Lessons of Adrenaline

So, I realize it's been a while since i've posted anything here. If all goes according to plan, i'll be more active with posts on my blog. Hope you enjoy reading. The following is an article that i wrote for the Canmore Leader, the local paper.

Canmore is an interesting place. There are folks from all over the world; just stroll down main street and you will probably hear at least three different accents, if not different languages. And why not? It’s a pretty amazing place to live. Personally, it is the huge athletic community that drew me in. I’ve been a national level cross country ski racer for the better part of my twenty two years, and despite my relatively new status as a permanent resident of the Bow Valley, I’ve spent a lot of time training and racing here over the years, and fallen in love with the place. Having just moved from Thunder Bay, Ontario, where I spent the past four years training and racing with the National Team Development Centre, I just can’t seem to stop looking at the mountains…. getting to ride, roller-ski, run and hike on them daily is the icing on the cake.
The strong athletic community is what drew me to this mountain town, and now that I’m here I want to be part of that community; I’m diving in headfirst. My new team, Rocky Mountain Racers, is an amazing and dedicated (if slightly odd-ball) group of athletes who welcomed me immediately. Our first training camp, at Silver Star Mountain Resort outside Vernon, was just over two and a half months ago, and already I feel perfectly at home. Late June had us at the Beckie Scott altitude training facility on the Haig Glacier, in Kananaskis Country for a week of on-snow skiing. Perhaps one of the keenest coaches I’ve worked with, John Jaques, the team head coach, is (in)famous for getting the first on-snow camp at the Haig in June and the last possible one in September. If trudging through waist deep snow for four hours just to get to camp isn’t the best possible team bonding experience, I don’t know what is.
In my first meeting with John, we talked a lot about the diverse training opportunities here in the Bow Valley, and he encouraged me to take part in as much of it as I can. His training philosophy is one that includes all sports, the more the better. That suits me perfectly. I decided to move out here because I wanted to be in a place where I could do more than just ski train. Still, I was a little taken aback by just how enthusiastic John can be. When he first told me about the 24 Hours of Adrenaline mountain bike race, I recall him saying, “You know you’re going to ride the 24 Hours, right?” It wasn’t what you’d call a question. He chuckled, while I swallowed hard and tried to disguise my trepidation. Three months later, the day has finally arrived despite my best efforts to wish it well into the future. In fact, I’m at the Canmore Nordic Centre as I write this, watching the clock tick down to my start time. The atmosphere is an odd mix of electric energy, nervous anticipation and heat-induced delirium. It’s almost time to go, I’ll have to finish this on my next break.
July 25th, 8pm. I’m now two laps into this adventure, and I’m beginning to learn things; things like Murphy’s Law is nothing to be scoffed at, ever; things like my legs hurt. I’ve learned that the combination of dust and 30 degree heat can make anything taste good, even your own sweat. Two of our five bikes are now out of commission, and I got a flat ten minutes into my first lap. Eight different people, indeed everyone who passed, stopped to make sure I had everything I needed to fix it. The camaraderie of suffer fests like this is what all of the fourteen hundred riders at this event live for, myself included. This kind of sport must seem intensely odd when viewed by spectators, in the abstract. To those of us living it however, the burning lungs, cramped legs and near hallucination, it all feels perfectly natural. I need to eat something before I pass out.
July 26th, 3am. It’s amazing the things that flow through your head when you’re in a world of blackness, which consists only of the whirring of your drive train, the crunch of dirt under your tires and a three-meter cone of illuminated trail in front of you. Everything slows down, at you find yourself thinking things you probably wouldn’t in any other circumstance. For instance, it’s curious how the blur of dust particles through your helmet-mounted light beam looks remarkably like fine snow in the high-beams of a car, and is just as blinding. Vaguely I wonder if I remembered to tell my team-mate Eric to wake up Etienne, who I’m supposed to tag off to. My thoughts are interrupted momentarily as I pass a fellow-suffering rider, who pants ‘Nice work, man’ as I struggle by. Surprisingly, those words get me up the hill faster than any coffee or energy gel. It’s also surprising how having your world confined to three meters of dimly lit trail and background noise actually makes it easier to ride. When you can’t see the top of the climb, it doesn’t look nearly so far away. The lights of downtown Canmore are stunningly beautiful when seen from the mine scar at the Nordic Centre, through a cloud of dust at 45kms per hour, on next to no sleep, in the middle of the night, winking at you like so many fireflies. At three am, by the blue-tinged aura of a helmet light, everything looks like a bear. Reality check: don’t forget about the hairpin right corner in a few hundred meters.
July 26th, 11:57am. I want to hug everyone around me, but can’t find the energy to pick myself up off the ground. I also might throw up. With three minutes to spare, after the hardest lap of the whole event, I crossed the line into what had been the transition zone for the last time. Eric, Rob, Yuri and Etienne are standing around me with big grins on their faces. We’re done. Thanks to some pretty outstanding bad luck and broken bikes, we finished well down in the team rankings, though I doubt anyone cares; I sure don’t. This is the reason I moved to the mountains, and I wouldn’t take it back for anything. The final lesson from this weekend has to be that no matter how dark the night, or how broken the bike, the sun will indeed come up tomorrow. Hopefully a few days of rest will be enough to get me ready for my next adventure, another training camp on the Haig in just over a week’s time. 24 Hours of Adrenaline versus a 28-hour training week…I wonder which will hurt more. I guess there’s only one way to find out. As a friend and fellow rider often says; on the mountain as in life, always ride that high line.