25 miles Northeast of Quebec lies Mount Sainte Anne.

this is a direct quote from Wikipedia “The ramparts surrounding Old Quebec are the only remaining fortified city walls that still exist in the Americas north of Mexico” this is a pretty cool fact, and reinforce Quebec, along with Porto, as one of my favourite old time cities.

The World Cup was in its 16th year at Mt St Anne, and im going to say the Peaty is the only person to have raced them all. correct me if i am wrong? second cool fact of the blog!

Mt St Anne is always the toughest track for all 3 of us, mainly consisting of alot of ”old skool” fast as hell piste sections and wide open fastness, interspersed with technical rocky sections, around 6 minutes long, its a damn hard track and we dont have nothing like it back in Blighty.

My second world cup ever here in 2005 i qualified 1st, then crashed and burned,podium 2006, missed 2007 due to injury,then 2008  i won. 2009 i missed the race due to injury, 2010 World Champs i crashed after my shoulder strength failed me. so 2011: was this going to be my first win of the season? NOPE!

I will not hesitate to admit that Mt St Anne kicked my ASS! As well as it being horrendously wet this year, so wet you couldnt ride 100 yeards without pulling a tear off, and even that didnt help! the holes were huge and it was wild wild fun!

The lay out of World Cups has changed since i last raced and now Thursday is first day of practise, this means an extra day of riding, and i was so tired by Sunday, my shoulders were sore, i couldn’t lift my arms to get a bowl out for my cereal, i could barely pull my skins on, it was pretty gnarly and i have not felt that bad since Windham last year, which was BEFORE my surgery, so i also felt pretty bummed out with that fact that they still can get so fatigued so fast. oh well.

making mudgaurds for the v3 and contour….

Race day and i did 1 practise run and holy fleck, the track is actually awesome fun, so challenging all the way down, keeping you thinking 100% to the finish, but i just didnt have the strength needed to attack the whole way down, i felt so sick at the bottom, thought i would puke, so i chiiled out and I was sat in the pits at 9am waiting for practise to finish so i wouldn’t have to do another run ( !! ) Browny rolls in and says ”are you doing the last jump?” i reply, no way. He says ”well i think you should everyone else is!” I had no idea the other girls were doing it, i hadn’t even bothered to look at it for cripes sake, because it had been SO WET all weekend, some guys weren’t even jumping it. Anyway so i jumped up and pushed up with browny to the last wood section and hit the bitch up, it was so easy but i was nervous to do it after a full 5 minutes of canadian gnar…

My race run was, how shall i say, strange. i struggled all year to get my head into the right focus and mind frame for racing, struggle to get to where i know i need to be to win, and my shoulders were almost all i could think about which is not how you should start a race. First turn i couldn’t commit and stalled, that pissed me off so much i went a bit wild and nearly crashed a lot, until i told myself to just chill out and flow, maybe slow down a bit, i had a steady run, feeling the lack of strength, until the last rock garden where i slid on a rock and because i was so tired i just pottered off line instead of controlling it and rode a few extra seconds out and then back into the line, ooooopsy!

Crossed the finish line into first but with Tracey and Florianne still to come i knew i hadn’t done enough,Pugin went into 2nd with Tracey killing it in first, she rode so good, so strong, manhandled her bike around and made me jealous! i was happy enough in 3rd, happy to have held on, happy knowing the times would be closer if i was stronger, and that is how i entered the year, preferring to not win because of a lack of strength, instead of not winning because my actual shoulders have fallen off!!

Watching the guys was so hard, so many people having bad luck, gee having to walk down with a flat and then greg crashing over the bars was hard to see, i hate it when the racing isn’t just fair and legit, it sucks so hard when the top boys aren’t all having a good run, but i guess thats racing,Aaron Gwindow kept up his winning form, but it was Josh the rat and Danny Hart who were the talk of the party, amazing to see josh final on the big dog box in 2nd! so rad.

Party was pretty dope in St Anne as always, hung out and talked about the world and life with Warner and Peaty,got some goodadvice.. those guys have been around for so long you forget how much they seen and how much they know, both of whom i would like to offer my extreme admiration too, for knowing what they want and how to get it and knowing that we need them in Mountain Biking.

chilled in the media room for few hours!: victor lucas, sven martin, john lawlor, josh rat, sambro dale, minnar.

End.

welsh boys.sushi and water = party….Al Bond, stag.