There are pros in these woods. I’ve spent the past year training on my Hei Hei to be something akin to “the fastest guy you know.” Perhaps not full-time pro level of fast, but at least fast enough to occasionally get accused of being on an e-bike. It’s honest and important work.
The main goal has been to roll up those cumulative e-doping accusations, drop them on Vancouver Island for the epic 7-day BC Bike Race, then have the Canadian translation come out as, “Who’s that guy, eh?”.
Three days in, the TL:DR is: The real pros are real fast. Take the kind of pace we all aspire to achieve, and then imagine another breed of humanity riding away into the distance.
The author, Ryan Short, shows that 94 number plate whose boss on stage 3! Photo: Margus Riga
Stage 1:
With racing, there’s a game within the game for me. I have taken to long form racing as the result of a benign heart arrhythmia. One that pops up whenever I start digging new holes at the back of the pain cave. The relatively short prologue, at eight miles and 1500 feet of climbing, is too short for me to be able to really dig in, cry havoc, and release the dogs of war – Or, you know, ride as hard as I would like to without inducing my old-man-heart (I’m 34…). So long as I keep the pace reigned in at a reasonable tempo, there is no heart trouble. Which is why when a friend started off at a blistering pace (who for reasons known only to me, I will refer to as test pilot Chuck Yeager), I sprinted hard after him.
The inevitable and predictable result caught me by surprise about halfway through the stage and put my pace back in check for the remainder.
The stage had a four-hour start window and I thought I had placed myself as one of the first riders to go behind the pros, but cresting the top of the course I started coming upon an even more rarefied field. The couples teams, spouses who are willing to race all seven days and 20,000+ feet of technical trails together, had snuck in front of me – Their pace being more geared towards keeping the nuptials intact than high results page placement. Passing politely took more time than I would have preferred to spend amidst couples therapy.
Beyond the betrothed, the pros were establishing an incredible, let’s call it absurd, pace for the week. I finished the stage in 32:20, whereas coming in at 25:36, before I arrived, the winner had enough time to finish a 6-minute abs routine and still catch their breath. Sitting in 41st of 600 racers, I’m left hoping that at least some of these leaders can’t sprint marathons.
Kona adventure rider Cory Wallace is one of those pros. After three days of racing, he’s sitting in 11th place. Photo: Margus Riga
Stage 2:
The first climb of a 4400’ vertical day turned out to be a road race. The start was meant to be broken up into fields of 25, arranged by the prologue’s finishing order, but at the first gun so many of our second wave jumped the dividing tape that it developed into a flow of lemmings and we turned into a frothing 75-racer peloton. Our mass hysteria continued up the road, driving an unsustainable pace. Before the singletrack, the field split and I did my heart proud by crushing every instinct I have left from a long prior road racing career, and hanging with the slower field.
Once the singletrack hit, so did my arrhythmia. As I pulled off the trail to let my heart settle, a group of 10-15 riders that included Chuck Yeager passed me by. This was to be the start of the Chuck Yeager curse on my day. Everytime I passed him back, which the day would require me to do several times, shortly thereafter my heart rate would jump to 200 beats per minute (The primary effect of my arrhythmia) and I would once again be left trailside watching him ride off into the great blue yonder.
Despite my troubles, my fitness felt as good as it has in years on this stage. I was up to the task of repassing the same group of 10-15 riders several times, both reeling them in slowly on the climbs and rolling by them with the beyond XC-bike confidence of the Hei Hei on the descents.
I finished the 25-mile course in 1:55, which was good for 38th on the day and moved me up one spot to 37th in the overall standings. A small move in the right direction, but even more so, a move that gives me a bit of hope that a steady pace might pay out with five days still remaining.
Cory roped Kona Adventure Team Rider Rebecca Fahringer into the BC Bike Race at the last minute, Becca is currently sitting in 6th with four days racing left. Photo: Margus Riga
Stage 3
While we kept our herds to our designated starting corrals this time, you can otherwise refer back to the start of stage two for an accurate summary of today’s start. Only today set the pace even higher.
The overheated pace up the road should have been what brought on trouble for me. Instead, it was when we got back on the singletrack and I made the prudent choice to slow down that my heart started going off. Back trailside, watching a now familiar group of riders hyperventilate past me, I made the mental transition to accept the pace my body would allow – Even if that pace turned out to not be competitive.
For the first climb, that was the case. I overtook perhaps two riders on the first climb (as opposed to surging through the group as I would have in the youthful exuberance of my yesterday). On the beautifully technical descent of Maple Syrup, which lies on the outer edge of sanity for any XC-bike, I overtook a few more – Including some of the pros whose bikes did not fare as well. And then the wisdom of patience started to reveal itself. One by one, much of the hot starting field rolled behind me. After another hard-earned six miles of undulating tech, I finished 30th on the day and brought myself up to 32nd overall. While the physiological marvels at the very front of the field are now well out of reach, I took what borders on too much pleasure passing a number of cracked riders who had previously been that much faster than me over one day.
With four days of racing to go, the steady-paced way of life is starting to feel a lot more exciting.
