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Down Deep |
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Written by Andrew Freye
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Tuesday, 05 June 2007 |
 Down Deep: Canada Cup #3 Tremblant Canada:
Tremblant ski resort is about 90 minutes north of Montreal and by far was the easiest place to find lodging for out of the three Canada Cups. The web site actually had an English page and everything was actually in English! This made booking a condo very easy. However, this race would be the hardest race to fully coordinate lodging with everyone else.
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People were coming then not coming, some didn’t fully read their email about how much it would cost, and no one put up a down payment. This part of coordinating lodging with a large group of people makes it very stressful. Despite the stress of trying to coordinate the lodging the condo made up for it. We stayed on a hill side and had beautiful views that overlooked Tremblant ski resort village.
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Back in September my girlfriend Hattie and I decided to collect bottles throughout the dorm and save up for a vacation this summer. After looking at my race schedule we decided it would be great for her to come to the final Canada Cup that I would be attending and then go to Montreal for two days afterwards.  | | click to enlarge |
Well turns out with bottles and the two of us competing in a school competition we raised enough money to go to Montreal for the weekend, so Hattie got to join me up at Tremblant! Down side was that Hattie had an Antimony and Physiology exam Thursday morning (summer course) and a quiz in the lab that afternoon.  | | click to enlarge |
This postponed our drive up by a few hours. Once Hattie made it up to Winthrop we were off! We left Winthrop around 4:00pm. By 8pm we had made it to Montreal! Not bad for timing, especially when Mapquest quoted a 7 hour drive. Down side was that after Montreal I didn’t really know where I was going. Some words of advice, when traveling in a foreign country, or any part of your own nation that you have never been to, bring a map! Seeing how I made it to Montreal by 8:00pm and its only 90 minutes up to Tremblant I should have been there by 9:30, well not having a map put me in Tremblant around 10:40pm.
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On Friday I got to check out the course that everyone else in the condo (John Burns, Kirk Turner, Mike Joos, all got to the condo at a reasonable time) was talking and raving about. The course was kick ass! Great open climbs, fast flowing single track, and some sketchy technical down hills!  | | click to enlarge |
The Canadians sure do know how to design a mountain bike course. I was feeling great on Saturday and was ripping it up! This was a good boost for moral since last weekend's race did not go too well. As the Bikeman elite team was out doing our pre ride Hattie was on a mission to find some shorts in the village. Turns out some random heat wave brought temps in the 90’s and some serious humidity that neither of had planned on. Her mission was a failure.
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Race day: It doesn’t matter what kind of shape you are in, if you head isn’t screwed on tight and in the right direction you can have a bad day. My head hasn’t been screwed on tight and surely hasn’t been facing the right direction lately. The week leading up to Tremblant was not good training wise. I just seemed really tired all the time. Well, with that the start went really well.  | | click to enlarge |
First lap I was right around 20 according to Hattie’s count. I was semi determined to gain ground and not loose ground. Well that failed as groups of 5 seemed to keep passing me. Didn’t matter what I did or how hard I tried to push I just kept fading. After the first group passed me my mind just starting slipping. You then start thinking to yourself “Why are you doing this week in and week out?” and once that happens you are done. On lap 5 I got a flat and that was it for me. I basically beat myself up so much mentally I was done. This isn’t a stage a pro (or anyone) wants to find themselves in. I have been in low’s before, but this time I am down deep. Something good will happen shortly, I am sure of it.
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Montreal! Well after a couple long weeks of driving back and fourth to Canada it was time to take a small vacation and relax (kinda sorta). Again when driving through a foreign country or any geographical area you are not familiar with carry a map! To sum things up the directions to the hotel stunk and with no map Hattie and I were again lost! We left Tremblant around 5 and it was almost 8 by the time we got to our hotel.  | | click to enlarge |
That night we just hit up the hot tub and relaxed. Sunday morning we got up early and headed into the city. We walked all day long! The day was spent walking around the old port of Montreal. It was free museum day in Montreal, so we hit up two of the historic museums.  | | click to enlarge |
On top of that there was a big Candy festival going on! Thankfully we just had lunch and were pretty full when we saw the candy festival so we didn’t get any and kept the racer diet going well. For dinner we had steak and lobster and it was great! The whole day was perfect. By the time we made it back to the hotel I just crashed. I was so tired and my feet were so sore. Overall is was a great and well needed vacation.
I am still a little bummed about the two past Canadian cups. Hopefully I can come out of this slump soon. I have a solid month before my first world cup of the year. That should be enough time to screw my head on tight and get it facing in the right direction.
A
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