I seem to be a solid week behind in my write ups. Maybe that is because of how busy I have been lately.

Lodging at Bromont is less than ideal. There are not a lot of places to stay and even less condo’s available for rent. Add on some big horse event in the area and lodging becomes even scarcer.  Tap on all the local hotels ganging up on the tourists by requiring four night minimums and you have one hell of an expensive trip! My minimum wage job at Starbucks was clearly not going to allow me to drop $500-$800 on lodging. In fact I was so desperate and late to find someplace that USA Cycling had to make up a fake address for me when they registered me for the event (to register for a WC your national governing cycling federation must register you and you must have an address of your hotel). I started to scramble and think of worst case scenario. My worst case scenario went something like this- Spend four hours driving to the event from my house in Maine on Thursday to register then drive home, then repeat the drive on race day and hope I don’t get caught at the boarder again. USA Cycling wouldn’t give me a list of US athletes attending the event so I couldn’t see if there was any other self supported pro attending to split the cost of lodging. Couch surfing with a pro team was not an option as all teams are strictly against such a thing. So I was left with one last option, start emailing local racers from the Bromont area in hopes that one would host me for the weekend. Luckily I was able to get in contact with Alex, a racer friend from the area. I have raced against Alex a few times in previous Canada  Cups and Alex even came down to Maine to race in my back yard at the Bradbury 12 Hour Race.  Alex came through big time, hosting me for two nights. Bam just like that, free lodging and a chance to better educate myself on the French culture in Quebec.

So onto the race- Saturday- warm sunny and beautiful, a great day to be at the mountain watching the gravity events. Sunday (race day)- cold and pouring rain, a great day to race if you are from Maine, and a poor day to be a spectator no matter where you are from.  My start was great, passed a lot of dudes and made it up in the ranks. I think I was somewhere in the top 60 maybe 50 during the first two laps? I was riding amazingly well on the descents and in the single track; no B lines for this fellow! I was feeling right at home in the mud. Reality sunk in on the third lap when I started to fade and fell back into maybe 80(?) as a huge group of riders moved by me on the big climb. It took a few minutes to regain my wind before I could start to pick up the pace again, but by that time it was too late and I would have to settle for 73^rd two laps down to Kabush.

I must say racing a world cup is incredibly hard! You are racing against the clock while racing against your competitors. Try and go out hard and hold on for as long as you can or try and pick off the riders who blow up? Either way you go about it, you have to find all the strength you have plus some to survive a world cup. Racing these two world cups was another great experience. I am very glad and fortunate to have been able to compete in them while representing my sponsors. I can only grow from these experiences to better myself. Thank you for everyone’s support so far this year.