Always know what you are signing up for. Sounds simple and straightforward right? In most of the racing we do, there is always some element of the unknown, but we (James & Nathalie) admittedly were a little caught off guard while racing the Raid Vallee Bras du Nord Mountain bike race(s) on the weekend of Aug 22-24. I (James) have no doubt that the organizers explained their new format clearly on the website. But when we signed up for the race, we just went on the assumptionr (without reading much on the website) that the race format would be similar to previous years, except that there were 3 stages. Sounded like fun! So we signed up early in the summer.
As the race drew closer, we actually read the race weekend description: a Friday "Night Challenge", an "Enduro Challenge" on Saturday, and the "Evolution Challenge" on Sunday. As we read what these races actually entailed, we became both excited and a little nervous. All 3 races offered a unique and interesting challenge to racers - Friday would be a 2-person night time relay race, Saturday was basically a downhill time trial, and Sunday was more of a cross-country race but with only 3 timed "sections" of the race. All 3 of these formats were new to us, so we just decided we'd tackle the weekend as a new adventure, a great training opportunity, and a change of pace from adventure racing.
As it turned out, the Friday Night Challenge was unfortunately canceled due to lack of participation, but the organizers were great to still offer participants the (free) opportunity to ride a marked course on Friday night at a more leisurely pace. This was a friendly easy-paced ride that allowed us to make the most of the weekend and to get the opportunity to do some night riding. The marked loop was awesome and we had a really fun ride.
Saturday's "Enduro Challenge" is where things got very interesting for us. We were not familiar with the "Enduro" style of MTB racing, which is defined in the following way:
"The most basic definition is timed downhills and untimed uphills. Racing is over a series of special stages and whoever has the fastest combined time after those stages wins. Riders need to get between the stages, often for a set start time."
We would be doing the same (mostly downhill) trail twice with a set start time for the first downhill and no set start times for the second one.
The other thing we were not familiar with for this race was the trail. The race would consist of biking (untimed) up an access road to the start line and then bombing down the "Neilson" trail - the Vallee Bras du Nord's newly opened signature trail - in 1 minute intervals between racers. We had ridden small section of the Neilson a few weeks earlier and found it to be fairly technical compared to the trails we normally ride - only to be told that the section we rode was the "easier" part of the Neilson. This had us both quite nervous. Here's a little video of that easier section of the Neilson trail to give you an idea of some of terrain. Nathalie has been working in improving her technical riding this season, so this trail was a major step up in terms of difficulty for her (particularly at race speed), while I was concerned with racing somewhat blind downhill on a technical trail that I didn't know at all. Nat was set to start 1 minute ahead of me, but managed to convince the organizer to allow her to start in the last time slot to allow her a little more time to run the course without having to worry about people coming behind her.
As I started my descent, I was filled with both the excitement of the race and the nervousness of bombing down an unfamiliar trail. In adventure races, the speeds are much slower generally due to the length of the race, but this was 25+ minutes of red-lining or at the least pushing the limits of one's technical abilities (at least for me!). I also find it extremely hard to race conservatively, so of course I went out way too hard - finding out the hard way that the relatively short uphill section in the middle of the course was longer and steeper than I expected, and that maneuvering my hardtail Cannondale 29er on the 12km course (which I would classify as mostly a downhill course with some cross country terrain mixed in at a few places) was a lot more tiring than I thought it would be. I also ended up in quite a few spots on the trail where, had I known what was coming, I would have gone slower or taken a different line. I found myself making a LOT of mental notes of places on the trail where I would need to be more careful the second time around... I decided to wait for Nat at the bottom of the course so that we could ride back up together to start line a second time. I was expecting her to finish with a look of terror on her face, given how much more technical these trails were compared to where we'd been training, but instead she finished looking quite determined and confident.
After riding back up to the start line, I started my second loop a couple minutes ahead of Nat. Based on the first loop I decided that I would take the second one as a hard training session, and back off a little from race mode, particularly with my long list of mental notes of places to be more careful on the trail. Ironically, letting off the throttle is what actually led to my demise this time around... I seem to have missed on of those mental notes at one particular point in the trail and went over what looked like a rounded boulder on the trail but what turned out to be a "half" boulder - with about a 3 foot cliff on the other side. I had gone over it so quickly the first time around that I more or less jumped off the ledge and managed to stay upright (but just barely), but I didn't recognize this boulder the second time until it was too late (and apparently there was a way around the boulder that I didn't see either) and with my slower speed, I more or less just dropped off the edge of the rock and went right over my handlebars. It was not pretty and to be honest, I'm not really sure how I didn't injure myself and/or break my bike. But there was nobody around and I just got back up, brushed off the dirt and kept going...once again a little slower. The rest of the ride was relatively uneventful and Nat ended up posting a faster second lap and finishing tired but satisfied.
Sunday turned out to be a lot closer to what we originally thought we were signing up for - 40+km of a mixture of incredible single track, fun double track, and a little bit of road to connect them all. Nathalie and I rode the untimed parts of the race course together and then raced the timed sections separately. We both had a good day on the trail and lots of fun.
In case I may have undersold the race, I just want to say that the race itself was excellent - very well run and taking place on some truly beautiful and amazing trails. The format, while not what we expected, was actually very interesting and a nice change of pace. The Neilson is a spectacular trail that I can't wait to go back and ride soon - but not blindly in a race ;-) All in all we got what we were looking for out of the weekend - some challenging technical training in a beautiful place and overall a fun weekend in the trails. What more could you ask for?
(In all the excitement, we didn't manage to take any pictures, but there were photographers on course, so we hope to eventually be able to post some pics of the race)
James
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