Catharine Pendrel

So I'm getting better at this race update thing. Of course 3hr layovers at the airport help! I've almost made it back to Kamloops after the most last minute race travelling the Luna Team has done yet. My last post said that we had Luna Summit this weekend in San Fran. Well we did. Saturday Georgia, Chloe and I were leading 4hr mtb rides with the Luna Local teams and sunday morning we were up at 4:30 am and headed to the airport. The night before Zeph drove our race bikes to Fontana California and we stayed to ride and have dinner and Q&A at the summit. For the first time ever we were going to try flying in the morning of the race. It went pretty smoothly though and we were at the venue by 9am for our 11:30 race. My legs felt surprisingly good. Georgia was able to sneak on course to scope out a lap and brought back reports of a hike a bike section added to the otherwise shortened loop. I was able to sneak on and check out the climb and sure enough it was going to be a tri

Now I’m really back at the pro cyclist schedule. I flew from Chile at 8pm and arrived in Miami at 4 am. 3 hrs later and a good little nap on the floor of the airport after not getting much sleep on the plane, still wired from the race, I was on a flight to San Francisco. I met up with some of my Luna team mates in Mill Valley and helped pack all of our new team gear into the team trailer. From here we headed to Napa Valley for our camp. At 6:30 pm Georgia, Chloe and I arrived in Napa with mechanics Chris and Zeph and were able to get our first shower since the race. There is nothing quite as humanizing as a shower! Gary and Kit, owners of ClifBar had dinner ready for us as the team trickled in from all over for the kick off to another great year. Team camp is more about photo shoots, dialling in new equipment, sizing and schedules than about training, but this year’s location in Napa allowed us to get in a lot more riding than in years past. Based out of Gary and Kit’s place w

It’s a good thing I’m not media as I don’t seem to be able to get my own race updates out until two weeks later! So yes, the Pan Am champs went phenomenally well. It was one of those days that you wake up feeling unstoppable. You know it can be your day. The course suits you, you’re rested and you’re positive. I warmed up on a road climb with a tail wind at my back and felt even stronger. Even though we were in a rather remote area, lots of Chileans showed up to watch the race; so many in fact, that as they did our countdown the crowd made a whistle like noise within the 15seconds to go count and half the field took off before the whistle. More than usual I had to make up for a slow start and started to feel a little panicky as I saw the four Americans and a couple South Americans surge to the front. Marry McConneloug and Georgia Gould were setting pace and looking really good. It was an “oh crap” moment for me as I tried to gauge how hard I could go to bridge the gap and n

Amanda Sin, Matt Hadley, Derekzandstra, Seamus McGrath, Me and Emily Batty Sections of the course are a wee bit steep Las Chicas Canadienzes

Racing Kicks off tomorrow with the women at 11ish. The men go at 2:30. Everyone is feeling good and looking forward to racing the surprisingly technical course. It'll be a tough race with some steep climbs and lots of loose rutted descents. Fun fun fun the mtb season has begun! Found this little critter in the bathroom. We now make sure we close the windows! The 40km switchbacking road to our accomodations Not a bad view eh! Falling on your knees sucks! My knees stuck out enough as it was I don't need any swelling! Don't worry guys it's not too bad riding

Doping control comes to visit you twice in 14hrs for samples! I’m now sitting in a house way up in the mountains of Santiago, Chile. The 7 member Pan American team flew into Chile this morning. 3 hrs after arriving at the airport and a $200 fine later for Matt who forgot to declare a bag of raisons we were packed into minivans and headed out of the city smog and into the mountains. UP, up, up we climbed until we reached over 3000 m of elevation on a road that became more and more winding with each Kilometre. About 40 switchbacks later we turned onto gravel and bridged many water bars in our rentals vehicles with only a couple scraping noises to find our accomodations! We moved into our cozy home complete with our care takers Cathy y Alexis that will cook and clean for us. The only catch is they only speak Spanish which just means I get to practice lots! The cabin is a ski in and ski out in winter and could be right out of Switzerland. There’s barely a tree in sight, just lots