End of season

With the leaves already starting to change colour, me and my Dad pack up the truck for the BC cup finals in Golden, British Columbia. We pulled out of Calgary saturday morning in near negative tempertures, which is odd in August everywhere except Cow town seeing as it has snowed every month of the year here. As we made the drive for kicking horse we stopped in lake louise for one of the best breakfast's I have ever had; a heaping pile of eggs and bacon all stuff in a bagel with some BBQ sauce.

With my stomach full, we got back on the road and arrived at Kicking horse around 11. I geared up got registered and got up the lift to the top of snow covered kicking horse and proceeded to freeze my but off with 70 km/h winds coming at me as I whipped down the fire road on the way to Pioneer, the race course. After thawing my hands I went off for my first run down the hill. The course was near identical to last years race course, which helped me getting only one day of practice. My first run was pretty darn good, I blasted blind down the track at near race pace and from then on I knew it was going to be a good weekend. I managed to crank out a few more runs and just stayed relaxed as I knew I was feeling quite good.

That night me and Daniel went to the Bar to watch UFC 118. As a Mixed Martial Arts superfan I was pretty excited for the nights card which pitted 5x UFC champion Randy Couture against current IFA heavyweight boxing champ James Toney. It was an interesting matchup as a striker of that caliber had never fought in the UFC before, but "The Natural" Couture quickly submitted the boxer in the 1st round. Being a massive fan of Couture I was amped to see him pull of such a descisive victory. This only added to the positive energy I had surronding the race.

On race day I got up to a beautiful view of misty mountain tops out the hotel window, banged out three runs and then proceeded to watch the weather turn horrid. It rained earlier in the week put it hadn't been this wet. I sat and watched as riders came down progressivly getting dirtier and muddier. When it was finally time to go up I slapped a makeshift fender on my bike (a cut inner tube zip tied to the fork crown and arch) and headed up the lift with Dan. On the way up me and Dan were pretty care free joking and laughing, for the 15 minutes in the gondola. We exited the gondola and were greeted by a pounding blizzard at the top of the mountain. We somehow managed to make it to the course without being able to see from all the slete and muck flying into your face. There was a few patches of snow at the top of the track which pretty much guarenteed a loose and messy run. After joking and messing around on the way up I started up my pre race routine to get focussed. This includes cracking most of the injured joints in my body, swinging my arms laterally across my chest and tapping my Leatt brace against my stem plate. I set off down the hill and took it pretty easy for the first few meters but as soon as I hit the pioneer rock drop it was on! I began to let the brakes go and nailed the upper section of course. about halfway down shortly after a highspeed section I mis-timed a pre-hop of some roots and went down hard over the bars and slid about thirty feet from my bike, but the conditions were so bad I almost excpected it so I was able to keep focussed and run back to my bike and hop on without loosing to much of "race" state of mind. I got up sprinted back to my bike and ran with it until i was able to jump back on and get rolling again. I finished of my run really well by doing a massive drift through a wet berm in perfect control. As I got on the final sprint I was already exhausted but I just told myself that there was no way in hell I was going to sit down. I stayed standing and put absolutley every ounce of energy I had into the 45 second dash to the finish. I crossed the line with my legs burning more than books at a Nazi rally.

I ended up finsihing in seventh place which was a pretty soild result, but it also makes me more hungry for next year and this years remaining races because I know I could have been on the podium if I hadn't crashed. It reaffirms in my mind that I have the speed to make it on to podiums and know its just up to me to put it together and do it!