Ouch. Yesterday hurt everybody.
A few of the leaders rode with pretty big injuries - 2 busted ribs on the mixed team, and a 8 stitch head gash - and still beat the pants off of people. People are starting to look a little rough at this point, as everybody has lots and lots of scratches.
Trevor took a pretty good tumble yesterday, but luckily the bike was ok. The trail was clinging to a cliff face with a mountain riiver below, and there was a really cool section of 'glass bottom' trail, where we had to ride on about 50' of chain link fence that you could actually see through ie down the cliff face. The end of the fence curled up just enough to catch something, say for the sake of argument, a peddle. At 25km/hr, Trevor's bike stopped dead and he kept going. Luckily it was bruises and scratches on the arms/legs. What was funny was that the trusty wrist heart rate monitor blew into about as many pieces as possible, and Trevor, a little confused, was trying to put it on again on trail. Stuart ended up carrying the monitor head and Trevor would call back 'Smithers!! What's my heart rate?!!?'. Seemingly unimportant, they aren't. They allow you to control your pace so you can make it over the long haul and not blow up. A little duct tape at the aid station helped to attach it to the handlebar.
At the end of the day, which took us a touch over 6 hrs with 75km of distance and 1560m altitude gain, we found out that *many* others yardsaled at the exact same spot, some with a lot worse ouchies.
Now the trail itself was largely all climbing today, punctuated by one fast and easy down hill, and one *very* technical, droppy and super steep section dumping us into Whistler. Most people walked it (we didn't ;-). Of course their were several punishing and long climbs. There was one really nice and mesmerizing twisty section riddled with stunts (curvy bridges and skinnies). What we love about the race is that it favors all around good riders, not just ex-Olympians or people with giant lungs down to their knees, or high altitude dudes from Durango (7000'), due the high degree and general difficulty of the single track
We didn't catch our results today, but we are pretty certain we held steady or moved up due to the crowd we rode with. Amazing how eventually you will see the same people all day long. A race like this certainly puts you exactly where you belong.
We finished again with the "100 plus" category leaders, lead by a 59 year old phenom from Nelson BC
Day 6/7 we moved out of the flatulence imbued tents and are now staying in a *huge* suite at the Westin, overlooking the village and underlooking the mountain. This is a real nice way to end the trip :-)
Cheers,
Trevor and Stuart
Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network
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