Race one in Edmonton

My first race in Canada was in a city called Edmonton. Edmonton is the Capital of Alberta a state

in Canada. It is a pretty cool city, I’m guessing around a million people living here. It has one of the biggest malls in the world; I am going to check out today.

Pro men started at 2pm just like in NZ and there were 45 starters. We raced 6 laps of a 7.3 km track with a few short climbs, over the whole lap there was only 116 Vertical meters of climbing which is pretty low for a XC race. The hills that were around were definitely ones to hurt on and still make up time on. The dirt was well packed and made a fast highway when there weren’t bundles of roots which did happen to be an often occurrence. This race track reminded me of the track that Timaru used in last year’s south island cup, in the middle of town with bits of track going all over the park.

The race itself was defiantly an eye-opener; there is plenty of training to be done in the next few weeks no doubt about that. I was ranked 10^th from the UCI points that I won in NZ so was in the second row on the start line. The start was straight into a short step hill that hurt more and more every lap. The first four laps were good I was feeling strong but not strong enough to race up front with the big boys yet. The second and third laps I rode mostly by myself, after that everyone was starting to feel it and I started to catch a few, things were good. After the fourth lap I then started to feel it but just kept on digging in, knowing it was only going to be beneficial to be in the next few races.

It was a pretty warm day, reaching about thirty degrees, so keeping the body hydrated was the key to finishing the race. Every lap I was drinking a full Raiseys drink bottle (750ml) of HYDR8 to keep me hydrated.

This is the event village, a lot bigger than we get in NZ.

I finished 24^th in pro. Overall for my first internal race this year I am happy knowing that I still have some much better results to come. I am now moving on to a place called Canmore where the Canadian national champs are, we aren't aloud to race in them but we heard there is heaps of great riding there so will go and spend a week there then moving on to a town just outside of Regina, Saskatchewan (the next state east of Alberta). My next race is in two weeks, so I am going to get some good training in before the next race on the 25^th July.