2008 Kamloops Race the Ranch DH - Day 1

This long weekend my wife and I packed up the kids, my biking gear and related belongings and headed up to Kamloops to visit Rob and his family and participate in a DH race.


The race was the first BC cup of the year. Race the Race DH at the Kamloops bike park. Rob and his lovely wife were ever so gracious hosts and took in our family for the weekend as well as two other grubby DH racers from the coast (kidding): Dave and Darryl.

It was a full house for sure but we all had a clean place to stay and great food was served up each night we were there. My two kids were also happily occupied by Rob's kids so it all worked out well. The only missing participant in the weekend was Bruiser, Rob's fun loving Black Labrador Retriever. He sadly passed away earlier in the day that we arrived so we were met with somber faces when we first invaded their house. I fondly remember riding with Rob and Bruiser at The Woodlot. He was a great dog that I've know since he was puppy.


So on Friday night Rob, Dave and Darryl went out to pre-ride the DH course. I stayed at Rob's to unpack the kids and get set up. That night 'the boys' talked about the course and our bikes and we even had a garage weight weenie session where we weighed our race bikes. I had brought 2 bikes to race. My Rune and my Ollie. On the way up to Rob's my Ollie had a bit of an incident with a tire which contributed to my choice of riding my Rune in the race. You see, my bike rack places the rear tire of the bike really close to the exhaust of the car. A 350km trip is a long time for a tire to get heated up. By the time we arrived I had ruined a brand new tire and burnt a hole through the sidewall.

In the end went with my Rune because the course suited a good pedaling bike that handles tighter corners and off camber sections well (some of the Rune's fortes).

Saturday being Day 1 of the race consisted of Race package pick up and pre-runs of the course. We had a pretty sweet set-up shuttling ourselves up the hill and managed to get in 5 or so runs of the course.

After our runs of the course which included a few spills by almost everyone, we headed to Rob's for a great BBQ and a few beers.

Dave's dirty face after a spill in Kamloops dust.

Even the Freetards showed up for Race the Ranch

Darryl's pre-run of the DH course
During one run I attached my helmet camera to Darryl (the fastest and most experienced racer amongst our group). After capturing the course on film the four of us watched the course section by section at least a dozen times later that night memorizing the turns and taking the recommended lines suggested by Darryl.