velo bread: vancouver canmore bike fun

the end of june, beginning of july, was two weeks of vacation for me and laura. laura left a week earlier and and flew to vancouver to play in and attend a conference she helped plan. her conference dovetailed nicely with the 24 hour race in canmore that dr. h., jonny b, cam and i had signed up for in early spring. i hopped in the car, with two bikes and camping gear and headed west.

after making my way to calgary on the first day, i soon found myself in the mountains

and in the province of big mountains and big trees

with laura busy at the conference i spent the first day tooling around vancouver on my bike and quickly found my way to cove bikes. after looking around the shop for a while i asked one of the guys if there any good trails for xc type riding on a rigid 29er. they pointed me towards mt. seymour and they suggested a few trails. the first trail was a twenty minute up hill grunt that soon had me doubled over my bars gasping for air. after finally reaching the turning point in the trail i headed down a trail i thought was beginner, but in actuality, was an intermediate trail.

so, i spent the next 30 minutes walking 1/2 the trail and gingerly riding the other 1/2; all the time hearing paddy's voice in my head " don't be falling over and scoring your new carbon forks on any rocks." as i was making my way back to the trailhead i met a guy on a double squish singlespeed (he was using an old derailleur as a chain tensioner) who told me about some trails at simon fraser university which i would have fun with - he was right, great trails with long grunty climbs and technical downs without any of the big hits of the north shore.

(didn't try this one - riding on round logs (last part of the stunt) scares me)

with laura finally finished her conference, we headed off to whistler for a couple of days. we got extremely lucky when the people she had been billeted with for the conference offered us the use of their condo. the condo sleeps 12 and had a rather remarkable view from the third floor balcony.

laura and i spent the first day riding some of the paved trails around the whistler area which was a blast. i must say that i did feel a little out of place in whistler because of the obvious wealth of the area, but still managed to enjoy the beauty of the country side, mountains and lakes.

the next day i headed out on my own to find some trails and this was a bit of a hit and miss experience. while i found this plank bridge (another one i managed to make even though it scared me a bit because the planks were wet), i was still having trouble finding the right trails.

after a couple of hours of trying i was about to give up and started to head home when i passed a guy on a cannondale who commented on my bike (favourably). we chatted a bit, and i asked him about the trail i was looking for. he said that the trail head was back a bit and that he was looking for someone to ride with and that he would be happy to show me the trail. scott was a great guide and i had a great ride with him. the trail gained about 850 meters of elevation, with most of it right at the beginning. i managed to ride about 1/2 and had to walk the other 1/2. the downhills were fast and i was very glad that i had hydraulic brakes.

(this picture is taken at the highest point of the trail - i started at the buildings you can see at the bottom left of this picture).

after the ride laura and i went for a fabulous hike in the woods

after whistler it was off to canmore and the 24hour race. i arrived on thursday, found the course and did a pre-ride to determine which gears i wanted to use. i decided on 32X20 which was approx 47 gear inches, this allowed me to climb everything, which was more important than having a gear that gave me more speed on the flats or downhills (except for four downhill sections that were flat, all the downhills were littered with roots and rocks and were not fast anyway - case in point, one of the better riders passed me on one of the faster downhills with his full suspension geared bike, but i was able to catch and pass him on the following uphill - when we got to the next downhill which was long, flat and fast, he only gained 70 meters on me before the next technical section).

friday saw the rest of the guys showing up which meant setting up our base camp and another pre-ride.

chris and jonny have excellent write-ups of the race on the fgbc and team jonny blogs, so go there to read about the race.

here are a couple of additional pictures and words on the race.

(cam on the downhill leading into about 15-20 minutes of continuous climbing).

we had an excellent team and a lot of fun. i don't think anyone could be as snake-bit as jonny was for this race. but, what he lacked for in clean rides (no mechanical issues) he made up for in effort. as chris mentioned, jonny did flat on his second lap with 1.5 kms to go, but he also ran his bike the last 1.5 km to turn in an excellent time. also, when he lost his lights about 1/2 the way through his first night lap, he managed to poach off other riders and turn in a 1:04 lap which was excellent considering how dark and difficult that must have been. chris and cam both ran excellent races and as a team we had a good shot at fourth and an outside chance at third (it would have been close with the farm team).