Spontaneity is the joy of life.

This weekend I didnt have anything on the schedule, I was supposed to go race Bromont, but opted against it on the basis of feeling unprepared overall as well as to save some money. Road Provincials at Elliot Lake was another option, but driving 8 hours to the middle of nowhere just for a race..meh.

Well, Friday night I ended up going downtown and checking out one of my co-workers rip it up with his cover band 'Bob Says Go' had a couple pints there, and then checked out my other buddies DJ set at another place, a few vodka tonics there...and then next thing you know its 3 am, im ordering pizza, and a few of us are hanging out at my place.

Went to bed at about 4:30, before getting up at 6:30am to head to Midland where I was filling in for a spot on my friends 9hr team. Yup, this is the proper method of endurance race preparation kids.

I got there just after the race start feeling dreadfully hungover. After eating some pizza (the same one from 3am) I started my warmup. Oh God, this was gonna be a tough slog.

My team was an eclectic group, we had a rider who was very new to MTB'ing, a 12 year old kid named Tyler, my buddy Simon who is having an awesome season and myself.

Let me tell you about Tyler. I am willing to put 100000$ right now on this kid winning everything ever. He will be winning Junior Ex in 5 years, and then u23, and then Elite, and then the Olympics. He was throwing down 32 minute laps on a singlespeed, and he weighs as much as one of my legs.

I figured I'd throw down 4-5 race pace laps and treat it as an interval session. On my first lap I puked. Who has two thumbs and is the antithesis of race professionalism? THIS GUY! My first lap was a 29 minute lap, which was way off the pace of Bretton Matthews 25:00. My goal was to come within 2 minutes of his time.

As the day went on, my times got better. The hungover feeling was replaced with artificial energy in the form of caffeine pills and monster energy drinks. My best lap ended up being my 3rd lap until I crashed fiercely (Matt Spak can serve as witness)It was on a rocky river bed with a 90 degreee left hand turn. The apex is blocked with a rock, so you have to take the inside or go far out. I tried the inside and slid into the rock. I jammed my chain and lost about a minute and a bit. It ended up being a 28:01 lap, so im pretty happy with that.

Originally we were just going out to have fun given that we didnt feel we had a contention team, but as the day went on, all our laps got faster, and pretty soon we realized that if we could throw down a few decent laps, we'd have a shot at the podium. So we dug deep, i popped some more caffeine and we raced hard. Simon was the final guy on our team to throw down a lap, and he dropped a solid ringer, bumping us from 6th to 3rd. In fact we grabbed 3rd by outsprinting the team that was originally in 3rd. Sweet!

We came out with some medals, and a bad ass pez dispenser.

It was really fun to just to hang out in the summer sun and race with a relaxed mentality for a change. Thomas and the Mountainview folks are awesome hosts and run an amazing event. I'm definitely going to do this event next year. What was originally a 6:30am spontaneous decision turned out to be the best one of the weekend.

I was supposed to ride the Provincials MTB Course today, but It seems I warped my rotor very badly on my last lap... so I have some repairs to do before its rolling again. I might try and make it out after work on Thursday for the weekly race.