Cesar's Blog

As the CX season is coming to an end, the Beans and Barley put together once again a superb event!! despite all the skepticism we got more than 140 racers !!!! with -7c temperature and many inches of snow along the course. New to the course this year was the fly over ! more that 8ft high and super fast. Luckly no one had a crashed in the fly over, but it certainly was atrackting for everyone in the race. As part of the team, I was there at 6:00am setting up the course with the rest of the team and volunteers and at around 9am we were almost done and getting ready for a pre-ride. It was a lot of work setting up the course and I was tire only from hammering stakes and flagging!!! Got ready for a pre-ride at around 9:30 and found the course very hard to ride (even walking your bike in the of the hills was almost impossible, let alone ride it...). Anyway, I started up in the front 5 minutes before the start and by the end of the first lap I w...

First of all I have to start by giving a huge thanks to Michael at the Dome Quixote hotel in New Denver, awesome and unique little place right in town with all the amenities you need before and after a race. After spending some time in the hot tub with Maria and Nick I headed out to the pre-race meeting at Kaslo (about 50k from New Denver on a beautiful twisty road) and met there with Andy, Stefan, Many, Craig, Julie and few others Dead Goats.. The pre-race meeting went well and was very detailed about the different course markings. They warned us about the terrain, some black diamond down hills, exposure, etc... Every down hill was actually very rideable and wasn't as bad as I thought, I can't say the same about the climbs !%$ where I was pushing up the bike longer than expected... I choose a good gear for the climbs (I think) 32/21, but even with that I had to walk lots.... The start was at 7:00am sharp. Lined up at the front with Andy, Many, Trav...