4 Hour of French Fort Cove, September 18th, 2011

Every fall, the Miramichi Mountain Bike Club host an awesome event in Miramichi, New Brunswick called the 4 Hour of French Fort Cove Mountain Bike Race.

This event was held last Sunday @ the beautiful French Fort Cove park. This race is a 4 hour endurance race that can be done solo or as a team. The race starts at 11:00 a.m. and you have to do as many laps as you can within 4 hours. It should also be noted that you can start your last lap anytime before 2:59 p.m.

French Fort Cove offers a variety of mountain bike trails for all skill levels and this year they designed a new 12km course that was a lot of fun. The course consisted of a mix of beginner/intermediate single and double track trails that offered some nice challenges that consisted of rocks, roots and a bit of mud.

Because Miramichi is 2 hours away from Fredericton, me and 4 friends decided to head down to Miramichi the night before and stay at my parent's place. We got there Saturday night, cooked a giant pot of pasta and had lots of laughes.

Me and my buddy Matt decided that we would be doing it as a team together and we called our team RockVortex. We took the first part of my bike's name Rockhopper and the name of Matt's Rocky Mountain Vortex to create our team name. When doing the race as a team, it works like relay. One rider starts the race while the second one waits at the start finish line. Once the first rider completed his first lap, the second rider takes off for the teams second lap while the first rider takes a break. When the second rider returns, the first rider takes off for the teams third lap and so on. So we showed up at French Fort Cove on a cool beautiful sunny morning and started talking strategies for the race. We figured that we should be able to do 45 minutes lap, so we figured it was best to let Matt go first. Our thinking was that Matt was a faster rider than me, so if I came in from our fourth lap and we needed a quick 5th lap to allow us to start our 6th lap before 2:59, it would be best to have Matt try and do a quick lap.

So the race started and Matt set off on our first lap while I tried and stay warm and loose at the start finish line. Our 45 minute per lap time was quickly crush when it took the real fast riders 41 minutes to complete a single lap. Managing to complete 6 laps in 4 hours was going to be a real challenge. Matt came across the start/finish line in about 47 minutes. Our team was running in 5th place out of 14 teams, so Matt had done an excellent job on his first lap. When I started our teams second lap, the 4th place team was about 2 minutes in front of me. About 7 minutes into my first lap, I passed the 4th place team rider and tried to put a gap on the rider. When I got to the start finish line, our team was now running in 4th place and had managed to put a gap of about 4 minutes on the 5th place team.

Matt took off for our third team lap and I was hoping  he would be able to maintain our gap on the 5th place team. About 45 minutes after Matt had started his lap, I got ready for him to round the corner. About 2 minutes later, the rider from the 5th place team rounded the corner. He had somehow managed to pass Matt out on the course. I waited and about 5 minutes later Matt came around the corner. Turns out he had gotten a flat tire. I took off for our 4th team lap and tried my best to catch up to the 4th place team. I had an awesome lap and felt like I was really flying through the course. I never managed to catch the 4th place team and when I got to the start/finish line, I found out I had done a 50 minute lap. My second lap felt much quicker than my first lap, but it ended up being almost 3 minutes slower. By the time I got back from our 4th lap, it was now 2:20 p.m. and I knew there was no change that Matt would be able to complete our 5th lap before the 2:59 cut off, so I knew that my day was done. Matt went out for our 5th lap and we completed  our 5 laps in 4 hours and 11 minutes. So we missed our cut off by 12 minutes but we still had a great day of racing. Our team finished in 5th place, 4 minutes out of 4th place.

Overall it was a great day of racing and everyone seemed to have fun. This will be another event that I'll be looking forward too in 2012.

Me and my buddy Chris Foster waiting on our team members to complete their first laps.