Ontario Cup #1

It was 6 days after the Homage to Ice and I was down in Uxbridge pre-riding the first Ontario Cup course of the year. My coach and a bunch of his athletes including myself did 2 laps of the course and got certain sections dialed in. The course was in great shape and it was a blast riding with some friends. The following day I had to go to work and do an 8 hour day on my feet which was tough. That evening I got as much rest as I could and got all of my racing gear ready for the next day.

The following morning we got up and headed down to the race. We arrived around 9 in the morning and I got my Mother ready for her race at 10 am. It was great to  watch everyone at 10 am  race and to be able to cheer my Mother on. She had a great race with a 9th place finish.

My race was at 1:30 pm so after my Mother was done I got some food and then went and relaxed. I have to say when you are waiting for a time to arrive it seems way longer then it is. Once it was time to do my warm up I headed to the Warm Up loop that they had marked out.

Once I did my warm up I headed down to the start line were all of the racers were lining up. Once we got in our start pens we had 10 minutes till the actual race start. The start ahead of us was the elite wave so once they went out they did the call ups for the Junior division. I got the first call up of the group which was awesome since I could pick the best line on the start. After all of the call ups were done we still had a minute to wait. The race buzzer went off and I was the first one off the start line. There was a lot of double track on the first lap so I slowed down on the start loop and then let a competitor take the lead. I slipped in right behind him so I could get a slight draft from him. I stayed in second place for a few km and then backed off a bit settling into my own pace. The course wasn't that technical so it was very fast. The single track was in fantastic shape. For the Junior Experts it was a 4 lap race. I finished with a decent performance placing 6th.

For the second race of the season and with only a couple of rides on the bike outside of racing I feel I did pretty well and I can't wait for the next Ontario Cup in Kingston in a couple of weeks.

Stay tuned for more updates.