This weekend my dad and I travelled to Baie-Saint-Paul, Quebec to race the third Canada Cup of the season. The course there was awesome! All rocks and roots and always going either up or down. It really made me use my technical skills and work to stay smooth and fast.
A couple changes I made after last weekend:
- I lowered my tire pressure about 2 psi to get more grip on the trails and crash less ;)
- I tried racing without my Garmin for the weekend
- I also did my best to stop overthinking the racing
I started off another good race weekend by racing the short track race on Friday. I felt awesome! The race was 25 minutes long and the junior experts and elites all raced as one elite category. Because of this I was pulled from the race just before the last lap, as the leaders in elite were about to pass me (world level racers). This was disappointing, but I was still really happy with my position. I finished 5th out of the junior racers and 17th overall. The short track also gave me a chance to get used to the trails at race speed. (Short track results here).
Then I went on the race the cross country race on Saturday. (It was nice not getting the last call up for once!) The race started off fast on a double track start loop. I managed to work my way up to 7th after getting a good start off the line. We hit the single track with everyone fighting for position. I sat in just outside the top ten, behind some of the other girls from Ontario. I did my best to keep them in sight and managed to stay close to them the whole race.
Last lap I gave it everything I had left and passed three people, including Kelly and a US national team rider. I managed to drop Kelly and almost caught up to Kaitlyn. I ended in a sprint finish with a US national team rider for 10th place. Sadly I lost the sprint and came 11th.
I am disappointed to have been bumped out of top 10, but am really happy with how my overall race went. I gave it everything I had. There's still room for improvement though! The next weeks are going to be a lot of work on intensity and speed which should be fun :)
Find the race results here.
Stay tuned for the results of next weekend's Ontario Cup race.
Happy riding!