crossing saskatoon

more fun then would could imagine, coupled with pain and some great companions - what a blast.

friday - started with a horrific battle with traffic in downtown winnipeg, after picking up brian s on home street i tried to make it downtown to pick up jon and cam from mec. problem was there was the fear of death from above because some window installers could not secure the windows they were putting in on highrise downtown. traffic was a mess so we had jon and cam hoof it the van which we had parked because we weren't going anywere fast anytime soon. finally we were on the road and just outside of brandon we see a vw golf tdi on the side of the road with four bikes on the roof - the gang had pulled off the road to resecure their bikes because of the previous incidnet with paddy's bike and the hihg head winds we were bucking. arrived in saskabush at 1:00 am sask time and promptly crashed.

saturday - up bright and early for the race. after a proper breakfast of coffee, fruit loops and a bagel it was off to the race with rancid's out come the wolves on the deck for our warm up music. a quick pre-ride of the course indicated that 40X16 was going to kill me - a lot of climbing and thick grass to deal with. after a quick change to a 36X16 set up i get to the line 1 minute before the start of the race (this works almost as well as riding hotlaps for getting your heart rate up before the race). race went well and the course was a blast which included getting air of a retaining wall and what felt like a near vertical wall climb up an embankment. after the race it was lunch, a ride out to the sunday race site to check the terrain for the next race, a trip to beer store (scored some st ambroise oatmeal stout, which you can not get in winnipeg, but grew to love when i lived in montreal - sweet), pizza while watching the movie speed in room with the gang, and bowling. the team of cam, dave, jon benson, and myself victorious over paddy, brian, tomek, and namoi.

sunday - different course, much faster with some great muddy sections. the wind was up so i was a little scared of putting the 40 ring back on so i stayed with the 36 - mistake. the 36 saved me some pain on the windy sections and some of the softer parts of the course but cost me a ton when it came to fast flats when guys would pull away. live and learn. a qucik shower at the fitness centre (located at the race course) and we were back on the road lisening to southern culture on the skids, johnny cash, bad religon, and elvis amongst other selctions. of note, the only singlespeed racers at both races were manitobans - yeah we got kicked by some of the local hot young guns but we held our own as well.

lessons learned - if you want to do well stand up and attack every up hill and false flat; know who is behind you and sprint sprint sprint to the finish (on saturday's race i caught and passed one rider about 3/4's of the way through the race, he dropped back a bit and i thought he was done. on the sprint to the line i was trying to real in one more rider and realized that i was going to fall short so i let off a little just to have guy i thought i had dropped beat me by half a wheel at the line as he mad a super charge to the line - that sucks).

race results will hopefully be up sometime soon.

the jerseys look sweet - wish i had it for the races. too bad about the hats (would have settled for singiespeed or stinkyspeed, but not singlcspeed) hope they come soon.

cool cx video from youtube (use speakers if you have them).