10 am Sunday morning I stopped in my race preparations to look out the front window. It was pouring rain and I felt so bad for all the racers lined up 5 minutes away waiting to start the 19th annual Paris to Ancaster. Lucky for us the worst of the rain had passed by the time we lined up an hour and a half later in St. George for the start of the 35km race.
Here we are waiting at the start line in St. George. Yet again it was boys vs. girls. Don't the kids look pumped, lol.
We put sweaters on at the last minute because when we got to St. George it was still raining pretty hard and I didn't want anyone to get cold. It ended up not raining after the start and not being cold at all and I really wish I'd left the sweater in the car.
Right from the start we were all doing great. Adam and Ryan shot off and we never saw them again until the end! Lily and I felt really good in the beginning the kms were just flying by. We were passed by two adult teams on tandems on the first stretch coming out of St. George, but we managed to pass them on a couple of the first uphills. We never saw them again. This year we managed to avoid the bottleneck on the atv trail that we usually get stuck in.
At one point Lily screamed out, "My tooth! My tooth fell out!" Apparently when she'd taken a bite of her sticky energy bar her tooth came out! She passed it up to me and I put it into a deep pocket for safe keeping.
As the race continued we were passing and then getting passed back and forth by two other Dad/daughter, Dad/son teams for the middle half of the race. We really thought we had a chance to podium this year we were ahead of the other tandems and then we hit the mud sections...
Unfortunately our tandem doesn't have any much clearance between the front wheel and the head tube/fork and the rear wheel and the seat tube/chain stays. They clog up after 10 seconds of that thick sticky mud. Push, scrape, push, scrape, repeat.
We had to walk the steepest part of the Martin Road climb and then hopped on to finish strong. Adam, Ryan and my mother in law Marg were there at end to cheer us on, thanks guys! Crossing the finish line felt awesome, Lily and I ended up taking 5th place.
I had a ton of sand in my eyeballs and it hurt a lot.
Family photo.
Our family cheer.
Frederiksens!
Adam and Ryan took 1st place. Way to go boys!
He's so serious.
2 tandem teams = a ton of bike clean up
I think I should have stopped a minute to clean the bike off, I didn't realize it was that clogged. It was so heavy with mud I had a hard time lifting it off the rack when we got home!
Sweet.
Note to self: Knobby cycle cross tires next year. These ones were great on the road but no where else.
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