Lethbridge Coulee Cruiser

Morning started off picking up Shawn, Jon and Devin for the commute to Lethbridge for the Coulee Cruiser, first local mountain bike race of the season that was delayed from last Sunday due to snow. We loaded up at Tim Hortons and through the magic of back seat driving I was actually able to navigate out of the city. A while into the trip I realized the black coffee I had ordered was lost in translation to the Tim Horton's 24 hour staff; somewhat humorous as a few of our orders were fairly straightforward but still posed difficulty.  I'm sure the Saturday night shift on 17th avenue is difficult to find staff for.  The week wait was well worthwhile, it was 20C and sunny for the race today. Course had a small dollop of mud here and there, but that was it.

I had a very lazy day yesterday, just seemed overall tired, from what I'm not sure. I felt better this morning as we warmed up, but I still didn't feel keen to accelerate on hills until I absolutely had to, ie. the race.

All the Expert groups were started together, Devin took the hole shot and I stayed close to his wheel on the first climb, too close actually. I surprised myself at how near I was, only to realize I big ringed the climb, and guessed I'd be paying for that later. Course was nice as always, quite a bit of climbing, but not as hard as they'd made it in year's past - a few less ultra steep sections per lap. Only one dismount was needed, seemingly from everyone, a sharp uphill accute angle off camber turn. For the first three laps I bobbed about 10-20m behind Devin, felt generally good, food and drink were going in fine and at what felt like pretty good timing. On the end of the third lap I got passed by a Bow guy who also caught up to and passed Devin. I couldn't hold their pace, and Devin hung onto his wheel until the end kilometer through the gravel pit, where the natural spacing of riding a downhill was too hard a gap to close in the headwind at the bottom. Toward the end of the 4th lap I was being closed in on from behind, and couldn't tell if it was a rider in our group or the leading Elite - sort of thought it was Brian Bain leading the Elites, but couldn't be sure, you know how the rear view mirror can be a little bouncy on the mountain bike...

I did what I could on the downhill, and shoulder checked when coming onto the last kilometer of gravel to see if the 15m gap was still there. The wind had really picked up, so if I was only a couple meters ahead, I was going to have to decide if we cat and mouse in the wind to the end, or just race it with a gap. Turns out the gap held, so cat and mouse was off the table. I decided to quit acting like a fairy and do what is supposedly my strength, pushing hard on the flats. Got the had down nice and low and attempted to induce vomiting via pushing pedals.

It seemed to work, but in the end it was Brian, so I was really just racing myself. Finished in 3rd, which I'm happy with, especially considering yesterday I spent most of the day feeling super tired and making every effort not to do anything that took any effort. Without mechanicals or wipeouts, or time lost on no-pass sections, it felt like a fair measure of my fitness.

Devin was second as mentioned. In the Elites, Shawn was third after Brian Bain and Jeff Neilson. I think Pete Lawrence was fourth and Jon was fifth.

The real fun of the day wasn't the results, but the fun of hanging out with they gang all day, shooting the shit on the commute, and biking without shivering in the beautiful sunshine.

Relatively small turnout surprised me. Only 4 deadgoats to the first race of the year?