Race Report for Road Nationals, 2007

            Hello everyone! Just here to give a quick race report on Road Nationals that just took place in St. George, Quebec. I thought it was a really fun trip, the town we stayed in was really nice and our races were surprisingly easy to find which felt pretty nice. We even had an adventure on the drive back to Montreal and ended up lost in some small town the night before our flight which was good for a laugh or two.

            Overall the trip was awesome, but my racing definitely suffered from me being sick. I got the flu a few hours before my flight, and ended up having to miss two meals due to the fact that I felt like I was constantly going to puke. I started to feel a bit better for the time trial, but still rode pretty poor from a sore throat that didn’t want to go away. The women were lucky since they rode earlier in the morning and missed the rain, but when Dave and I started was when it really started to pour and made the cornering in the race extremely slow. The course was really hard and had pretty constant climbing the first 7 km and then leveled out until the turn around. I was coughing pretty much the whole race and just couldn’t seem to find a rhythm. However, Dave and Alyssa both rode strong and they seemed happy with how their races went!

            The day of the road race gave us much better luck then the day of the Time Trial. It was around 25 degrees the whole day and there was little to no wind which felt pretty great, especially coming from Saskatchewan. I wish I wouldn’t have been sick to see how I could have performed but I haven’t really been sick once this year so I guess back luck catches up to everyone eventually. Dave rode awesome in our race and worked hard ‘til the end, he helped chase, lead his group in the finishing circuits of the race, and even rode riders off his wheel during the final portions of his race. Alyssa rode the same way and looked strong the whole time. She was even dropping her group up the climbs near the finish which was really impressive since there were some riders from big teams in her group.

            Anyway, I thought the trip was a blast and apart from some bad luck with me being sick, I thought Sask. rode awesome! Thanks for reading everyone, and I’ll see you all out at the races!!!

Sincerely,

Ben Rempel