Bromont World Cup

Racing a world cup is hard. Racing only one world cup a year is even harder. This was by far the hardest and most challenging race I have done and will do all year.

Because the world cup was coming to town, every hotel, motel and condo in Bromont and the surrounding communities decided it would be a good idea for all of them to jack up there lodging prices and make high minimum night stays. The original plan was to head up Friday am, but because the motel I was trying to stay at had a 3 night min I had to head up Thursday night. The next closest option was to rent a place in VT. So Hattie and I made the drive up Thursday pm to Canada and we didn’t have any problems.

Friday morning I went over to the venue. Sram did an over hall on my 06 SID that wasn’t doing too well. The guys also said they never want to see my El Santo again. Some free parts will be needed if they don’t want to see the bike again… While the guys worked on the fork I went out for a ride on the lap. The course was pretty much identical to the Canada Cup race back in May. The course had a way long and pretty steep climb followed by a nice decent and then a good stretch of some nice single track. Everything was going great until the last 1k of the course. Somehow an invisible ghost flying through the air T boned me, end result me getting a nasty bruise on my right quad; invisible ghost got away without a scratch. Damn ghosts.

The rest of Friday and Saturday I spent icing my injured quad; it sucked. The good part about having two full days without travel and work meant I had a lot of time to sleep. The bed in the motel was awesome! I slept about 10+ hours a night plus a nap Friday and Saturday. The extra sleep and constant icing of the nasty bruise on my quad helped speed up recovery.

Race day I woke up to rain! It had been raining for most of the night and it didn’t look like it was about to let up anytime soon. The rain reinforced my decision to race the El Santo with the Panaracer Trailrakers 2.1. I had my normal pre race meal at the normal pre race time and I was feeling alright. The rain stopped around noon, just as the females were about to go off. By the time I headed out to warm up the rain had let up, but the skies were still coated in dark clouds. I had an alright call up, 5th from last. My start went really well, I was right up there with some big guys like Carl Decker, Wicks, Snedon, to name a few. The first lap was crazy tough. The course was so muddy that it was hard to ride all by yourself, let alone with another 100 guys. There was a ton of running on the 1st lap. On the 2nd lap I was able to ride a lot more of the single track and moved up quite a few spots. I was riding with Subaru Gary Fisher rider Sam Shultz for a while. I think somewhere on lap 2 Sam pulled away from me on the climb.

Going through the feed zone for lap three Hattie yelled to me “this is your last lap!” I thought she was serious so I really picked up the pace. As I approached the lapped rider pull area I noticed they were not pulling riders! Good news I don’t get pulled so early, bad news my legs have to push me up that damn climb one more time. Going into the 4th lap my legs were feeling heavy, esp my bruised quad, and the bike wasn’t functioning to well. I think the gears are worn out a lot more than I thought and the drive train wasn’t holding up all that well in the mud. I continued to put my head down and hammer away at the climb. I picked off a few riders and moved up into the top 50!

I can’t believe I actually broke the top 50 at a world cup! I was super stoked about the result, but at the same time slightly disappointed. I feel like with some better equipment and another shot I could have been even higher. Maybe if I went to Mount Sainte Anne I would have known just really what I am capable of? All I know is that after a solid result at a world cup I have enough fuel for another long winter of training!

Immediately after finishing I hit up the hose and semi cleaned off the mud. I had to leave as soon as possible because unlike anyone else at the World Cup I had a 9-5’er to be at Monday morning. I did take time to hit up the Tim Hortin’s in Bromont to pick up 3 donuts!

Thank you to all of you who have helped me out this year, big or small. Without your help I would not have been able to achieve such results and accomplish my goals.