Discussion: Fantastic Report

I've been waiting (as have many others, I'm sure) to hear the inside story of Will's first overnight race. What a trooper! Finishing 12th of 26 teams when you feel really crappy for an entire leg is pretty amazing. It sounds like you had excellent teammates, and it also sounds like the teammates helped to inspire Will in a different way from his Dad - which was useful at a time when he needed inspiration from as many sources as possible. I'm looking forward to watching the full 3-part video race report from Active Steve, and I'm counting the months until Will beats me in a race for the first time!

Gotta say, you are one cool Dad.

P.S. Sorry you missed that 2nd trek. I would have loved to watch your SPOT track whiz through there. You may or may not have noticed my extreme attentiveness when we were at your cottage and you were pointing at the map and describing the area around Go Home Lake. I was attempting to feign mere polite interest but may not have succeeded.

Due to the lack of roads and the existence of Hwy 400, we were limited in the ways we could send our short course racers to Bala. This meant that short course racers had tougher biking than the full course racers, and they were all finished before the 5th place teams on the full course. If we could have redesigned the terrain to meet our racing needs, we would have chosen to put some back roads and trails in different places - but as you know from designing race courses yourself, we had to work with what there was.

One racer did offer feedback that gravel roads would have been more appropriate for a short course bike section than snowmobile trails. If only the town council - already worried about minutiae like our parking arrangements - would have built brand new roads for us. Now *that* would have been downright hospitable! :)

Btw is it OK to link your race report to our website?

Yes you can link it... I may edit/correct it a bit if I get a chance to re-read it.

If hwy 38 were a little wider, it 'might' have been safe to send the teams along it from the power line trail to the canoe TA... that is a great ride from CP9

what we ended up doing was what I had anticipated as the finishing bike of the reg course.. hence the beer stash :-)

...it sucks when you understand the rationale behind the design, because when you get frustrated you don't have anyone to get mad at and have no release for the tension :-)

Agreed - a nice ride if the Saturday night drivers had gone to bed, which is likely. Another factor related to that power line is permission from the Wahta Mohawks. To get permission for Bike #2 on the full course, Bob and I first needed to ride it with a Wahta office representative who was on an ATV. (Great guy and a fun and different outing. Bob is a rockstar with a winch!) Then Bob had to submit a written request to a Wahta Council meeting, and they voted to approve. They were fine with our short course, which just enters a small corner of their land, but we probably would have needed to go through the full process for the power line trail as well. That wasn't the only part of the course where permissions played a key role, so (as you've experienced) we had to keep several scenarios in mind until it all worked out. It's such a complex and interesting puzzle!

You are one awesome dad FB! Great report! And congrats to Will. He really sucked it up!

Thanks Carbon! Can't wait to see Wild Rose out here next year! :-)

Good on ya FB for:

1. Excellent race recap;
2. Shepherding Will thru his frist true AR .
3. Superb race pre-planning with your unauthorized frosty cans of awesomeness drop - my kind of racing.
4. Great result even in lieu of not hitting the cut-off.

I'm sure Will will not forget this epic weekend and will be remembering this in eternity with you....."Dad, remember when we rode into the TA and Mom and Syd were there??....."

Keep it up!

Great race report! And really solid for his first overnight AR, makes me look forward to future race reports to see what the lessons bring :-D. Congrats on a great finish!

Love you videos!

Steve did a great job!

I especially like the comment of "there are no minors drinking beer here" :)

Fantastic work, especially Will. The kid's amazing, and you dads aren't too shabby.
There's a reason the 'Bentblaster comes with helmet mount ya know!
Bar mount is just secondary, or you can buy the dude a cat-eye bar light.

yeah, I know... I dropped the ball on that one! :-(

Great race report FB and huge pat on the back to Will for his first overnight AR. It was good to have some back and forth with your team in a few areas. We also appreciated the encouragement on the 2nd part of the first bike(trek) when you advised us that once we got past the sh*t the hydrocut would get better. This gave us some "hope" when we needed it.