The morning of the first Canada Cup starts with the sun rays beating down on my face through our hotel window at 7:30 AM. I open my eyes and the thoughts “I’m racing today” come into my head. I get out of bed and make my way over to the mini bar fridge, making my first meal of the day which consists of lots of fruit mixed with vanilla yogurt. I still feel groggy as I am eating but as soon as I had finish I am more awake and excited for what is going to happen today. An hour later, I begin making my actual pre-race breakfast, a big bowl of oatmeal. After I finish, I am full but satisfied and start to get into my racing gear.

 

Now the fun begins… sharing my room with my Ontario teammate, Natasha Oldcorn couldn’t have been more interesting since the two of us together are very messy. Okay, where is my helmet… my shoes. I have two bottles, where’s the third? Gels. Where’s my bike? I hope it’s still in the trailer as well as my spare wheels. Now that everything is found and ready to go, let’s race! Oh wait, I forgot about the 45 minute warm-up which turned into an almost 2 hour warm-up because the race got delayed. Well, at my legs are awake from the 12 hour drive to get here two days prior so I’m sure they can handle a bit of intensity now.

 

Time for call ups…  I don’t know how I did it, but I somehow got called up second, not that it mattered because the junior girls could almost fit across the first row anyway.  30 seconds to go… at this point I could just about feel the adrenaline running through my veins. 15 seconds… a very short 15 seconds because soon after the man at the startline shouted “go” and everyone is racing to be the first one in the singletrack.

It's a fast start but not unfamiliar. I'm in third place after the first piece of singletrack, shortly after passing into second place on the next set of doubletrack. It stays this way until about another km into the next singletrack where first place slips out on a root, hitting the ground and I make my move by passing her so that I am now in the lead. I was alone for a while until Oldcorn catches up to me and it is just the two of us battling it out for the top position. It goes back and forth for the first two laps, each taking turns in the lead but never getting a real gap.

 

It would have been a very close race if Oldcorn didn’t have a mechanical in the last lap. I rode the final lap by myself at a steady and comfortable pace and came in through the finish line with a 3:23 minute gap ahead of second place.

 

LB