Saturday – Sainte Anne

Here's a sweet piccie from Damian Breach from today in practice. This is my new TLD kit. I'm very stealth like.
WooHoo my bike showed up!! It finally showed around 1:30pm today so it was just in time for our 3:30pm practice. I got it all put together and Mike from Michelin put a freshy Comp 16 on the front and I was good to go.
Oh before I get into how qualifying went I want to give a shout out to the XC boys. I think Adam finished in about 19th and was the first place American and I’m not sure how the Deckerator finished, but I think he might have had to start from near the back and that’s always tough when you’re duking it out against a hundred guys in tights.
Anyway, so practice was fun and I was just sort of playing on the jumps. It’s pretty high speed with a couple slower flat-track corners and once again pretty much a one-liner course all the way down, but whatever. So the gates have changed a bit and I’m sure most of you already know that, but this is the first time I saw what they meant. You can actually still sort of time it, but it eliminates sling-shoting.
As for qualifying I sooo wish there were more girls, but what can you do. If only some of the DH girls would race some 4x! I came down almost last and had a pretty decent run. I made one dumb mistake in the first flat-tracker left hand turn and went waaaay wide and went to shift and missed it so I came out spinning my head off, but I think the rest of my run went all right. I ended up second behind Jill. I think Anneke was behind me, and then Melissa. I wish Trina were here!!
My hand is feeling a bit worse than I had thought it would so I think a little ice and some extra Advil is in order tonight. I’ll try to take it easy tomorrow until race time.
In the men’s I think Gravesy qualified 1st with Lopes in 2nd. The women’s times aren’t that far off the guys. I think the men’s fastest was like 38 and women’s was 40. Then again the course is pretty fast and not much of a power course.
Anyway, I’m off to go have some dinner so I’ll be back tomorrow.
Cheers!