Durian Cup, Street sprints and other fun stuff

Mitch flying through the card collecting station

Yup that's me fixing a flat (which is becoming a rather unpleasant habit)

What a great time this is, in the cycling world. Grassroots racing happening every week at Hartland (Durian Cup), and underground sprint series on the streets of Victoria. People are on bikes everywhere, the weather is awesome, and to top it all off: The Tour De France!

Last Thursday Me and Mitch made it out for the Thursday nights Durian race. This time it was a poker run set up in a bit of a different way than usually. You collected cards for each lap you did around the short race track which included Little face, Emergency two, and Rolly Ridge. Then you could stop at the card playing stop and play your hand. Now this is where it got complicated for non-card players like myself. You could play everything from one card to five depending on what you felt like...I was not very good at this and that in conjunction with my new found fondness for flat tires resulted in a mediocre placing. Both Mitch and I had a blast however, even though we agreed that we would have liked to see the top half of Little face included in the race course, to add a little gnarlyness to the racecourse.
The day after we were both feeling the pain of the previous nights escapades. -Cross country racing is a painful sport. We did not have time to recover much though, because that night we had street sprints in Esquimalt. We had a good showing from the store with me, Mitch and Justin representing...The sprints were oodles of fun as always and Mitch took it upon himself to destroy everybody else, and thus retaining his title as the reigning sprint champ. I did not escape the humiliation of Mitch's speed and got crushed by him, not once, but twice. I did however, not manage to loose to anyone else so that placed me in second, after "The Destroyer".
Justin had some epic battles as well with a three series sprint race with Paul One of which was a spandex and no shirt affair on the part of Paul, and on his insistence Justin raced shirtless as well...This was strangely entertaining. But their first race was the best, as they switched the lead at least two times and crossed the line dead even. The first draw ever. In the end Justin sadly lost out to the aerodynamics of his spandex-clad competitor, something I'm sure he will try and avenge next time around.
Tonight we have a night ride at the dump, but since we have to attend a product knowledge seminar after work, this will be later than usually and we should be at the parking lot around 8:30-9. I'm going out anyway, and I'll see if I can drag anyone with me.
This will be a true night ride though, lights mandatory!

Durian cup orienteering race, Tour De France

The Map for the race and our ride marked in pink.

Me and Mitch made it out for the orienting part of the Durian Cup last night. After being coaxed into it we signed up for the A category. I wasn't feeling to fresh, perhaps paying for my indulges in alcoholic beverages oon Tuesday night. Mitch on the other hand was just flying. He was riding a xc/all mountain bike for the first time, and using clips for the first time and this combination resulted in an extremely fast flying Mitchell. He's used to climb on his Triple clamp Bullit, with a coil shock, road cassette and a 36t chainring. So he was laughing on the 30 pound Stumpjumper FSR and never even shifted out of the middle ring for the whole race. In fact the only way I could keep track of where he was ahead of me was by judging the distance according to the sound from his shrieks of enjoyment. Mitch is a very capable downhiller, but after seeing him flying up the Hartland hills, and destroying the street sprints, I'm starting to think there is not a single category of cycling where he would not be successful if he gave it a shot. He was kind enough to wait for me though, as I dragged my sweating, huffing, hulk up the hills in granny gear...He got plenty of time to enjoy the outdoors. In my defence, we did manage to make it back in time (at 55min we had 5 min to spare), and finished the race without any major crashes or injuries. That's always positive.
Talking of Racing, The Tour De France starts tomorrow, so set the timer on your coffeemaker to 6am and get up for the 6:30 start. First stage is an individual time trial in Monaco which should be a blast to watch. I'm currently building my virtual team on The Tour De France Online game so get ready to be crushed by my favorites. We have also invested in a nice flat screen for the store, and the idea is to watch the stages on that.

Durian Cup and bombs

Second round of the Durian cup mini mtb series is happening tonight at Hartland. Check out the race poster here. Tonight there will be an orienteering run. How that works, I have no idea but it should be fun. Looks like it's going to be a great day weatherwise so there's no reason not to show up. Three dollars is all you need if you have a bc race licence, and if you don't you can buy a day race licence for $10. The organic athlete people that organize these events also have some interesting swag at the end of each race...think: Vegan Cupcakes, climbing passes for Crag x, cookbooks etc. What more do you need? Come on out, it's a lot of fun.

Also, for you bike nuts out there:
Some of our staff will be going out for a zoobomb, or a vicbomb on Friday. There will be a pavement run and then a dirt time trial...So if you have your own bomb and would like to join feel free to do so. Just shoot us a line in the comment section and we'll let you know where this will be happening...prepare to be destroyed by "Little Missy."