Bear Mountain Challenge 2011 (Mudfest)

So this weekend was the 15^th running of Bear Mountain Challenge DH in mission. It was the 2^nd BC Cup DH of the year, but the first race back for me from my extended bout of injuries and 11 months away from the race circuit. I have raced Bear at least 8 times before, have always loved the track and placed 4^th there two seasons ago (crashing hard there last year), so I was cautiously optimistic about what I could pull off. I knew my fitness still wasn’t going to match that of my competitors who had been able to train the entire winter, but being that it is a bit of a shorter track and I have been training like mad, I hoped to be able to strategize a way to play my strengths and minimize my weaknesses in order to pull off a decent result.

The adventure started for me when I decided to resurrect my van as a means of travel. As it hadn’t moved in over 10 months since I took the insurance off it after my knee surgery, that meant replacing the tires and brake pads, changing the oil and refilling the tranny fluid, all on the most minimal of budgets possible. Adding to the headache was the fact that seemingly every bolt rusted itself on. Fun times. After getting the van running and insured and working late into Friday night at the bar, I packed up all my gear and early the next morning began the voyage down to the coast. It was rather satisfying to pack down the van with all my gear, crank the tunes and head down there surrounding by everything I needed to succeed.

When I arrived a couple of the boys who had come down the night before were already training. The first task I set for myself was to find and maintain a consistent race-head as I have not had much opportunity to practice long runs at a race pace and I needed to increase my level of focus at speed. The mischievous weather had thrown a bit of a curve ball at us, so on the track we found deep mud, to the point that on the four packs that usually you would have to scrub to avoid landing flat, you had to sprint with everything you had in order to make the first set before landing in squelch and missing the second sets. Tristan, Thomas and myself got to do a number of runs together which was fun, figuring out the track while sliding around in the mud. The track was sloppy as all hell but I really enjoyed it, drifting corners and surfing tough lines. It took a good few runs to get up to speed but by race day I was feeling half way to my old self.

It was fun to work with a few of the younger guys who are just getting into it and see them put together a solid weekend of racing. I was really impressed with their attitudes as they faced bad weather, a super foreign type of track and mechanicals, but despite the adversity, came through charging. Jordan blew up his back wheel casing a muddy double in training on Saturday but managed to get a new one built so he was back in the game. Tristan’s back brake decided to die on him late Saturday and as it was a Formula no one had the required equipment to fix it so Sunday morning we poached the brake off my hardtail to get him back running. There was also the obligatory Bear training line-up in the rain to deal with, but as the boys learned, all such is racing. Being more prepared for adversity than the next guy is half the battle and we pulled together our race-heads while putting together everything we needed to at least be in the competition.