WORS Cup Stage Race

What an awesome weekend of bike racing the last few days. Finally some really great weather to enjoy at one of the best races of the season and Don and WORS crew put on another top notch event with a tough course and great competition for 2 days of racing fun.

Saturday's XC was hot, first actual hot day of the year. The front of the race whittled down over the first lap to 5. I could tell we were all hurting in the heat, everyone seemed content to ride hard, but never too hard. I could tell my HR was a little high for the effort and felt pretty dizzy for the first hour of racing, kind of a shock to the system to ride in heat in humidity while just a week ago I was riding in armwarmers and a vest.

The pace hurt though and by lap 3 Travis had the group down to 4 and I was dangling off the back while the cramps seemed to be appearing a bit early. I managed to get back on the decent and by the start of the last lap I decided to spice up the race more out of boredom and desperation in a decision to either get 4th cause I attacked and then got dropped, or get 4th cause I just got dropped. For some reason though hurting on the back of the group hurts more than hurting 20 seconds off the front and after realizing if I ignored my cramping quad on every pedal stroke and kept my gap I might be able to hold off a charging Jesse Lalonde. Desperation turned into motivation as the finish line came closer and with one section of hard climbing remaining the relization that I might pull it off began to settle in just as I turned to see Jesse full on the gas. I managed to make it over the climb with cramping quads and just a few sections of downhill singletrack where all that were left to cross the finish 17 seconds up on Jesse. I'm still not sure where it came from, but it sure was refreshing to take a win again on the mountain bike.


Really big thanks to Jamie for sitting in the sun all weekend handing me bottles and to Planet Bike for the great support and motivation. My GT Zaskar was the fastest bike on the course and it was great to ride it to victory. I really owe all my sponsors for standing behind me and supporting me through the last few years ups and downs.


The only thing better than winning was jumping in the lake afterwords and cooling off, that was awesome.