|
When
you think of mountain biking, you probably think of, well, mountains.
You probably even think about forests, rivers, trails and wildlife.
Wildlife like owls, deer, coyotes, bears and mountain lions. There's
that ' mountain'
word again. What you probably don't think about when somebody mentions
mountain biking is a small grove of trees nestled under a bridge,
a stones throw from the center of a major city.
This
was the setting that we found ourselves in one Saturday morning
in April. The event was the Vanier Park 3 Hour Enduro, a race on
an unusual course that would be, of all things, three hours long.
Now, if you wanted to enter this event you had two choices. The
first was to do it solo, the second as a team of four riders each
taking turns riding three laps. Hmmm, ride for three hours straight
or ride for 45 minutes, with liberal amounts of rest thrown in the
middle?
 A
team of four it was! There were two full fledged, self proclaimed
FatBoys in the form of Bruce and Neil and two who have yet to come
to terms with their FatBoy-osity in the form of Lance and Paul.
The
course is on the eastern edge of Vanier Park, stuffed between the
Vancouver  Conservatory
of Music, the Rowing Club and the Burrard Street bridge. Rumour
had it that the course was a whopping 3 kilometers long with an
incredible 20 or so feet of climbing per lap. It twisted and turned
through a grove of cottonwood trees, over undulating whoop-dee-doo
type bumps (most likely a result of it's use as a landfill?), past
two squatter's encampements and underneath the bridge itself.
 Lance,
being the most fit and athletically talented of the four was chosen
to go first.  Actually
when asking for volunteers to step forward to go first, the rest
of us took a step back, leaving Lance hanging out there. What a
team! Neil was to be second, Paul was third and Bruce was chosen
as the anchor, mainly to try and limit the number of laps that Bruce
had to ride, therefore bettering our chances of success.
Well
to try and make a long story short, the FatBoys did a pretty good
job with Neil and Lance turning laps in the 6:00 to 6:30 range and
Paul and Bruce close behind in the 7:00 to 7:30 range. We went through
the order twice, each riding a total of six laps, except for Lance,
who by  virtue
of being first in the rotation snagged two bonus laps and completed
a total of eight. That's 26 laps if you were trying to do the math
in your head and ran out of fingers and toes. The closest competition
in our class completed 23 laps, they were also the only competition
in our class, but hey, we still beat them!
 So
that's the story of two FatBoys and two FatBoys in denial who worked
together as a team and as a result of their hard work and dedication
were able to taste the sweet nectar of victory. And they said it
couldn't be done.
|
