COP Fall XC Race

Goal for the race: Have fun!

This race had been circulating the Alberta biking clubs to see if there was an interest in reviving a weeknight XC racing series. I decided to attend this event purely to show some support for the idea so that we might have a training race series next year. I had no intention of going out super hard as I had a real race coming up.

This was going to be my last mountain bike race of the season so I decided I would just take it easy and have fun (although technically I should always be racing for fun). At first we were told we would be racing the CCC course which is a really easy 3 km course...which would have been 30 minutes of racing at $20. Closer to the date it was announced that we would be doing the World Cup XC Course. My category was set to do 3 laps of the roughly 5 km course.

I arrived at the site pretty early and after registering for the race, I went to bust off a quick pre-ride lap. The first half of the course was the Giver-8-er and the second half was the CCC course. The one part that worried me was the single track dowhill that had been turned in a stream from the earlier thundershower.

We all lined up for the mass start which was going to be a LeMan's start (running about 80m to your bike). The whistle blew and I went out into a light run...which turned out to be a bad idea mainly because when I got to the first climb I ended up soft pedaling behind a bunch of people who were dismountng to walk up. There was nowhere to pass on the tight single-track so that was about the point where I would no longer be able to contest the top 3.

There was an area of the course that I had ridden at least 10 times that had a skinny bridge to a sharp left turn. I called out to the rider behind me there was a bridge and I was going pretty fast. I went to make the turn into the single track and my wheel slipped off the bridge and got stuck in a rut catapulting me off my bike. I crashed pretty hard and ended up smashing my right shoulder into a root (later on I found out I had just missed breaking my collarbone). I picked up my bike and checked to see if anything broken and kept going.

The single-track down the stream was super slick, really muddy and took a toll on my drivetrain. On the hills my small gear was locking up my chain, forcing me to either run up steep hills or hammer out the climbs in my middle gear during the rest of the race.

The next 2 laps were fairly straight forward. No more crashes or close calls and pretty much jsut raced my race. It was a really fun course, except for the 200m down a stream of mud each lap.

Result: 5/8

When I finished the race which took me about an hour with the top time being 45min I washed off with my water bottle and went inside for a BBQ. At the BBQ it was announced that COP will really try to bring in a XC series next year based on the turnout. Hopefully this makes a return and more people in Calgary will be able to participate in a fun local race with no pressure. The only issues we could think of was that $20 a race is way too much to charge every week so that will have to come down if they want a good number of people to come out and race.

I'm looking forward to see what transpires and hopefully more people will come out and see what racing is all about and help revive the XC MTB scene in Calgary.

- Kyle