Catharine Pendrel

Looking forward! After slugging through to the finish line of my lowest World Cup result since 2007 I found a nice piece of grass to collapse on and contemplate what the heck had just happened out there.   How had I gone from racing to win, to just trying to finish?   My manager, Waldek, worried came over.   He picked up my bike and spun the wheels.   I laughed.   I had already checked that.   My brakes weren’t dragging, just my body. I pride myself on my consistency, I have finished in the top 3 of the World Cup overall since 2008 and top 5 in 75% of the World cups I have done.  When I’m off I can usually still piece together a decent ride, but after 3 laps of trying to hold wheels in Windham my dig was gone and I was just trying to turn my legs over. (If the race had been all downhill though I would have been on fire!) As with any performance it is never just one thing that leads to having a good race and never just one thing that leads to a bad one.  Typically if you have t

And now that MSA went so well I can say that the stage race training hit was a great success!   I had raced day1 of ST3 pretty hard and so backed off on day 2, but then got caught up in racing again on day 3 and was a little worried that maybe I overdid it, but 2 days of recovery and then 2 days of light course prep had me feeling sharp and ready to go. It was the 25th anniversary of MSA hosting a World cup or championship event. I always love racing here, the course is tough technically and physically allowing no hiding.  You have it or you don’t.  It suits my aggressive “go for it” race style and the fans create an awesome atmosphere.  The course was its usual gnarly self with the addition of a new rock section and was super slippery the day before the race.  I chose to ride my full suspension Orbea Oiz with Fox electronic lock out system and Maxxis ikon tires (18psi).  It was the perfect set up to have me feeling fast on the descents and able to put out power on the climbs.

Having done so much racing and travelling recently it was time to readdress my aerobic base before the next round of World Cups and travels.   But how do you get a good training hit that will help you carry form till September with only 2 weeks between nationals and World cups?   I decided to take a gamble on stage racing.   Doing the BC Bike race last year had worked so well for my July-September races that I felt a mini-stage race might do the trick.   Singletrack 3 , a transrockies event, was being hosted in my region of BC this year.   Keith was already registered for their 6 day event so I figured I could get in a solid training block …and some fun… with the 3 day event and still have sufficient time to recover for the MSA World cup. I am so glad I did.  Although I live within 1.5hrs of all the stages I raced, of the 120 km of trails we did over 3 days I had only ever seen 20 km of them before.  The first descent we hit in Salmon Arm had me smiling ear to ear knowing I could