Hurricane Ridge

Today was the annual Hurricane Ridge Canada climb over in Washington State.
This unofficial race starts with a 4:30am get up, a 6am ferry and then a rolling start about 2 hours later once everyone has finally paid there 5 bucks to get past the ranger station. This year about 100 riders showed up for this little adventure. The great thing about this race is that there are all types of riders; some who really want to race it and some who just want to get to the top.

Since I am have not been able to run or compete in a triathlon in over a month I was really looking forward to the competition aspect of the day. Luckily my calf does not hurt on the bike so I knew I would be able to lay it on the line and ride as hard as I could to the top. I didn't waste any time getting the competition aspect of the day going. I went to the front early on and tried to break up the group right away. I was soon joined by Max Plaxton, team mate Bob Cooter and a few other strong riders. Max is one of the best young Mountain bikers in the country so I knew he would be a tough athlete to stick with to the top, but I decided to ride with him as long as I could. Riding with Max ended up putting a big gap on the other riders, but at 25 minutes I was in jeopardy of blowing to bits so I had to let him go. From there on I rode my own tempo and Bob rode up to me in the last mile where we were able to ride tempo together for the last 5 minutes to the top. We made it up in 53:15, about 1:30 faster than my last attempt a couple of years ago and 2:45 down on Max. All in all a great day of riding, a great day of friendly competition and a chance for me to get on here and write a race report again :)

In the women's race Mel Mcquaid kept her title, but less than a minute back was HPR athlete Pam Shatzko.