The team "Committed or should be" ended up consisting of 4 riders:
Steve Mathezer
Geoff Harding
Nathan Paisley
Myself :-)
After all kinds of panic and scrambling to fill out the team came to nought, we decided to do the best we could with three riders, and I would debate the wisdom of riding with a half ironman only one week in my future.
Joanne was designated as the den-mother for this team, and Nathan, Joanne and myself met in Canmore on friday night, and put together a great setup for our base. I spent the first night tuning up Nathans ride, and he was quite happy with the results. And I am happy to report that the truing stand got used this year, and that Nathans wheel was more true after I finished with it than when I started. I have only trued one other wheel, so I was happy with the results as well.
Steve arrived in the morning, and got setup himself. We sent Joanne down to pick up Geoff, and they got somewhat stuck in traffic. The rest of the team had already Volun-told Geoff that he would ride the first lap, and therefore also get to do the Lemans start. We had to rush to get Geoff, because he had little warning that he was going first as well.
The order of rides was
Geoff - starting at 12:00
Steve - 13:45ish to 15:00
Nathan - 15:00 - 17:00
Geoff - 17:00ish-18:30
Steve - 2 laps until 22:00
Nathan - 22:00ish to midnight
I did my volunteer stint, keeping the transtition handoff area clear. I had a number of times where I was telling teams that they could not hang around in this area, ie "You can't be in here", only to realize they were handing off the Baton and I was delaying them, so I pat them on the back, and say GO GO GO.
Joanne came in before Geoff was to go out next, and informed me of the "Den Mother" decision that she had made. Doing a hard second lap in the heat, with not enough recovery time before, had really wiped him out. He was still wrecked when Joanne told him that he was not going out, and came and informed me of decision. I agreed, and Geoff called it a night.
Nathan did a good lap, and the team called it a night. I slept in the Zero Gravity chair, hard to get comfy at first, but a good nights sleep after all that.
We did three more laps in the morning, with Geoff leading, Steve did the next, and I did the ceremonial last lap, after I could not convince Nathan that he wanted to do one more lap.
So I start out, and the first thing that happens is that my contacts dry out, and I am blinking like crazy to get them moistened. That first set of long uphills really takes it out of my, and I stop for a breather at the top. Then we are into the single track, and the fun begins. The first downhill I have to do, there is a tricky drop and the end, I lock up the front brakes, and do a low speed crash, nice knee scrape. Smart. Straighten the seat out and readjust, go about another 100m, and dump the bike on the other side. Smarter still Gord!
OK, now that we have that over, we can get on with the real riding. I find that I was still having real trouble with the downhills, nerves really I think. I found that the uphills were much easier in the past, I was picking the right routes, and powering my way up. It had to be all the resistance training over the winter that did it.
I had one reall exciting downhill to speak of. On my way up the hill, I passed a fellow who had crashed and I heard swearing. Asking if he was Ok, he stated that he broke his front brake lever, but no worries, he would just take the downhills faster, and therefore didn't need it anyway. So now I am in front, going down what turns out to be long section of single track, with no chance to pull off to the side, with a guy with no brakes behind me, when we hear the call of another rider coming fast behind us. OK, no stopping here, and turns out I dont need brakes either. We booggied down this hill, bouncing like crazy and thinking Dont Crash Dont Crash Dont Crash. Finally got to the bottom, and let both guys fly past me.
I recognized the area as we got to the end, and had power left to crank it up. I passed several people in the chute, and as it is now 12:00, and the end of the race, the crowd cheered like crazy as I raced down the chute, locked up the brakes in the dirt and ran through to the timing tent to drop off my baton. I surprised the team with my time, as I met them on my way back to the campsite, they were heading up to cheer me in, but just a few minutes late.
All in all, a very intense and fun weekend!
I asked Nathan to provide me with his thoughts about the race, as this was the first time he had done anything like this, and he sent the following:
I would love to do this again next year and the year after and...
As for rider experience for your blog:
Having realized, after I went for my first lap, that this was the first time I had ever really mountain biked, I think I did well for having winged it. The uphills were long and plentiful but lead to the most entertaining trails I have ever ridden. The joy of roaring down a hill, bike bouncing around like mad, was enhanced even more during the night time lap as I no longer really knew where I was going. I am extremely excited for next year as I hope to be on the trail more and be go uphill and enjoy it as much as I enjoyed going downhill.
This was probably the most fun, self exploratory, and physically intensive thing I have ever done.
Pictures and video to come when we get them processed
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