This weekend was the Bear Mountain Challenge BC Cup Dh held in Mission. Bear and I have a bit of a history. The track is super fun; flowing and not too steep, with tech rocky and rooty sections in between buffed burms and doubles. That being said with all the jumps littering the track and with the pedally nature of the course it is easy to get too excited in the air and make mistakes that cost you the race. Bear is a course that suits me very well and I know I can slay, but I can count crashes for every race there over the past 5 seasons, which always left me just back of the mark and knowing where I potentially could stand. This year I finally took my revenge on Bear.
This week saw the first 2 sessions of my sports psychology series with Dave Freeze. I felt mentally strong coming into them, but had no idea the difference it would make for me again going over my mental game and the processes I go through to come to a competitive result. Even though I have worked with Dave before on a very similar program, I learned a ton of new things and applied the lessons to a ton of different aspects of my riding and preparation. Using the lessons from the sessions I began preping early, and since I knew the course well from past years and riding it earlier this season, had visualized the course 5 times before I got to ride it. I came in with my bike feeling dialed from a Neely race-tune, my body feeling the most rested it has in a while after 2 days off, my injuries feeling calmed down and my head in a good place. Upon arriving in Mission I found the course in ultra-buffed shape, the weather in good order, my best friends all round and an adventure to be had. I only did 2 training laps on the first day of practice, concentrating hard on finding early lines into smoothly arced corners, memorizing each action for each piece of the course and riding in a confident and race-oriented manner. Two kids from my race group were there, but they decided to train the course mostly on their own, so my coaching consisted mostly of going over strategy and mental prep with them. I met up with an old friend at the race during the day, so after practice we got to catch up while swimming, chilling out around town and going for a nice extended dinner. When we returned to the race site it was threatening to rain, but we decided to walk the course anyways. A crazy lightning storm descending on us during our walk so we ended up getting completely soaked as we inspected the mess of a course, but the lightning was pretty cool and I don’t mind slippery conditions, so I remained in good spirits and was eager to see how the course would look in the morning. I camped in my van that night and had the best sleep I have had in a long time which left me feeling well rested. Despite the torrential rain during the night, in the morning we found the course in really decent shape and I did one race-ish training lap down the trail which felt really good and confirmed my confidence in my line choice and overall prep. In the 6 hours between my practice lap and race run I worked with the kids again on their strategy and mental prep, got my gear and bike completely dialed, chilled with friends, went over my race strategy and visualized, and then walked up the course with my camera and guitar to relax and take in the event. I walked up the course pretty far and the course looked to be in excellent condition, so I shredded my guitar in a merry way to the spectators and passing racers, and got at least one master 30+ racer stoked as he passed.
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