Thursday, June 13, 2013

Banff Bike Fest - Weather Roulette

Pre-prologue Eve... after the epic flash afternoon hailstorm and minor tornado siting, I spent extra time vacuuming water flowing via the weeping brick wall in my basement suite.

Pre-prologue Day... drove to Calgary to unload a few items, noticed things were damp from the trunk. Discovered a couple of gallons of water travelled with me from Edmonton's prior day's hailstorm via my trunk! Had a chance to toss everything in the dryer and bail out the water.

Got to the prologue in Banff with just enough time to warm-up. The sunshine in Banff helped defrazzle me from that extra unexpected effort.

Prologue... in my warmup, I was asked for "tips". I had forgotten what the stage was like from 2009 when I did it, only knew the profile on paper...  Relatively rolly-flat for 1.0 km, then climbs with a spike at 1.4 to 1.5 finishing at 1.6+ km.

After riding, my "tips" would be... "go HARD"... as hard as you can for the first 1 km", the steep hill always catches by surprise, hence called "surprise corner", AND it caught me again! It will hurt going up the grade no matter what! Love the final 100m descent which seems so Effort-Full!

scooped photo from Christina Smith, fellow racer, on her warm-up ride
In the first km, maybe I wasn't working hard enough as I certainly noticed the amazing scenery!

Weather... Earlier, just after drying out my trunk, it poured rain. Scared me for the race. Actual race weather was sunny, dry and AweSome!

No comments: