Transrockies Challenge
A Perfect Day of Suffering
Paul Done / 12.08.2011
66km/2000m climbing/2000m descending</b>
Lance Armstrong once described the Tour de France as “3500km of pointless suffering� and with few exceptions, most ultra-endurance events fit this same description. The kind of people who sign up for epic adventures and races aren’t the kind of people who go home and brag about how great the weather was and how much time they spent by the swimming pool, instead, they talk about the pain, the difficulties, and the discomfort.
For these people, Day 5 of the 2011 TransRockies was a perfect day on the bike. The first sections of the course were coated with a thick layer of hail which fell the night before making traction hard to find and good lines through the singletrack impossible. With average speeds chopped by the conditions, even the fastest riders were out on course for 4 hours in the rain and cold and the average finishing time was closer to 6 hours on this classic TransRockies day.
Rolling out from Little Elbow Campground under cloudy skies, none of the riders were taken by surprise as they had been the day before and everyone took their extra clothes out of their gear bags and were prepared for an epic day in the high mountains. For most, this would be a day for survival, not racing.
This has been one of the closest races ever in the Open Men’s Division of the TR7 with four teams from three countries trading the top placings on a daily basis. The battle for first place tightened up again as former Canadian National Team riders Martin Vale and Carter Hovey (Team Fernie) grabbed the stage win and took three minutes out of the overall lead of Team Zaboo cutting their gap down to less than four minutes with two stages to go. Behind them, Team Honey Stinger (Nate Bird and Dax Massey) continued their methodical ride picking up another podium finish and closing in on an overall podium spot. After a mechanical-plagued 2010, their 2011 approach has put them in striking distance of their first overall podium at the TransRockies.
While the status quo held in the other Open Divisions, the Swiss KRAFTWERK -
rockthisbike.ch team of Marco Carrer and Eva Carrer-Enz found the tough conditions to their liking and grabbed their first stage win of the week.
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