Provincial Champion

Mighty's perennial strong man Quinn bridged up to the winning move and sprinted to a fine 2nd place overall in the Masters Provincial Championsips RR which was a separate race at the Whistler Gran Fondo.  This was enough to win his age group (40+) and cap another solid season where he was in the mix from the first Spring Series races and Barry's Roubaix right through into CX season.  Hard man.

mini tour

I had a few days I could take off work, and needed a good solo ride anyway, so figured I would try out a few things that had been on my list for a while.
First thing on the list to accomplish was riding a bunch of gravel roads that are near a lot of the rides we do anyway (particularly on the annual Lillooet trip.) I see a lot of these roads while we are out on our training rides, and I’ve ridden bits and pieces of them. It seemed like a good challenge to string these pieces into a route and do the whole thing in one shot.
The second was to try out some gear I've been meaning to check out for a while.  Notably, I was looing forward to riding the Salsa Warbird on more gravel, loaded with camping gear on the new Compass 38 extra light tires.  Forgoing the stove and other comforts I ended up with a fairly compact setup.

Bivy, Sleeping bag, pad, tools and spare bits, some extra clothes, snaaaacks

I was also hoping to give my Alpine hammock a go.  Practice run in the park:

Day 1



Day 1 was a typical route out of town.  A couple of required stops, including finally making it into Wentings in Mission to use up a gift certificate from a race around 4 years ago.

favourite water stop

used to be the dogwood..

And finally, dinner at Fat Jack's and sleep at The Mighty Fraser

Day 2

The second day was to be a bit more ambitious.  The original goal was to ride the west side of the Fraser, but early morning showers in Boston Bar and getting to the ferry in Lytton during a 1.5 hour coffee break put a stop to that.



The day ended up being hard enough without that extra gravel.  I continued passed Lillooet toward Carpenter Lake (one of the standard mighty training camp rides), intent on climbing and descending Mission Pass to Seton Portage.

jack ass..

carpenter lake dam

bc hydro infrastructure

mission pass

seton portage

I carried all my gear because I thought I would be camping in this section, but I pushed through the day to make it to Gates Lake and our friend's cabin, arriving just before sunset.  So, actually didn't get a chance to test out the bivy after all...

Day 3

rest day

 Day 4

And, of course, when you're in the area.

cayoosh pass, aka the duffy

Pics

Faces of Gastown

Progression and Contrast.  Our 'most pro' man Cory tackled his first Gastown GP last week as part of Stuporweek.  As the photos attest, it was happiness and agony all wrapped into one race.  Note the contrast with Sarah's calculated coolness (top left).  Cory is more along the lines of the wizard of hyper ventilation, Dave G (bottom right).  Regardless, he finished with the group which is something to brag about when almost half the race DNF's...

Climbing Week

Summary

8 days

749 km

12855 m

9 summits

1 bottle irish cream

5 camps

Chinook and Cayuse Pass #1

Chinook and Cayuse Pass #2

Money Creek Camping

Stevens Pass

Morning Irish cream and coffee

Washington and Rainy Pass

Washington and Rainy Pass

Rest Day

Anarchist

Anarchist

Big White 

Apex

Silver Star

Summary

8 days

749 km

12855 m

9 summits

1 bottle irish cream

5 camps

Jeremy's Roubaix

Our Pirate Alex Dove bridged up to the two TAG guys off the front and then rolled through them to win the Cat 3 race  on Sunday.

Solo.  Proper.  BigRing 54 would approve.

Some interesting race footage below.  Yeah, not cool.

AD now leads the BC Premier Series for Cat 3.

Gorge Roubaix

While Sara was out winning B spring series races, we had a large group of Mightys head down to the Gorge Roubaix covering most of the categories with Cory in the 1/2 group, Matt, Keegan, Heavy, Jeff and Ryan in the 3/4 group and Shane representing the masters 1/2/3/4s.

We've been planning on attending for a year after seeing the photos that came out of the last running of the race, and it did not disappoint.

Both races were different for different categories and are listed on the gorge website, but both contained significant gravel climbing.  Day 2 also contained a very fast, loosely packed, gravel descent that claimed many tubes.

Post-drive spin

Cory cresting the gravel climb following Zack

Hanging out in the feed zone

Feeding the other team

Why are you wearing embro in this weather?

2015 Gorge Roubaix from Dronescape Media Consulting on Vimeo.



Some more photos on flickr or Instagram.

Results.

Next up for those liking gravel is Jeremy's Roubaix

Equality in Racing

There's been lots of debate about equal prize money for women at race wknds.  Sara stomped home her argument in favour by winning the combined B group race on Sunday on the challenging Atomic course.  She won solo.  In rainy/windy Spring weather.  

Yes gentlemen, for anybody who ever doubted, women are as fast.  And often faster.

No refunds for hurt feelings or crushed souls.

Pre-season Camp

18 riders faced the hills, wind and gravel of Lillooet.  Unfortunately it was a little warm this year so we will look at relocating somewhere more appropriate with snow/ice for 2016.  On to racing.

See the kids over at Stuckylife for their re-cap.  And thanks for coming out guys.