My turn to make side line picks. After a couple minutes of meticulous results, course, condition, weather data crunching.
*No particular order*
Men:
Raph- Won Tremblant and dont think he'll drop outside the top 5
Yeti- Awesome ride in Nove Mesto and now cleared of jet leg
Other Evan- Fresh off a top 30 world cup performance and will ride with the strength of two Evans instead of one
Flying Bouchard- Name says enough
Tony and J- will sprint it out again but Antoine will get it this time, with a sudden display of sprinting prowess, just to balance out the universe a bit.
Women:
Amanda- top 30 in La Bresse, best WC of season
AP- 11th in La Bresse? No problem
Jeaner- Watched her ride single track maybe twice as fast as every other women in the field last weekend. BSP is techincal
Sandra- Tremblant winner and hungry for more
Fudge- Finished her 100 year schooling marathon and is now squarely in a bike racing mindset
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Thursday, May 24, 2012
No BSP for me - sad face
Unfortunately I’m going to have to sit out the
Baie-Saint-Paul Canada Cup this weekend due to a small leg injury. After the legendary Physio Tara Baker pampered my high maintenance knee all trip, I had to go and tweak the
semitendinosus in La Bresse and the long travel day made it angry. A very, very
tough decision to make but the physio guy in Kingston laid it straight: “You could be 100%
in a week [skip race] or 70% for a month [shred some BSP soil]”. Well seeing as
how Nationals and the North American world cups are next month I had to make
the smart call. Even though I think I could be good to go for BSP, a full race
effort might be too much to ask for off the bat and would be risky. I've never had a major injury, but the small ones left untreated could build up
Sunday, May 20, 2012
WC #4 Report ya hear
 |
| Cookin up Crepe pizzas after the race |
We were greeted in France with sub zero temperatures, rain, snow, sleet and did I mention it was really cold. Other Evan had to lit a toasty fire for us with his bushman skills. Still bloody cold when we were checking out the course the next day. It was muddy, maybe because of the snow on the ground the night before. Old school track with one big up followed by one big down, had McNeely written all over the soil.
The weather slowly got nicer over the following couple days and the hermit crab crawled out of its shell to explore the city. Not a city really, more of a very classic french village.
It hot and sunny once race day came. I started about as well as last weekend in Nove Mesto which really isn't bad seeing as how the start loop was short, tight and fast. Riding in the low 40s for the first lap, but it wasn't an "OK lets move up" low 40s. More of an "OMG this is really hard why cant I go anywhere" low 40s. Certainly didn't move up, only continued to move back wards at a 3rd degree parabolic rate. Felt like I couldn't breath at the top of the climb, guess my body just didn't show up for the party. It was doing Ballroom when everybody else was doing Tango.
Today the Elites raced with Canadas, and Specialized, own Max Plaxton earning a single digit result. Two very dramatic finishes that could require a few more blog posts to be written. I'll just say I swear i heard the girl standing behind me start crying when Julien Absalon crashed on the final decent. The atmosphere was intense!
Now time to fly back home and rest up for the Canada cup at Baie-saint Paul.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
WC # report from yesterday
Well... I wrote a whole blog race update thing yesterday day but this "app" crashed and I lost everything. Official boycott starting now, and autocorrect is making me angry to. It went something like this.
Title: Ughguehghgheughhfhv World Cup #3 update
The title (^) pretty much sums up how I feel right now (that's yesterday). I thought "cross gut" was reserved specifically for skinny tire dirt loop racing in the winter. Guess not. (forgot what wrote yesterday but insert stupid comment joke here).
It's been awhile since my last MTB WC. The start line claustrophobia-testosterone kicks in as 118 beefy, greasy, grown men pile on to a 4 meter wide strip of pavement. Felt a little closer than usual. Front tires touching calves and handlebars jammed into hips. Much closer than any road race or road sprint I've ever seen. The 29r isn't a real advantage anymore since everybody's smartened up and gotten one... But then I remember Specialized did it best so I'll just put that one in my back pocket.
However, once the gun went off it was like Moses just parted the field. I had all the room I could ever ask for to sprint down the Tarmac while dodging random skids and barricades. Start loop featured 3 good climbs that will knock your bowls loose. I thought I did a lot better than I did in those first nine minutes. That is, I thought I moved up a lot more than I did but instead rode through in 44th. Same as when I started.
Next 5 laps I moved my way forward, passing 10 guys on the first lap. Trying
to catch some of the large groups I could see up the trail. No crashes, no flats, success. Entered the final lap in 27th, in a group fighting for 26th. I just put my head down and started whimpering. We all stayed together and entered the stadium for a sprint for 26th with me leading, and that was a mistake. But I really didn't have much choice as I passed a guy in the last tech section, which I thought was pretty cool, to take the lead. I kicked from a long ways out and ended up getting S**t pumped to lose to everyone, lunging for 29th.
Still my best world cup result to date, a full 10 places better than the 39th I got in Val di Sole last year. But it's still not in the goal of top 25, where I would WC points and UCI points and overall good livin' points. To be frank, I would punch your grandmother in the ovaries for those damn points.
The Canadian National Team worked like a well lubricated drivetrain today. A huge thank you to everyone! <- and that's the only exclamation point I've used all post to show how sincere it is.
In general I think I think exclamation points are over used in this modern age where !!!!!!!!!! would just mean you did all right.
_________________
That was yesterday's. Today the elites raced with some awesome breakthrough results for Canadians. I really would not want to be the one selecting those Olympic teams.
Title: Ughguehghgheughhfhv World Cup #3 update
The title (^) pretty much sums up how I feel right now (that's yesterday). I thought "cross gut" was reserved specifically for skinny tire dirt loop racing in the winter. Guess not. (forgot what wrote yesterday but insert stupid comment joke here).
It's been awhile since my last MTB WC. The start line claustrophobia-testosterone kicks in as 118 beefy, greasy, grown men pile on to a 4 meter wide strip of pavement. Felt a little closer than usual. Front tires touching calves and handlebars jammed into hips. Much closer than any road race or road sprint I've ever seen. The 29r isn't a real advantage anymore since everybody's smartened up and gotten one... But then I remember Specialized did it best so I'll just put that one in my back pocket.
However, once the gun went off it was like Moses just parted the field. I had all the room I could ever ask for to sprint down the Tarmac while dodging random skids and barricades. Start loop featured 3 good climbs that will knock your bowls loose. I thought I did a lot better than I did in those first nine minutes. That is, I thought I moved up a lot more than I did but instead rode through in 44th. Same as when I started.
Next 5 laps I moved my way forward, passing 10 guys on the first lap. Trying
to catch some of the large groups I could see up the trail. No crashes, no flats, success. Entered the final lap in 27th, in a group fighting for 26th. I just put my head down and started whimpering. We all stayed together and entered the stadium for a sprint for 26th with me leading, and that was a mistake. But I really didn't have much choice as I passed a guy in the last tech section, which I thought was pretty cool, to take the lead. I kicked from a long ways out and ended up getting S**t pumped to lose to everyone, lunging for 29th.
Still my best world cup result to date, a full 10 places better than the 39th I got in Val di Sole last year. But it's still not in the goal of top 25, where I would WC points and UCI points and overall good livin' points. To be frank, I would punch your grandmother in the ovaries for those damn points.
The Canadian National Team worked like a well lubricated drivetrain today. A huge thank you to everyone! <- and that's the only exclamation point I've used all post to show how sincere it is.
In general I think I think exclamation points are over used in this modern age where !!!!!!!!!! would just mean you did all right.
_________________
That was yesterday's. Today the elites raced with some awesome breakthrough results for Canadians. I really would not want to be the one selecting those Olympic teams.
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