Ton o' fun. That's what the 24 Hours of Adrenalin offered on the weekend. Hundreds of mountain bikers gathered at the Canmore Nordic Center to race in this demanding event. The technical course revolved around a 16km lap raced in the foothills of the Rockies. There was some sweet and some gnarly singletrack and some fun rooty and rocky downhill steeps. Did I mention climbing yet? There were vicious climbs, some grueling climbs and oh yeah - some more climbs. I think the vertical gain was 1400 feet per lap.

The race began at noon on Saturday with a Le Mans running start which you can see in the first photo and finished at noon on Sunday. As you can see in the next photo the riding conditions were spectacular sunny blue skies, here's Tom on his first lap leaving the flat starting zone and heading for the mountains in the distance. The first set of laps for everyone were pretty hot but cooling off as the day wore on. As dusk turned to night everyone began riding with night lights which in most cases only added a couple of minutes to the lap time. Our 5 man team did really well with laps generally taking an hour per, this moved us into a 5th place finish in our category (due to some solid efforts), suprising us as we hadn't intended to be competitive. We only had one mechanical breakdown which got fixed rapidly in our bike pit and all the wipe-outs were minor (at least there were no stitches). The most common complaint - the dust. After a lap you were guaranteed to get back to the trailer and cough dust for half an hour. At least it was good, healthy mountain dust. ;-)

Everyone's bike survived the ordeal so things look good for the Bow 80 race (80km mountain bike race on some intense trails in Kananskis Country) in September. Thanks to all the guys on our team for pulling it together and putting in a big effort. When Shawn sends me the end of race team photo I will fire it up on the blog so you can see who the Usual Suspects were. Also thx to Doreen for bringing Evan and Keegan out to the race and generally let them visit but also keeping them out of my hair and out of the chain oil. Quite simply, a great weekend.