My first two Mountain Bike Races!!

The Sunshine Coaster and Ore Crusher were so much fun!! Judging by the fact that walking was a painful chore afterwards, I definitely pushed myself to my max, and now, I just need to work on skill!! I found that in both races, being a road racer and all, I was able to power up the non-technical climbs and flats and use those to my advantage, it was just when we hit the more technical sections that I couldn't ride them very fast. I found it very helpful having cyclocross skills for those obstacles that I couldn't ride- being able to dismount and mount quickly and run with my bike until I could get back on.

The Sunshine Coaster was the first mountain bike race that I had ever done, and wasn't quite sure what to expect despite the pre-race talks from my Local Ride teammates. I had a really good start, and was right up there on the climbs, once we hit the more technical trails I lost some ground, but again, was able to make it up on the non-technical climbs that followed! The race was so much fun despite all my crashes, and gave me a taste of mountain biking! I couldn't wait for Ore Crusher after that :)

Once again, we hit the road early and got up to Squamish BC with plenty of time before the race! So we (the team and I) pre-rode half of the muddy (but still epic) course and then it made sense what everyone was saying about there being quite a few roots...! Same as the Sunshine Coaster, I was right up there with the leaders on the non-technical start and then started loosing ground to those better technical racers. Although, I held my own and used my cyclocross skills to get myself through the mud and to the finish were I finished the Cycling BC Youth Mountain Bike Series Race and then did another lap to finish the Ore Crushers u17 race!

All in all, the small taste of Mountain Biking I have gotten these past months has been awesome! Thanks to everyones support and especially to my Local Ride teammates for all the help and encouragement!!


The Local Ride Family at the Sunshine Coaster
Finishing Ore Crusher


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Back on (the) Track

Image
Hello beautiful people! I have been pretty neglectful of my blog lately... so here will be my attempt to do a short recap of my year since my last blog after my crash in Copenhagen. For those of you who have read my other blogs you'll notice I'm not great at condensing content so this will be today's challenge to not write a novel (also to not use a million exclamation points... that one might be a bit far fetched)! So the last chapter ended with me in the recovery process from my broken face and prepping for my first block of road racing in California. All in all, Chico and San Dimas Stage Races went much better than I would of guessed, especially considering my February endurance block kind of fell off the track (no pun intended). Following California, I hopped on a plane back to Quebec to meet my new Macogep-Argon18-Girondins p/p Mazda teammates. Do the whole team photoshoot, sponsor dinner, become instant friends and some serious bonding on a 26hr drive down to Arka...
Read more

Junior Track World Championships 2016

Image
5 weeks away from home, 3 different beds, 3 crashes, National and World class racing, 12 amazing teammates and probably most impressively, a bronze medal in the women’s omnium at Junior Track World Championships! After Nationals, me, Erin, Cam Fitzmaurice and John Willcox piled into a car with our bikes and drove 5 hours to Milton, Ontario, where the next 2 weeks were spent training at the 250m velodrome. The training was intense, with usually two sessions a day and included some longer road rides to keep the endurance up. As well, we did lots of team pursuit work on the track to get me, Erin, Ali Vanyzendoorn, Devaney Collier and Laurie Jussaume up to speed as the first Junior Women’s team pursuit team Canada has sent to Worlds in around 4 years. We grew very close over the total of 4 weeks that we lived together, and had a blast building our relationship as teammates and friends, as not many of us knew each other too well before this. Card playing, nail painting, baking and a trip...
Read more

January European Track Adventure

Image
I can't believe it's already almost March! The past two months have blown by, but everyday has been so full and impactful that I could probably relate every single event of every single one of the past 51 days from memory. My last blog post ended with me sitting in the small air bnb in beautiful Gent, Belgium, just days out of competition. By the end of that week, I had resurrected my jump and bunch racing legs and was race ready! The first day of the Belgian International TrackMeeting consisted of a Points Race, where I rode a safe race, but needed to have more confidence in my abilities and trust that I had great form to do better than the 9th place I ended up with. That night we put together a last minute Madison pairing of Chiara Consonni (ITA) and I and we dove right into the race with our first ever exchange being on lap 2. Probably one of the sketchiest Madisons I've ever done but we got through it, not missing an exchange and finishing on the same lap as ...
Read more