lisa morgan

A river runs though it - that's why Edmonton has some pretty awesome riding.  It also seems to attract Kiwi's in spades!

While eastern US/Canada was in the middle of a heatwave (think hot, then add 10 degrees for humidity - humidex 45 degrees the 2 days before I left) it was a good time to head west to give things some time to cool down.  Edmonton was a bit of a 3-seasons in one day kind of place - it would cool down a lot over night, warm up considerably during the day, rain heavily for short periods, and of course being as far north as it is, the days are long!

I arrived last Wednesday and not expecting the course to be marked out went for a spin to find the event venue and check out the local bike paths and trails.  My first challenge was to work out which bridge I was trying to get to, and how to get to it!  Edmonton is basically split north and south of the North Saskatchewan River and the River Valley is home to a myriad of multi-use trails and paths.  The river has created a ravine which provides the necessary elevation to host a Canada Cup (they don't need much to make tough courses over here) - and it's heavily wooded providing the necessary roots and mud to make things interesting.

I've often wondered how many cities in the world would be lucky enough to have great trails minutes away from the city centre and now I know there are at least 2 - Wellington (Mt Vic) and Edmonton.  My hostel was on the other side of the river, 2 blocks from 'downtown', and it took 5 or 6 minutes to get to the park the event was based at.

At the end of the ride on Wednesday I found a small section of the course by following some faded yellow arrows, which were very difficult to spot when painted on green grass!  What I found was enough to convince me the course had a lot of promise.

On Thursday I found the rest of the course, including a section that they must have used in the past but has become too difficult (seriously, 100% not rideable - you'd end up in the river!).  I got a bit worried for a minute or 2 as I'd been directed there by a yellow arrow.  I climbed down on to the trail below to see if I could spot a line from that direction (nope) and followed it for a short way to see where it went.  Sure enough the correct line was down a bit of a chute.  Over the next few days with pre-riding while it was wet some of this area was eroding pretty badly, but being dry on race day it was all good.

I also found the 'boggy climb'.  Thick, stinky, deep, black mud on a climb - kinda ick, partly unrideable.  It had rained very heavily the previous day so I was trying to calculate how much drying time it would need to be rideable on Sunday.

Before and after that section had been fast, dry, smooth singletrack, but the next section was very rooty - would have been a nightmare in the wet but luckily race day was mostly dry.

All up, the course was pretty cool -  a short section with some tough climbs and tight corners to start with before heading along the river along the fast singletrack then back via the more technical rooty trails and someone's driveway - talk about urban racing!

During the time I was there the Edmonton Street Performers Festival was on only a few blocks away so I went to have a look and wouldn't you know I ended up watching a basketball juggling, super-tall unicycling Kiwi performer - a great show, very funny.

And he rides Maxxis!

When I went to registration on the Friday I met Greg, another Kiwi who's been in Ottawa for 2 years with his wife.  He was going to be racing earlier in the day.

Race day arrived and things had stayed pretty dry for over a day and when I got to the park I could see racers were looking pretty clean (not like I had my first couple of rides!) which was promising.  It was mild with a cool breeze, but heated up plenty for the 2pm elite race.

I caught up with Greg (it was his birthday) and his wife and friends, tracked down a feeder (thank you Nathan) and went about the business of warming up.

My legs were feeling super fresh and I felt pretty good in the warm up.  Katie O'Neil and a couple of the guys have arrived in Canada and we were called up her in the front row, me in row 2.  It was her first race over here and she was pretty impressed with the set up.  The stand out feature for me was the music they blasted during the countdown to race start - as the boys were gearing up they managed to play bits of The Final Countdown, We Will Rock You and Eye Of The Tiger to get everyone pumped up.  We were also lined up right next to the beer garden that had been set up for the event - a real party atmosphere.  It's the second year these guys have hosted a race and I'd pick they'll host plenty more too - they're doing a great job.

My race... did not go as well as I'd hoped.  I got off to my traditional slow start but in the first lap and a half had made up a few places and was going pretty well and feeling good at that stage.  Halfway through the third lap I had a big stack on some tree roots - I'm not really accustomed to crashing so it was a stark reminder as to how much it HURTS!!!  I took a while to pick myself up and check that everything still worked before getting back on.  I found it pretty tough to get going again and rode terribly for the rest of the lap.  On my 4th lap I started losing the places I'd gained and just near the end was lapped by eventual winner Amanda Sin, who was leading Emily Batty, which meant the end of my race.  It wasn't all bad but it didn't finish well and I was certainly feeling the effects of the crash and was very quick to gather my things and head off to get cleaned up.