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Singletrack6 – Day 3 & 4

Day Three – Invermere. 46km, 1200m.

Riding in Invermere is all about the excitement and anticipation of early season riding with friends, and the joy of being back on a bike on dirt after a long, long winter. Trails there are dry and dusty when the Canmore trails are still packed with ice and snow, and 15oC in Invermere seems more like 20oC… while 15oC in Canmore seems closer to 10oC. It’s like a little magical mountain bike world we can escape to while winter still has Canmore in its icy grip. So I enjoy riding the trails there, and after Nipika I was really looking forward to racing something a little smoother with a little more flow.

We caught the bus out from Radium to a staging area just past Lilian Lake. The start today was in waves as well – six waves this time? I think I was in the second. Later in the day we were going to be riding my old friends, Kloosifier and the Johnson, but first up was a mix of newly built singletrack, and re-purposed dirt bike trails. It was dusty, and a little rough, but I was having a great time!

There were some steep, sandy hike-a-bike climbs (here’s hoping the guys at the front couldn’t ride them all, they were tough!). But the skies were wide open and blue, and the views were fantastic, and I just love the Invermere riding for some reason.

After a good 20km or so on the new trails, we ended up on roads for a while, cutting through a small town before climbing up and up and up on a dirt road. Past the scene of some nefarious course tampering – thankfully it was all properly marked again by the time I got there – and onto the Kloosifier. Except we were doing it backwards! Oh well, still fun. Just… not quite as much fun as it should have been. Also my gears were getting a little weird. I stopped and checked my rear skewer. Nope, still good, wheel not about to fall off. Oh well.

I was flying along and having a great time as we hit the Johnson, and was really looking forward to hammering the final 10km of fun and familiar trail. And then I didn’t have any gears all of a sudden. What?! I stopped and looked. My rear derailleur cable was snapped. This had never happened before, and I wasn’t sure if there was anything I could do to improve the situation. I tried manually pushing my chain over onto an easier gear, but thanks to the lack of cable tension, it just flopped right back onto my hardest gear. Damn. If only I was a better bike mechanic! Oh well, looks like I’m single speeding the rest of this. Damn damn damn! Could be worse.

And so I sadly stopped then fun game I’d been having of gradually reeling people in and overtaking them (these trails really suit my riding apparently … or perhaps it’s the advantage of a familiar course … or more likely I was just riding strong because I was enjoying myself so much). I rode up what I could, and ran my bike up what I couldn’t. And there’s nothing like restricted gear options to stop you from braking too much on the downhills.

I rolled into the finish line a little disappointed, but glad my bike had still been able to keep going – there were worse mechanical issues I could have had.

From there it was straight to Lilian Lake for a soak. Chatting and hanging out with other fellow bike freaks. Then lazing on the grass in the shade. Then hopping back into the lake again. Life is hard.

That evening I dropped my bike off to the race mechanics, had a nap, then icecream, and caught up with an old friend for some tasty Mexican in Radium (who would have thought it?). Fun times.

Day Four – Golden, Mountain Shadows. 28km, 1000m.

I caught a ride with some of the support crew to get from Radium to Golden this morning – no coach rides for me today! We pottered around Golden, I helped unload bikes from the truck, then gradually got organised and rolled the couple of kilometres over to the starting line in the middle of town. My bike was fixed, and today was a short one, on trails I’d never ridden before. With a timed descent that sounded potentially epic. I was a little afraid, but what could possible go wrong?

The tunes of Highway to Hell played us out of town, as our police car escort led us to the base of the climb. Oooh, a climb! I wasn’t feeling warm, but that changed pretty quickly. Every day so far had been reaching 30 – 35oC, and it was warming up as we slogged our way uphill in the sun. Pleasantly we occasionally dived off onto tracks in the trees, before re-emerging to keep climbing on the baking hot road. Brief conversations of few syllables as we climbed. Dust. Sun. Sweat. More climbing.

And then it was descent time! It was all pretty rideable, nice. But a proper descent this time, in a rugged, sandy, rocky, rooty kind of way. There were a few moments of doubt, and some things that I might have walked if I wasn’t racing, and was feeling more timid. I was overtaken by some… overtook others… and then a few of us reached a knocked over course marker. Which way do we go? No idea. We yelled out, and a photographer lurking downhill a little told us to head left. Right. But 20 seconds or so of indecision meant that a big group of us had formed, and so we all headed off downhill together in a pack. Oh well.

From there it was onto the Mountain Shadows trails – which were kind of rocky, rooty, technical and fun! I was enjoying the riding, gradually catching and overtaking some of the downhill speedsters. Past an aid station with bacon (I didn’t partake). A too-sharp turn off double track onto single track, and I ended up side-swiping a stump, which gouged my leg. Blood!

It wasn’t a long day though, and before long we were heading back into town. Spectactors were hanging around, someone sprayed water on me – oh thank you! It was getting warm by then. A final swoopy descent through lovely cool deep forest, and then out onto the river trail through town, trying to reconcile racing as fast as I could with avoiding being too much of a menace on a public trail… then done! And into the river to soak.

I settled in at one of the bistros downtown, joining a Canadian couple who were racing as a team, having a delicious lunch and a very tasty recovery caesar.

It was after that everything started to go pear-shaped. I caught the bus up to the Glacier Mountain Lodge, along with a few other racers. We’d arrived 15 minutes before official check-in, and found the lobby strewn with Singletrack6 folk who were waiting to check-in. Apparently they were short-staffed, and were still cleaning the rooms. I settled in to wait. Tired and hungry. Apparently my room would be about 40 minutes. 2 hours later, I finally got into my room. I’d missed the first bus back down to town, but made the second which was running late.

Now, the downfall of not signing up for meals was that I was then stuck a 25 minute walk from most of the restaurants in town, and the bus driver had said he’d be back in an hour to run us back up the hill. Still tired, still hungry, not thinking clearly, I just walked to the supermarket for food. Nearly melting in the heat. I panic bought a few random items, then headed back to catch the bus. Which wasn’t going to leave for ages yet. Argh!

On the bus ride home, the driver had played us some music from the band of the bus owner. From the poster on the bus wall it looked like death metal. In reality, it was more like the ‘Sesame Street on acid’ that the driver described. Thoroughly hippy, wildly bizarre lyrics, it lent the evening a perfectly surreal tone, as we sat on a school bus, driving up a mountain at 9pm, listening to music that told me that I shouldn’t cut trees down because the squirrels needed them. I really wish I could remember the name of the band, just so I could confirm with myself the whole incident wasn’t just a hallucination.

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bikes canada general trip reports

Singletrack6 – Day 1 & 2

Back in the middle of winter, I entered into a competition by Tourism Golden, to win entry into the Singletrack6 MTB stage race. It was going to be the replacement for the old epic Transrockies bike race from Fernie to Canmore. Just with a lot more sleeping in town, a lot less mud, shorter days, and much much more singletrack. But still six days of bike racing.

Then when we were on holiday down in Bend, I found out I’d won it. And I was a little bit scared, but quite a lot excited.

Day One – West Bragg Creek. 42km, 1500m gain
The event started over on the West Bragg trails. We arrived super early, so I’d have plenty of time to check in. Checking in took 30 seconds. So we spent some time throwing rocks in a creek, and messed around, until all of a sudden it was time to be getting into the starting corale, and I had left it a little late, and crammed in somewhere towards the back of the mid-pack.

The customary ACDC Highway to Hell played over the speakers, and then I spent a lot of the first ten minutes trying to overtake as many people as I could before we hit the singletrack. Where I was stuck. In a slooow slooow singletrack train. It did eventually thin out though – especially once we started climbing up Pneuma!

Things were going pretty smoothly, except I’d started to lose my lower gears – the chain just wouldn’t want to sit in granny gear. I wondered what could be wrong, and whether I’d be able to get my bike seen by a mechanic that afternoon, until somewhere along Strange Brew, my back wheel fell off. Ah. So apparently that’s a thing with the new hollow axles – they can be too dry, and they’ll work their way out, until your wheel will drop out. Fitting my wheel back on fixed the issue with the gears though – hurrah!

I’d lost some time messing around though, and was overtaken by another solo female – although I could out-climb her, she totally outclassed me on the descents, and so as we dropped back down towards the finish line, I didn’t have a hope of catching her. Especially after I ran into a tree with one kilometre to go. Well, the end of my right handlebar ran into a tree. My bike took this as a sign that I wanted to hug the tree. So I did, before picking us both up and continuing.

Day 1 down – that wasn’t so bad! I’d tried to take it as easy as I could – my first real multi-day event, who knows how it would go.

Day Two – Nipika. 42km, 800m gain
Ah, Nipika, my old nemesis. Actually I’d only ridden here once before. Although my memories of it were vague, I was haunted by a sense of not wishing to return. Once we started racing it all came flooding back to me. Nipika is rough! If it’s not rooty it’s rocky. And if there are no roots or rocks, there is constantly uneven ground, so you can never just easily sit and spin to cover distance – you have to fight for Every Single Metre. And for my spinners legs, it’s a challenge. They’re not great at pushing over that kind of terrain.

On the plus side, it is beautiful though.

We started this day in waves of 10, based on the results of the previous day. I was in around the ninth wave, so got to watch some of the fast kids taking off before I set off – and met someone who rode the same awesome bike that I do! She was riding in a mixed pair, and they were the beginning of a collection of riders I ended up getting to know, just because we kept a pretty similar pace each day.

Things got warm, legs kept spinning. I spent most of the last 20km just dreaming of the nice cool pond back at the finish line.

Once I hit the finish line, it was straight to the pond, feeling a little in need of a hug. I’d caught the ST6 bus out to Nipika that morning – just me, my bike and my duffle bag, out to take on the world on our own, while my menfolk stayed home. But it’s a little lonely, doing a big multi-day race on your own. Although I ended up meeting a whole lot of awesome people, it would be really fun to do a race like this with some friends you knew beforehand too.

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bikes canada general

24 Hours of Adrenalin 2014

Another year of riding with one of the teams from work – Go Team!

After all the setting up, and excitement, and hoards of lycra-clad fools running in bike shoes, it was back to the same old rhythm of sit and wait. And cheer. And eat food. And catch up with people. And get ready.

I was up third in the team order this time round. The weather was ok. A bit warm and dusty during the day, but a little rain late in the night and early in the morning settled the dust down.

By the time each of us had done one lap, we had settled into second place in our category. By the end of the night we had even more definitely settled into second place. First was out of reach, with quite a few riders who could put down faster times than us. We were equally comfortably ahead of the third place team though. As a result, the whole thing was a lot less tense than last year, where we were hanging onto first place by just minutes. It also helped that the race hadn’t come on the back of one month of fairly intense flood disaster and recovery.

Thanks to the quirks of fate (involving peanut butter cookies, and perhaps insufficient peanut butter cookies) I ended up riding five of the 22 laps our team finished with. But thanks to the lack of immediate competition, I got to slack off a little on my last lap, so this year I was able to walk around and function like a normal person-coloured human being when I was finally done.

No tragedy, no drama, just a fun bike race. And I didn’t win the slowest lap award this year!

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bikes canada general moosling trip reports

Bikepacking Jumpingpound Ridge

With a couple of sunny days at our disposal, a new set of bike bags for Alex finally complete, it seemed about time for an overnight bike adventure.

We’d been hoping to do a big loop from home and out into K-Country, via the Elbow loop. It’s still in poor shape following the floods though, so instead we opted for good old Jumpingpound Ridge, where the camping is free and the views can’t be beaten.

The road is still closed to cars, hurrah, and so we had a quiet ride out, much like last time.

This time we were riding early enough to hit wildflower season though, which was nice.

Once we hit the trailhead for our path up to the summit though, the flowers disappeared and the boy was kicked out of his trailer to walk up. Some genius had placed geocaches every 200 – 300 metres along the path. Usually this would annoy me, but on this day, it was perfect bait to lure on a small boy who started to get a little fed up with jumping over roots.

The last push up to the ridge over, we settled in just below the summit to cook dinner in the same spot as last time. Last time it was a bit cold, with a wind picking up that was bringing rain with it. This time it was eerily still, and swarming with mosquitos.

We ran around in circles, slapping and stomping as we enjoyed our dinner and the views. The mosquitos weren’t actually terribly bitey, most of them just hovered in confusion, not sure what to do with the vast expanses of delicious food that had turned up before them. They were a good incentive to get the tent set up though, which we did, piece by piece, in between running around in circles to shake off the clouds of mosquitos (except for Alex, who was for too dignified for such behaviour).

We didn’t bother with the fly on the tent, as the forecast was good, and it was easy to keep an eye on any incoming weather from where we were. We lay in the tent, and eventually switched from mosquito hiding and sky watching, to actual sleep.

A few storms rolled around on the far edge of the horizon overnight. We heard low rumbles of thunder, and watched lightning flashing in the distance. But the sky above us stayed clear, and filled with stars, and the temperature dropped enough to scare the mosquitos away.

The next day dawned wonderfully clear and warm. I watched bits and pieces of the sunrise from the tent, occasionally sticking my head up to acknowledge the different colours banding along the horizon.

As tempting as it would have been to keep lying in the tent, the sun was starting to shine on us with intent, and we had a 3.5 year old in there with us, who is quite insistent that if the sun is up, he should be up.

It was still a lazy and meandering sort of disassembly of camp. There was tea to be drunk, and gear to be thoughtfully rearranged in new bags, as we meditated on the optimal arrangement for the future.

On the descent we found just one surprise drift of snow – not too bad if you’re just out for a day trip, but a small challenge to get around with fully loaded bike and trailer. That was nothing to the next challenge though. As I stopped to photograph Alex coasting down a section of trail, and then off into the distance, put the camera down – and then the singletrailer exploded! The wheel bounced off down the hill in a most poetic fashion. Actually, there wasn’t so much an explosion, as just the wheel coming off and bouncing away. Which did cause Alex to stop pretty quickly.

Here the boy looks despondent as Alex re-seats the bearing into the wheel so it could lock on properly. No rocks were harmed in the making of this photograph.

The final hurdle was the fording of the de-bridged river, which was flowing just a little higher than last year. I tried riding it, and ended up falling in. Which was fine, as I’d been riding in sandals all weekend, due to a forgetting-I-had-flat-pedals-on-my-bike-still incident. After seeing my less than stylish crossing, Alex opted to just walk across as well. I went to throw him my sandals for the attempt, and one fell short, and started floating away downstream. Cold footed lurching and squealing ensued, as I rescued the errant sandal and returned it to Alex.

The rest of the ride passed without incident, and we even made it back in town in time for the Canada Day parade (which was apparently too noisy, so we didn’t stay for the whole thing anyway).

Total trip distance: 33km (Day 1: 18km, Day 2: 15km)
Total elevation gain: 860m (807m of that on Day 1)
More details: We started and finished at the Dawson Recreation/Camping Area, where the Cox Hill trail joins the road. The road is currently closed to public vehicles beyond that point. And we took the trail directly beneath the summit to reach the ridge. Our packing list was much the same as last year, but with no diapers and more spare clothes/underpants for the boy. We did take less water, and now we both have fancy Porcelain Rocket bike bags, everything is much easier to carry.

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bikes canada general trail running

Rundle’s Revenge – The Iron Donkey edition

Rundle’s Revenge – mountain biking a 12.5km loop on Saturday, and trail running the same loop on Sunday. Up at the Canmore Nordic Centre. I did it back in 2012, and completed the “Half Donkey”, with 50km of biking and 25km of running. Apparently that wasn’t hard enough, so the next time round I signed up for the Full Iron Donkey. 100km of biking, and 50km of running. Just on the verge of being impossibly stupid, yet attainable. In 2013 the race was cancelled due to the floods, and I heaved a massive sigh of relief, as I was in no way even close to being fit enough. And so my entry rolled over to 2014.

And suddenly, it was the day before the race. Was I ready? I didn’t feel terribly ready. But I was at least vaguely optimistic that I might be able to complete the course. Maybe.

From the very first lap on my bike, my knees started aching, and my back muscles were feeling painfully tight (I’m not sure what they were trying to achieve, but hopefully I can work it out and stop them from doing it again). The trails were quite greasy from the rain the night before, and some of the downhill rooty sections were downright treacherous. I drew blood once in a mini wipe out before slowing things down a little and keeping it conservative.

On the plus side, I’d self seeded almost perfectly at the start, to the point where I was actually riding sections of trail all on my own right from the very first lap, despite the hundreds of other riders on the course. Things pretty quickly settled into a rhythm of riding old familiar trails, slowing down to eat on the double track sections, then replenishing my food stores as I looped back around by the daylodge.

On lap 3 I caught up to a rider who seemed to be faster than me, or at least a very similar speed. I was following him up a short steep climb (on Baby Beluga), and wondering why I had caught up with him, when his bike suddenly rose up on its back wheel. Front wheel high in the air, I stared at it, vaguely horrified and wondering what was going on. The bike and rider pirouetted sideways to fall off the trail down the slope instead of falling on me. The rider had fallen stiff as a board, head downhill and clutching at his leg. Cramp. He assured me he was fine, and I rode on.

The day was warm, so the trail was gradually drying out, and was in pretty good shape for my last 4 laps – so as I lost time going slower on the uphills, I was getting faster on the no longer treacherous downhills.

As the trails became quieter and quieter though, with all of the riders doing shorter distances finishing, then all of the faster riders finishing, I was having unhelpful conversations with myself (with my superego?): “Why are you riding so slowly? You are terrible!” “Because I don’t want to cramp, because I know I have to run 50km tomorrow, because my knees hurt!” “Why do your knees hurt so much? Is it because you haven’t been doing your physio exercises? You ride your bike a lot, you should be much faster than this.” “Look, there’s an interesting bird, leave me alone.” “Do you really think you’ll be able to run 50km tomorrow?” “I’m going to try.” “Hah!”

The fun descents were distracting though, and a penultimate lap was finally followed up by a no-stopping-for-anything final lap, which was my fastest of the day, hurrah, leading to a finish in 8hours 10minutes. 100km, 2800m elevation gain.

And then it was time to stop, and soak in a cold lake. Which stung. I didn’t even think about chamois cream beforehand, but it probably would have been a good idea. Then lots of stretching, and trying to eat. Although I’d been trying to rely on eating lots of actual food, my stomach was still feeling angry and unsettled as a result of the days exertions.

…

8am, standing on the starting line again, Sunday morning. I set off, and was pleasantly surprised to discover my legs weren’t feeling as painful as they could have done. I ran all the way up the first hills. I was doing ok! But I was very definitely feeling tired.

The first lap was easiest – there were people everywhere to talk to, to listen to, to watch. Second lap, my people started disappearing. Third lap, I started running on my own. And by that point, I had already learnt to hate the flowing downhills that were so fun on my bike. I was glad for the rooty trails, as they meant there was less of my brain free to think about how much I was hurting, and although I was stumbling from time to time, I always managed to catch myself. It was an exercise in learning how to suffer cheerfully, and distracting myself looking at trees, squirrels, birds, thinking about what I’d eat at the next aid station (nearly always watermelon and cola on this day), focusing on getting up the next section of trail, remembering people who had been cheering me on, mentally naming the runners who I ran in the vicinity of for kilometres (carrot, jingly bells and flappy pack, you guys were awesome). My mind descended into complete surreality and randomness, and I became wildly emotional. And I ran, and I ran.

I wasn’t setting any pace records, as I struggled up the hills and on the flat, and painful knees had me shuffling down hills too. Weird pains flickered around, but thankfully never settled – except my right IT band, which become more and more angry, so it was painful to bend my right leg. Problematic. But at least I didn’t have cramp. I ended up carrying around my emergency pickle juice for nothing! The one person I tried offering it to was happy to do without.

Then it was penultimate lap (“Penultimate lap! Second last lap! One more to go! Watch the roots, lift your feet, you can do this! You only have to run this bit one more time!”), being overtaken by the winning 50km runner (curse you Andy Reed!), and then it was time for the final lap! (“Last lap! Last lap! Feet! Feet! Feet! Don’t have to do that hill again.”) More watermelon, some more fizzy cola drink at the last aid station. Then run, run, run. Out of water. But nearly there! Dip my buff in the creek that flows across the Georgetown Trail, put it back on my head dripping wet. Run, run… walk a bit, run! Into the stadium and across the finish line at 6hours 15min.

My slowest 50km run yet, but under the most difficult circumstances. Podium photos, more watermelon, sit in a river, and then home. I did it!

(And now I never have to do it again)

(And I get the last laugh Rundle, because two days later, and I’m actually feeling pretty good already)