Western Canada Summer Games was not all that awesome....the games itself were fun, but my races just didn't work out.
The buses that took us to venue for our races left far too early for a bike race. To be honest, you don't need to be at a Time Trial 3 hours before your start time! Anyway, seeing as we got there sooooo early, I had my bike "unofficially" checked by one of the commissaires. The seat position and aero bar length were all to UCI regulation, and my bike rolled out in 7.25m. All good, right? So I set about getting my race gear all ready, and my skin suit on. Went out to do a 20min warm up, get all comfy in the aero position and made it back 10 min before my start. Plenty of time! Now my bike needed to be"officially" checked, and after it was checked it couldn't leave the coral until I was on the course. Okay, so, bike length, seat all that jazz measure out...same as it did 2 hours before. I go to roll out my bike and its over, I do it again, still over, and again, still over. Now the panic ensues, our team mechanic tries to block off one more gear, and can't do it. We rush my bike and me out of the coral to our team tent and try and find a wheel that has junior gearing. We grab a wheel, (it was either ours or Manitoba's), throw it on my bike, tune the gears and then run (literally) back to the coral. Everything is rechecked, and I had 37seconds to get to line. I was panicked, stressed and upset. My coach told me to take deep breaths and to get myself back into the zone. I tried, I really tried. I didn't have a good race, I just couldn't get my head in the right place. But our women's team got a gold and a bronze in the TT, and we got a bronze in the men's TT. So at least it went well for some of my team!
Okay, so on to the road race. I had a lot of time to make because of my bad TT, and a lot to prove. The rolling start was good, the first "short" lap went well, the second lap was going well and then we hit the MASSIVE climb. It was big, really big, and everybody knew it would explode the field, and it did. I happened to be a part of the explosion, but I was holding my own. Not too far behind, and keeping it stead with two other Team AB team-mates. The turn around was at the top of the hill, so I turn around, and I am on the wheel of on of my team-mates with another trailing about 20ft behind me. I shift into my big chain ring, start going through the gears on the back, max out, and then clunk....Chain drop. Do know how hard it is to go from 70km/hr to 0km/hr and then get above 70 again to catch your team? It impossible if you weigh 100lbs!!! So, I spent the next 2.5 laps trying to catch up. Yup, that was fun....but we got a third and second on the women's podium for Team AB!
The next day was a "training" day. We went up to the bike park, the venue for the MTB XC race. I'm not a good mountain biker, lets just be honest here. At about 2/3 of the way through the course there was a steep downhill with a 90 degree right turn at the bottom. I was the last one for my team to go down it. I started to head down, scared out of my mind, when I see one of my team-mates KG sitting on the apex of the corner all dusty with her bike on the ground. So I braked, in an effort to cut the corner high and not crash into her. I didn't crash into her, but I did crash pretty hard into the desert. I was winded, got a bit of "desert" rash on my right arm, but other than that, I was okay. KG on the other hand wasn't so fortunate and it looked like a shoulder injury. I got up, dusted myself off, and climbed the cliff like ridge to the top so I could ride the corner like I would in the race. I made the corner, and continued on down the course while KG had to walk out. The farther I went, the harder it became to focus on the trail, and I was feeling a bit nauseous and dizzy. I had to walk this one downhill section because I could not focus enough to go down it safely.
KG and I shared the ambulance back to Poly Clinic. KG fractured her collarbone and I landed my self with a pretty bad concussion and six hours of monitoring in the Poly Clinic. The Chief de Mission Medical (the person who makes all the big medical calls) removed me from the games because of the severity of my concussion and my previous "concussion history."
I didn't get to race the mtb race, but I cheered! Team AB got a second place finish on the women's podium and a first and third on the men's podium. It was an overall pretty successful games for Team AB Cycling. CB and FW of Team Alberta took Gold overall in the General Classification, which was a pretty big win!
I was unable to attend the Future Champion's Camp in Penticton because of the concussion deal. I ended up fracturing my temporal bone (I don't even know where that is) and it as super tiny bone that has something to do with middle ear. It will be all healed in a few weeks!
