Race the Ridge

Our good friends over at Local Ride put on another excellent stage race last week. It was comprised of a rainy 22km Time Trial in beautiful Golden Ears Provincial Park, a rainy, technical Crit in downtown Maple Ridge, and a cloudy but dry Road Race on the tough Thornhill Circuit.

Mighty had some good representation. Claire finished 6th in the TT, 5th in the Crit, 2nd in the RR and 5th overall. In the Cat 3/4 men: Andrew finished 11th overall, Ryan was 31st overall and Dave Groves had his first taste of a big race weekend and loved it.

Claire in a close fought sprint in the RR. Just getting pipped by former teammate Jenny. (Photo by Tim Sherstobitoff)

Climbing in the hilly RR.

Jenny, winner of the RR and still part of the Mighty family (check out the knee warmers...)

Claire stringing the group out in the wet crit. Unfortunately, there was too much water for the Men's Cat 3/4 crit to go ahead. The CX team is still laughing about that...

I only competed in the Time Trial. I was unhappy with my time but at least I was dry. Ok, maybe this pic just reflects how slow I felt and how epic the conditions were.

Congratulations to all the kids who made it out for a great weekend of racing!

Late to the Party: A Chronological Retrospective

After my post here at the end of the year, many thoughts were stirred about my first year of mountain biking. I forwarded that blog post over to Cam at nsmb.com, and suggested that I tailor the story for their audience. Cam was definitely stoked, and gave me the go-ahead to start work on the project.

Looking back at a year of riding through great photos—who could argue with that? My mtb-versary was in the first week of February, and I had a few weeks to get something together. As I went through my hard drives mining photos and stories, an overwhelming amount of material came to surface. As that date quickly approached, I realized two things: I had a ton of material to work through; and I probably wasn't going to finish in time for the anniversary.

Cam was supportive, and suggested we split the story into two parts. He also asked me to fill in a bit of my background: how did I avoid mountain bikes all my life, and what was it that pushed me to give it a go. Part 1 of the story went over well, even though it was quite long. A bit more time to finish Part 2 was nice. However, it was turning out to be even longer, so it was split again. Part 3 was another epic, of course, so Cam took liberty to split that one as well.

When all was said and done, I had a series of four published articles on nsmb.com. We're looking at about 10,000 words and over 100 photos. My official introduction to the world of mountain biking has been a great experience. The value of writing down your stories and experiences is invaluable.

So, after that introduction, maybe you want to read these articles... I promise they'll make up for the lack of photos in this post!
Part I: Born Again as a Mountain Biker
Part II: A Hardtail Summer
Part III: Enter the Duallie
Part IV: The Final Chapter

I'm very happy to announce that I will be continuing to work with nsmb.com. My next article just went live today; The Digg Never Stops came together as Cam and I met up for a ride to check out and document the new work on Digger's venerable trail on Mt. Fromme, Ladies Only. Hope you enjoy it, and I'll see you on the trails!