More tanning, more crashing

This weekend I was back in Toronto. It's entirely possible I would have done less driving this season if I lived in Toronto! But there's only so many times I can ride Keele St to Holland Marsh... Stopped a couple of days in Ottawa to catch up with Paul and Bets, and see Nige's team have a great run in the Canadian Ultimate Championships, until their worlds bid came off the rails in the semis. Great showing, boys.

On Sunday, Nick, Matt, Jordan and I converged on Niagara for the Niagara Classic. Probably 300 racers in various categories, and get this: after subtracting the entrance fee, the winner of my Elite 1-2 race got to take home $20. Good thing we don't count on prize winnings to eat (one could also point out that I would still starve if the winner got $1000 for every race I do... ;) ).

Nick got in a two-man break from kilometre 3, and had a tough 120km of suffering out there. He won the KOM competition, by cresting the Effingham hill first, 6 out of the 10 laps, but unfortunately hadn't heard them say before the race they'd cancelled it. Aw.

Jordan got in a 4-man break that caught Nick and co, but they failed to work as a unit and were separated in the last couple of laps, and ended up 4th and 8th. I need to figure out how to choose the right break to go in - I ended up chilling on the front of the peleton for the last 25km, chatting up a storm with my fellow riders and working on my tan-lines.

Afterwards, we figured Nick needed to check out The Falls, being just a hop, skip, and twenty vineyards away.

Fortunately he resisted straddling the barrier, unlike the unlucky girl half an hour later!


I was pretty stoked to get hooked up with a factory tour on Monday with our bike sponsor, Norco, and a 2012 model CRR to ride for the remainder of the season. Following that, we headed over to Joyride 150, an indoor bike park for BMX and MTB, partly sponsored by Norco, and got some more VIP treatment. The facility was super cool, with ladder-bridges, BMX pumptrack, an 800 metre XC trail, and plenty o' jumps...oh, and a foam pit!

Of course my 'push it till it hurts' attitude was once again my undoing, and I got to bond with

an ice pack for a while. While I was sitting/lying around, trying not to pass out or bleed on my t-shirt, a little dude comes over - he can't have been more than 10 - and said "did you do that trying to do a back-flip?". haha Unfortunately honesty got the better of me and I pointed out the jump (smallest in the whole place) that I ate it on.

After a trip to the Markham Stouffville Hospital and another scar to add to the collection, Nick and I mixed it up with the big rigs on their late night run to Montreal.