd place.
Overall not too shabby for two races in two days, in two different countries. I must say this was a first for me. I don’t think I would highly recommend it many people because you sure are tired after the second race! I had a great time in Canada even though the race didn’t go over to well. Just being with fellow bike friends and hanging out is a great time and that is part of what makes racing as a professional so much fun. Till next time take care and keep the wheels spinning.
A
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