Bras du Nord Raid #4

In the city of Saint Raymond, Quebec this past weekend was the 4th and final of the Raid Extreme series. This final edition was to be 2 stages of 70km each. It promised lots of single track on day 1 and it did not disappoint!

Day 1
About 500 racers took to the start line.Within the first 10km a small selection happened. Marc-Andre Daigle,(MAD), pulled away on a long climb but never got out of sight. I ended up with his teamate Leni Trudel,(LT). I chased for a while with Leni sitting on my wheel until Aroussen Laflamme, (AF), bridged up to us and we proceeded to work together catching MAD shortly after. The 4 of us were riding well together and attacking one another on the climbs. AF and I shared the work of responding to the attacks of the 2 Garneau riders MAD and LT.
After a very long section of downhill single track AF and MAD had a small gap on LT and I. I was sitting on LT's wheel going downhill at about 45km/hr when he missed a turn and slammed on his brakes abruptly. I was caught off guard and hit him, launched myself over the bars and landed on my head pretty hard. I crushed the helmet. Broke my derailer hanger right off! Race over. Damn!
Nothing I could do about day 1.

Between
Sat afternoon we went to a shop called Biclyclette Record, in Quebec city. They set me up with all the parts I needed and even did the work! Great guys. Thanks to owner Mike and fellow racer , (up and comer) Vincent! You guys saved my race weekend and even hooked me up with a racer discount.

Day 2
An even bigger crowd too to the start line of Day 2. I felt good as I only had a half day of racing in my legs due to the crash. Took a little longer to get to the steep stuff. So it wasn't until 15km in that we had a selection. About 9 of us popped out on the road.
Entering the next section of trail I drove it pretty hard and managed to get a good gap taking the lead. I was joined by a Scott rider. We took advantage of our gap and worked together well. About 30 km in we were joined by the Garneau boys again. We hit a big climb and dropped the Scott guy right away.
Me against 2....been here before. The biggest longest most technical climb of the weekend and they just kept launching attack after attack.
Finally I cracked and MAD got away. LT sat on me again until I showed a small sign of weakness and he pounced! I was alone in no-mans land. I knew I had to keep my speed up. It was hard being alone in the wind for the remaining 30 km but I managed to pull off 3rd,(4min behind the Garneau boys).

Overall, great weekend. Time to buy a new helmet!

Quebec Provincial championships

Monday, August 8, 2011

Late Report

Val Morin, a beautiful little town with super steep hills and lakes everywhere you look. Located just down the 117 from Tremblant in the Laurentians.
Imad and I headed out for a pre-ride on Saturday around 3pm with Rob and Trish who had already done 1. Rob showed me some lines I showed him a couple and proceeded to do some sections way too fast having way too much fun, crashing spectacularly numerous times!
We all ended up staying in the same super 8 because le Radison burnt down the night before. But it ended up being pretty good, as they had an awesome water slide which we setioned for about an hour and continental breakfast with fresh wafels in the morning!
On to the race.....Rob had a catastrophic technical, exploding his bearing on his rear Hope Pro II rendering his bike completely unrideable,and being in the Masters category has to carry any parts and tools on him. Too bad he didn't have a new bearing and a hammer in his pockets, then he could have fixed it and finished the race.

Our race was sure to be really fast on a super dry hot course. I went for it right from the gun. I was able to stay with the lead group for the 1st half of the first lap. Really hard efforts. Eventually fell into the chase group where we proceeded to attack each other repeatedly. By the 3rd Lap I was joined by Imad, we dropped all of the chase group and it started to pour. I slipped my right hand off the bar , crashed pretty bad and got passed by 4 guys, got up, and settled back in, eventually passing them all again. I ended up about 40 sec behind Imad going into the last lap. I gave it all I had and finished 34 seconds behind him. He was 7th and I was 9th in the end!!
I can't imagine it going much better than this, considering the extremely strong field of young Quebec guns who were in attendance.

I highly recommend Val Morin (Far Hills Ski resort) for MTB'n---only $5/day and about 2.5hrs from Ottawa!