It’s been a few years since I’ve ventured into Capitol Forest, and I have to say my most recent visit left me wondering why it had taken so long to get myself back to this magical playground of endless singletrack. Since my last visit, the Friends of Capitol Forest have been hard at work creating hundreds of berms and jumps, and have greatly improved drainage of the trail system. The trails, much like the race organization were dialed to day the least.
Simon Lawton Volunteers to Teach BBTC.org instructors who then in turn teach boot camps throughout the season to help fund the non profit trail advocacy group.
Looks like we missed a great race in Chile this year with the running of the fifth
annual Valparaiso Cerro Abajo (VCA) race. Congrats to Chilean ripper Antonio
Leiva on his fourth VCA win in five years:
We went on the most beautiful xc ride on Sunday with a local crew of friends. We set of to Grabouw in the dark, to have an early start, because it was supposed to be another real scorcher of a day. It was like a kid in a candy store, because I have been wanting to do this ride for year’s, and just have never been able to…
So, with 23 days to go, I decided to enter a mountain bike race to see how my training has been going. There were 3500 entrants, and it was on a beautiful wine farm Boschendal, where you are not usually allowed to ride. It was 55km long, and because I was not seeded, I had to start with hundreds of people way back in the bunch. I played catch up the whole race, and the last 15km, all the age groups were thrown in on the same trail towards the finish line. It was chaotic, with kiddies and grannies and very large people on bicycles, you had to control yourself not to race past the kids and push over the grannies, but to still try and get to the finish line ASAP! I finished 18th overall out of 50 in the pro women’s category, and only 7 min behind some of the top xc pro.
