My first endurance race

This past Sunday was my first endurance race. It was a new thing for me. I had well prepared my self for this, with the help of my friend Dan.gerous I started my preparation in January. Now this was it, the first one! So i got to my brothers place on Saturday for some nice relax moment with him and some friends. We had a good meal, pasta and a little wine. Went to bed early because i had to get up at 5am to go to Massif du Sud.


So after a good wake-up from the radio on the new Silversun Pickups song "Panic Switch", i was energized !
Took a good breakfast in order to fuel up for the event. 6am i hit the road, I had ask for covered weather not rain! well when i got to the Massif du sud i had my weather. the day before they were running the first stage of the big RAID 120km in two days. They had to stop the cyclist at the half mark to much rain! One guy on Sunday said to me, that it was so rainy, that the trails were transformed in rivers. So the start of the first group of riders the ones for the big RAID had to start at 8h30, we had our start at 9h. So that gave me a good 20 min of warm-up before the start. This was good for me, cos i know that my machine takes 30min to get to it's performing shape. So i did the first climb ... following the first group. that also gave me a idea of what was ahead, and i knew the distance before we hit the small trails.



So 8h50 i'm placing my self at the gate for the start. I'm not that nervous i find and that is a good thing. Pow!
We are off... i'm a bit stuck in a group that does not follow the leaders. They are already a bunch of 10 riders going at it. So as we pass the first corner i go at it. lunch a attack to catch them up, i say to myself i should try to run ahead and if i can't follow I'll just find a group behind that is going to my paste. I see that 6 riders are following me in that attack. At one point i say to my self, your on the big ring you should save your legs. As i get my gear down, it goes all the way down ... No trouble! When i try to get it back to the big ring it does not! i'm stuck on two rings now! Shit that will slow me down in the fast part! Ok i'm leading the second group of riders
so i'm where i wanted to be, in the first 15 riders. Next we head in the smaller trails, it's all mud and mud and we go up and up. In total we had to climb 1300m in 53km. So climb we did. after that fist climb we are 4 riders in the second group. Two of witch are getting away in the downhill because they can go on the big ring. i'm followed by a woman Josée Tremblay from Vélo2Max of Saint-Félicien who is riding very fast. In the first rocky road downhill after the climb, i hear "pow" that's it ... i say to my self i got a flat rear tire! Shit ... that's it i got to stop... from now on it's gonna be a race to gain back position! So i stop to change my flat and by that time i'm in the back! Got to go back up as far as i can.
From that point on, i had to do two more stop to try and fix my front ring problem. I get it to work, it had turn on the frame tube... Then it was sprint to catch up for lost time!

So in the end i finished 50th overall on 100 riders and in my class of Master 30-39 i finished 20th on 40 riders. I must have past about 20 riders to get to the end the last one 3km before the end. I'm happy with the fist experience. I could have done a top 10 i think if i had not lost time to the leaders. I felt good after the race. Next one Mont St-Anne on July 18th for a 72km.