A bit Furious at the Furious 3

I showed up for the tournament Thursday afternoon and was feeling the excitement the nervousness settled in. I stuck to my superstitious routine, eating lunch in Cranbrook at the Cottage restaurant and visiting the guys at Favorit cycle. This pattern resulted in good finishes at the last 3 races so I had to stick to it.

I bumped into my buddy Colby Large (Giant bicycles sales rep for BC) in the bike shop and made plans to meet in Fernie. He arranged a 2 bed room for the weekend and let me stay there. I was looking forward to the hotel hot tub and relaxing after each day's race.

That night I went to visit my friends at Straight Line bike shop and ask about the course for day one. Tyler took the time to load up the web page and we checked out the map. The map was basically a red line drawn on google earth with no arrows showing what direction we head out or what hills we were to climb or descend. The map had a 2 paragraph write up for each of the courses but my local friend couldn't really understand where the course was taking us. So I gave up on that strategy and just thought following flagging should be fine.

Day one went pretty good. I didn't feel 100% off the start. The10km logging road section didn't go as well as I wanted it to, but I got my legs in the single track. I finished 5th overall and found out later that day some flagging got missed and a sweet piece of single track was left out. So after climbing for 20 min we descended a logging road instead of the trail. OOPS. Day 1 was Canada day and there was no national anthem to start us off. Too bad it would have been nice.

I guess they didn't learn from the day one hiccup because day 2 turned out to be a disaster. I started day two fast and followed a local legend Troy Mesigner down a long walking trail.  I lost his wheel once we started climbing single track. Riding with Troy was another local hero Martin Vale. They both knew the trails like the back of their hands and I think that was an advantage for them because they didn't make any wrong turns. I was riding with the winner from day one Shawn Bunnin and 2 other guys from the top 6, Ron Ellis and Rudi Schnider. We kept a strong pace and caught glimpses of Troy and Marty until a long climb up a trail called Dembones. When they were out of sight, Shawn, Ron, Rudi and I came to a red ribbon across the trail. Troy and Marty knew the way to go so they crossed the ribbon and we didn't see which way they went. We thought we weren't supposed to cross ribbons, so we turned left. Bad choice. We were supposed to cross the red ribbon and ride into traffic and potentially cause a collision with other riders. With no course marshal at a very important intersection, and 4 racers that didn't want to slow down, we lost about 60 minutes as we had to climb Dembones again. When we got back up to the trail with the red ribbon across it, to see a volunteer there moving it. What a joke!

I was pretty bummed that afternoon. People started talking about all of the different sections they got lost on and there was talk of the day not counting. That would have satisfied me and made for a more accurate result in the end. But they counted day 2, boo. I lost all desire to recover and get ready for day 3 so I hung out down town had some beers.  I even ate McDonalds for dinner! At around 10 o'clock I felt like a sore loser, told myself to suck it up and give it 110% to see what might happen. So I did and it turned out to be a great day, a solid race and a fast pace. I finished 4th that day sprinting to the finish with Shawn ahead of me and Ron right on my tail. Really exciting.

It's all over now and I've told the story many times. I still get a bit annoyed, but I know and a lot of other people know what the overall results should have been. I just wish the organizer gave us some recognition.