Tim Coleman Racing

The BC Cup returned to Silver Star resort this year for the first time since I’ve been racing. I’d ridden the Silver Star bike park before and always had a good time on their trails.

Practice on Saturday went really well. The track was a little awkward in spots, with loads of corners that were tough to hold momentum through. I felt strong, and comfortable on the bike. Holding good speed everywhere and hitting my lines consistently.

Glenn and I were using Strava to track our runs, and I was happy with my own progression on the track through the day.

Practice on Sunday morning was excellent again. I had two fantastic runs that were smooth and fast, and I hit all my lines. Strava segment of one of those runs is here: http://app.strava.com/activities/14157581#264285367

Racing unfolded throughout the day on Sunday with beautiful sunny blue skies. Reports from the Masters was the track was holding up well. I was stoked for my run. Quietly confident that I could well on this track.

Unfortunately as we waited at the top for our runs we could see a storm moving towards the mountain. Streaks of rain pouring from the black clouds. I was hoping all the elites could get down the hill before the rains started. It started to drizzle. I lined up in the start gate. The rain gathering momentum. *BANG* Big lightning strike on the next hill over. *Beep* *Beep* *Beeeeep* “Best get down as fast as possible” I thought. “The track is still in good shape, I can still get a good result”. “Stay clean, hit your lines, relax”. My run was going well. The dirt was tacky from the moisture. The rocks and roots increasingly slippery. “Stay light on the rocks … easy over the roots”. I rode the first three quarters of the track fast and smooth. The clouds were so dark it was like someone turned the lights off. But it’s ok, “Last woods, enter high, apex early, stay tight” I told myself. Alas the roots were more slippery than I judged. The front end washed into a hole and I went over the bars in slow motion. BALLS! I remounted as quickly as possible, neck brace rotated so I can’t look down, adjust neck brace. Back in action and hit the bottom of the track. The final turns were greasy, easy, don’t need to go down again. It was really raining hard now. Frustrated I crossed the line and hustled to shelter.

Final jump to the finish line in the pouring rain! Photo by: CBC Photography.

All said and done I finished 15th of 30 Elite men, 13 seconds off the win. My practice laps on Strava were within a few seconds of the final winning time. You never know how much time you lose in a crash, but I’m sure without the rain and the crash I would have placed within the top few. I left frustrated that I didn’t get the result I knew I was capable of, but at the same time confident that I was fast, riding well, and had a ton of fun shredding all week-end.

Cheers to the organizers and volunteers for yet another wonderful BC Cup event!

2012 Silver Star BC Cup Results

I’ve always enjoyed the Sun Peaks race course. It’s probably the highest average speed race course on the BC Cup circuit, which I love, and it’s always loose … double exciting!

Glenn and I trained together for this race as per usual. The one difference was that we used Strava to log each practice lap. We broke the track down in to segments; the top steep loose section, the middle flowy fast section, and the end tighter tree section. After a couple runs we’d upload our runs and compare our segment times. The most interesting part was our perception of our strengths and weaknesses. I thought I was riding the top section really well, average through the middle section, and struggling a bit through the bottom section. Glenn was the opposite. When we compared times it turned out we were identical in time through the first two segments, but I was faster by 6 seconds in the last segment. My final practice run HERE.

Small creek gap in the middle of the race course

My race run went well, with only a couple minor mistakes. I wasn’t overly happy with my run, but as the remaining Elite riders came down I realized that the course was loose and difficult to judge. After the last riders were down I wound up 6th of 26 Elite men, and 4.5 seconds back from the win, which I was happy with. BC-Cup-DH3-Silver-Star-Results. Also I was one place better than the overall BC Cup Champion for 2012, who is always really quick, being quicker than Fonzi is always a result.

Just this past week I got to head down to Sun Valley Idaho to check out some new Scott bikes. I was there as a representative for NSMB.com and the purpose of the trip was to cover the big unveil of the upcoming Scott Genius 650b (27.5) and 29″ trail bikes.

I wrote a quick summary of the trip before we got in to the meat of the riding on the second day I was in Sun Valley, and that got published here:

Photo by: Ian Hylands

A full write up of the bikes and the trip can be seen here at NSMB.com:

If you couldn’t tell from the pictures the riding was awesome, the bikes were a ton of fun, and I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face all week.

Photo by: Ian Hylands