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Last weekend in sunny Bromont,Quebec the Canada Cup XC series wrapped up for 2010. To date this has been a great Season for our Factory Team riders Andrew and Catherine, both in the running for Overall series titles.

Well they both ran into a little bad luck… Catherine flatted on her 2nd lap, having to run into the pits for a wheel change. She held strong
fighting back some spots, but had to settle for 2nd Overall in the
series….Not Bad.

Andrew was having a trouble free race battling it out with fellow National Team rider Derek Zandstra and Great Brittan’s Olympian Liam Killen, just before the last piece of single track he lost control and found himself hitting the deck hard. After collecting thoughts he rolled off course, not being able to finish. Good news being he had enough points to hold on and WIN the Overall..

With a 1st and 2nd in the overalls, both look forward to a World Cup in New York followed by World Championships in Mont St Anne in the coming weeks.

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