Whistler BC Cup Mtb Finals

I raced the BC Cup XC Mountain Bike Finals in Whistler this past weekend and team Whistler put on a great race.

The 3-lap course was held on the Lost Lake trails and was a mix of technical cross country riding and fast gravel pathways. There were a number of wooden ramps and tons of twists and turns and roots and rocks for good measure. The trails were similar to the Revelstoke mountain bike course in technical difficulty and nowhere near as hard as the Plunge in Squamish. It was a fast and flowy course that was a blast to ride.

The start was a mass start with around 130 people charging for the first single track sections at about 1.5km. It was nuts! I got hung up a bit by someone dabbing ahead of me and holding up the entire line, but had a pretty good start and got into a decent lineup where everybody was riding well. It took most of the first lap to spread things out. Until then, it was sprint every chance you had to get ahead of someone, then hold on in the single track. A lot different to the longer races where things are a little more relaxed. My Hr was only about 5-10 beats lower than my max for most of the first lap and up the first climbs, my breathing rate was pretty fast as well. My average HR for the race was 159, a couple beats over balance point.

I managed to ride fairly cleanly for the rest of the race, with only a few dabs here and there and no crashes, which is always a plus! On the last lap, I was even catching a few people that had dropped me on the first lap.

There were lots of little climbs and roots to power over and the cramping potential was definitely there, so I made sure that I was getting a few E-disks down every lap to mitigate the risk. I was using HEED as this was only a 2hr race and it worked well. I botched one handoff, droppinhg the bottle and had to stop the retrieve it, which lost a couple seconds. No big deal.

I had put in a long hot work week outdoors in Penticton previously and managed very little training, so my race prep was not great. I concentrated on drinking lots of water and replenishing the electrolytes on the days leading up to Sunday which helped as I didn't feel too drained come race day.

I ended up 5th in the 30-39 category and about 28th overall with a time of 2:00:42. The top time was 1:44:46. I am pretty happy with the race overall, will try and race this one again next year.

Ian