Last weekend was the first highlight of the summer. 4 days on Hornby Island, racing, camping, and hanging around with a very solid crew at Stefan Widmers Island escape.
Early friday morning my racing buddy, Raph, and I loaded up his mazda and headed 3 hrs north up island and then took the two ferry jump across to Hornby Island. Hornby Island is legendary for its flowing singletrack and its races back in the day (10 yrs ago) called bike fest. There hasn’t been much racing on Hornby for the last decade but this past weekend it was re-surrected with an XC Island Cup on saturday and DH on sunday.
The xc course was longish at around 14 km as it circumnavigated through the finest trails on the island. Most the trails were created a long time ago when suspension was still just a pipe dream. As a result the riding was smooth and fast, pretty much ideal terrain for my 29″ Kona King Kahuna hardtail.
Race day started with a bit of a gongshow as Raph and I got pretty lost on the trails and roads in an effort to find registration but nonetheless made it to the start with a minute to go. The course itself was epicle with a solid 15 minute climb, followed by crazy amounts of wicked dh sinlgletrack, another climb and then more trails winding itself back to the start finish. For the first half lap things seemed to be shaping up for a solid race until a couple bent chain links ended any high aspirations and restricted my result to a 5th.
Congrats to Stefan Widmer on his first race and win of the yr after a rough winter of training/finding sponsors. Very solid.
The rest of the wknd was spent either by a campfire or on a bike seat.
The last couple months have been rough as far as results go but things are shaping up nicely for the rest of the season. Next up is BC BIKE RACE starting on Sunday! Super stoked as this race is dialed and the riding is amazing.
As for August there may be a few changes to the schedule due to an awfully sweet opportunity I will talk about soooonnn.