Norco Grassroots rider Monilee at Nationals
Hello all,
It’s been a while but it’s been good … after all, how much better does it get than spending 24 hours on your bike in the Canadian Rockies? Oh, maybe some sleep 
Wanted to give you a quick run down on Canadian Nationals – I’ll post a full blog report soon.
Summary:
Place: 2nd
Details of ride: ~275Km, 18,000 feet of climbing, and 18 hours on the bike
Details:
The drive up was amazing – great scenery and great company. I drove up through Vancouver to pick up Kate – amazing friend and support crew extraordinaire – and her roommate Lila. The drive flew by – we were catching up and just enjoying the great views along the way. Road trips with good friends always fly by …
The weekend was relaxed .. Kate and I wandered around town, found some good food, did some shopping, and went up to the site to set up the pit and get in a ride. We found the course in pretty good shape – about 18km and 1450ft of climbing per lap. Loads of single-track but most of it was not really technical …but super fun none the less. It wasn’t a course that played to my skills but it was a fun and challenging course – worthy of Canadian Nationals.
Race day brought warm weather (about 30C) and blue skies … so we got the ice scarfs going right away. The first few laps flew by … stomach was holding together pretty well and eating was on track. Kate was giving me double feeds (2x per lap) so my drinks were always cool and I never ran out of liquids. Around lap 4 my stomach started to feel funny but i couldn’t quite place it. Looking back eating Perpetuem in the heat was the wrong call … later in the race we figured this out and the Hammer guys hooked us up with some Heed (thanks Hammer!) … it’s the only thing that got me through the race …
After 10 hours of racing I was right behind the leader – about 8 min back. But my stomach felt funny so i decided i should take a quick break. After an hour i went back out and my first lap felt great. I think i ate too many salts though … my second lap was painful. I had to stop. Unfortunately I was sick for a few hours before Kate convinced me to shower and offered chicken broth which was amazing … i was back in action after 4 hours off the bike.
I had some catching to do … 2nd and 3rd were both ahead of me. I like to chase though so off I went … my legs felt great and i was turning out the laps. I passed 2nd and 3rd in my first lap out and continued to gain on them. 1st was too far ahead so i knew it was out of the question … but i still pushed hard.
All in all it was a good race – a great effort despite the stomach.
Thanks again to Samammish Valley Cycle for keeping my awesome Norco’s up and running – and of course, thanks to Kate for her amazing support!
Monilee
