Day 4

Another day in the books. A hard one to say the least. Awoke at 4am to catch a shuttle bus to our first ferry of the day. On this boat we had breakfast which was followed by everyone involved with the race being taken to the top deck while a photographer and film crew were hanging out of a helicopter to get footage and shots of all the racers on top of the ferry. Up next, a short drive to the next ferry landing where our driver proceeded to hit another bus in the caravan. A slight hiccup, but I was asleep when it happened and it jarred me awake. We made it across to Earl's Cove and the race start arch was on the end of the ferry dock. Promptly at 11am, the race was on with some steep climbs on the stunning sunshine coast. The course today featured some spectacular 1track. AV and I got a good start and we were settling in close to the competitors that have surrounded us that last few days. We were bombing a very fast descent that went through a river crossing and AV flatted. Together, we made quick work of the change, but it was still early in the race, so many many many teams streamed by us as we made the change. With the flat repaired, we were off again, but stuck behind many slower teams on a course that did not offer lots of opportunities to pass. I put it in full on XC mode and coaxed AV to dig deep to pass as many teams as possible. We put in some solid work and passed 20+ teams in the process. With about 15 miles to go, I thought we were golden because we had caught some of the teams that we were racing with before the flat. A mistake to say the least. The last 15 miles featured some spectacular but super technical 1track. With the fog of fatigue setting in on AV and I both from the hard chasing effort we quickly began making handling mistakes that cost us time. I hit my rear derailleur on a rock and dented my rear rim on another rock. AV wasn't having a much better time of it. He hit is head on a low hanging tree and knocked himself a little loopy. After that we had to dial down the pace and limp the last 5km to the finish. We only gave up a few places in the finishing order, but lost a bunch of time on some of our competitors and dropped a spot in the overall ranking.

That's it in a nutshell. Sorry for the lack of pictures and the stream of conscious writing, but I'm just too tired and fatigued to write something more entertaining or deal with uploading photos. SLR may be posting in the next day or so with some photos of her adventures following the caravan of the BC Bike Race.

Thanks for reading,
Blue Star