Van / Arduum

I left the park feeling dialed and confident, and we packed the Van to the roof once again with good direction but vague plans, with a mission to catch up with family and embark on more adventures. The next two planned rest days in Vancouver consisted of fun all over the city, adventures being too many to mention in detail but with highlights of lots of pool, go-cart racing, diving board trick offs, mustache costumes, broken down vehicles, ghetto drive by shoot outs, random friends of my cousin, my Uncle’s new Bimmer Z4 and unclothed nighttime jogging. We spent the time setting wagers on anything possible, laughing, engaging in harmless shenanigans and being an audience to those who had to carry out the wagers of lost competition, as well as tuning up our bikes and catching up with a bunch of my cousins who I love but rarely get to see. Unreal. Saturday came and we found ourselves back at Arduum, training on possibly the most challenging track we will face this season. The terrain is quite different from what we are used to in Kamloops, being on a steep, rocky hillside ensnared with roots from the coastal rainforest. In training on Saturday the course was dry and loose, with the conditions deteriorating rapidly from what we experienced on the training trip earlier in the week. Holes and braking bumps developed everywhere where the riding surface was dirt, exposing the tangle of rocks and roots hidden beneath the soil even more. On Saturday night it rained lightly, but the dirt soaked up most of the moisture over the morning and the course remained fairly tacky in practice. About a third of the way through the race the weather forecaster earned his credibility for the day and rain began falling lightly. Halfway through the race the rain was falling hard, the dirt had turned to slime and the rocks and roots had become very slippery. By the time the elite men and women were to start we were in a downpour and the course was a slippery mess, being completely different from what we had practiced. As I descended the course on my way to get ready for my race run I decided to switch from my standard front Minions to my Wetscream spikes, which proved to be a wise decision. I had never run them before though and had no idea how they would handle the rock slabs and roots, so I was a bit nervous up top. The starting tent held an unusually tense air to it as we were waiting to go, but I have a fondness for challenging conditions in general and mud in particular, so I was excited to see how my spikes would handle while getting really loose in the slime. I have also been working a lot on sport psychology strategies, so I fed off the others lack of confidence and knew it was my advantage. When I was in the gate with 30 seconds to go I went to put my goggles on and realized they had become covered in slime, so I quickly tried to wipe them off with my damp jersey and spin them dry, but it was to slight avail. I put them back on with 5 seconds to go and realized I had no choice but to start with the smeared slime covering my lenses. Not the best way to begin. I dropped in over the start rock outcropping and immediately my goggles were the furthest thing from my mind. I used a bit of caution while testing the traction between the saturated ground and my spikes but was happy with how they felt so I decided to just let'er go and pin it.