Sudlow's Psychosis Synopsis
At Dicky’s surprise birthday at Calgary Cycle, I met up with Mark Haimes for whom Brett was building a brand new V10! This was more or less by chance. The last time I saw Mark was 3 years before. He had been in ‘Oz’ ever since but had a bike stolen there and he found it to be cheaper to come back to Canada, buy a bike and go home!! So Mark had decided 4 days earlier to jump a plane and here he was wanting in on the Psychosis. I told him to be ready by 7 a.m. He was! I picked him up on Dicky’s front step, went inside to get the rest of his baggage but there was none! All he had was a tiny suitcase that you could almost take as a carry-on, a helmet and his bike! It was so funny because the van was almost FULL with my gear. I could see that having Mark along was going to be interesting to say the least! Off we went!
We drove to Golden, did some groceries, skipped filling up with gas (dummies!) and drove the 14 km, 4400’ vertical, dirt road to The Launch on Mt7 where we met up with a well entrenched Wade Schmidt who was in the process of taking his bike apart. The weather was perfect, so we got riding within the hour. First turn - straight down Dead Dog following Wade! The trail was mint and Wade had spent the previous evening building this nice big burm on the second to last curve which saved my butt every time! What a way to start the build-up to the race! We met Mark at the bottom of Dead Dog and proceeded to blast 4 shuttles that day. The highlight for me was watching Mark pass me on my left as I was crawling down the steepest section of “RTC” only to crash one corner later into a big tree, and then to do it again on the next steep, this time without crashing – totally mental!!! Mark had a “V10 glow” all weekend.
That evening Danny Big Pockets (Dan Szgatti) arrived with some other Whistler riders. Most of them had never seen the trail but they jumped right in. It was fun to talk to them the next day after having ridden the course - they were all blown away.
The next day it rained. All day. We saw two groups come up to ride. Phil Wilson was in one of them with Yasmin driving. She came in for a beer and got us all drinking. Drinking became the theme for that rainy day! We proceeded to drink and watch the Aussie (Mark) turn various shades of blue between periods of idling the van to warm ourselves in the rainy 8 degree weather at the top of the mountain. I chatted and watched the road become a stream! What seemed like 5 hours after Yasmin had been up there with us, we received a note written by Yasmin from some guy who had driven up the mountain (my cell battery had died although the phone did work from up there, on and off, up until that time). The note read, “Yasmin, [phone no.], SAUNA”. Well I think that was all Mark needed to see at that time and Wade and I were not about to argue. The van was low on gas and the rain was not letting up. We packed up and headed to town in Wade’s pick-up. Got a few supplies and headed off to Yasmin’s.
Yasmin’s sauna was a log hut with a tin roof and a wood stove. I’m going to build one of these things myself at some point – it was perfect! We stayed in the sauna for at least an hour, maybe two. Yasmin offered us a shower and off we went back up the mountain into the cold and rain to make ourselves dinner and a bed. I forgot to mention – we borrowed a gas can from Yasmin to put more gas in the van so that Mark could keep warm! Mark was happier again! (Although I must say Mark was great company and always served Wade and I as a good distraction from the real reason we were there whenever we needed it!)
It was Saturday the next day which was the official pre-run day. We rode down in very muddy conditions. Wade rode and cleaned the RTC section in the greasiest of conditions! I got to view it from the front row bushes where I had been spending the last minute or so untangling my bike! Definitely some of the bravest riding I’ve seen in some time! At the start of that morning run Mark and Wade had decided to drop into ‘Dead Dog’. I had decided (intelligently, as it turned out!) to take the Summit Trail detour around the top section. Mark, Wade and Alexander were among the last people all week-end to do it due to the fact that the organizers decided that it was too dangerous and so shut it down. Wade said that it was unrideable. Alexander, the guy who won the expert class the next day, decided it was too crazy and actually bush-wacked over to Summit Trail when he was already half way down Dead Dog! It must have been really scary.
We all did another official pre-run later that day but the course was even muddier – locking your tires made you go faster! Myself - I was riding better and better all the time. My bike was riding well, tires working well and I felt in tune, so to speak. I decided that day that I was going to “run” down two of the crazy sections of RTC if the rain kept up. Otherwise I was confident I could ride everything else including ‘donkey punch’ and ‘wet dream’ sections. So that was the plan I developed the day before the race.
Race day. For the second night it had rained off and on, so we knew the course was going to be a mess. Dead Dog was officially closed.
All of a sudden it was 15 minutes to start and I wasn’t even in my race gear yet! We had spent the morning the same way as the previous morning – trying to stay dry and warm and laughing about it all from inside the van! We watched clouds come and go (it’s fun to see clouds fly past from the inside of the clouds!). So I jumped into my armour and got the bike ready and was at the start with 1 minute to spare. They were just about to send the pre-runner down to test the timing system (pair of radios!) when a chopper came out of the clouds to film us. I was just thinking “You know it’s a crazy race when…” and wondering if I should bother with goggles or not and how effective my piece of plastic fender zip tied to my cross bar was going to keep dirt out of my eyes. Then the pre-runner was off with a big cheer from everyone.
Not 3 minutes after he left it started to rain again, then it started to hail, then the wind picked up, then it started to snow! REALLY HARD!!!! I was supposed to be third out of the gate so I was all ready to go, and should have been on my way by then! It had accumulated to about an inch or two deep and I was holding the timing tent down so that it did not fly away with 40 other racers under there doing the same thing laughing about it with everyone else!!!! (Mark was in the van – he wasn’t starting until later because I laughingly told the people at the racer check-in that he was a fast guy from Down Under!). I remember thinking at the time that the conditions were just “psychotic”!
After 15 minutes the snow stopped and I was off, third, following two tire tracks through the snow. I instantly wished I had my glasses on because the cold air made my eyes water. Then I realized that I couldn’t feel my index fingers which were supposed to be on my brake levers! I had to look down to see if I was braking or not. I started to two-finger the brakes just so I could feel the limbs I was using to control my speed. Then those fingers froze too! Well – that was the least of my worries. I had to race! I got right into it and was riding well but slowly, not going off course and looking far ahead. I caught Paul Shannon on the first tech section of RTC. He was 20 feet below the trail in a tangle! I ran past, hopped back on the bike and rode to the second steep just below where Alexander caught me from behind. He rode the entire thing like his bike was a bucking missile!! He had to have been going 60 kph at the bottom in tractionless mud, riding it out. No wonder he got first!
I rode the course clean from halfway down that crazy straight line and had a blast the rest of the way. My eyeballs felt like the pitted windscreen of a on old car with old wipers and no windshield washer fluid! But my visability was good by the time I got to Donkey Punch so I decided to continue sticking to my race plan. The Wet-Dream drop ended up being the highlight for my run with the crowds and people shouting encouragement! I got to the bottom, smooth, in one piece and collapsed from exhaustion and adrenaline withdrawal.
I got 7th in the ‘psycho’ (expert/sport) class, and about 16th overall. It must have been an advantage to be riding the fresh snow at the top rather that the slush that it probably became by the time the last guys came down (sorry Mark!), but staying on the bike paid off too and I am stoked about the placing. I was also blown away by the fastest times that were about 4 minutes faster than mine! I think the winner was in the low 19’s. Yasmin won the women’s! She was only 3 minutes behind me and didn’t even have a clean run. She just about beat Mark! Mark suffered badly after the climb and lost quite a bit of time there, being caught by two of the pro class riders starting behind him already by that point. Surely he was still not used to the required effort at altitude.
After the race, Mark and I spent time trying to convince Yasmin to accept a pro-ride but she’s still reluctant, claiming that it would just put undue pressure on her – I agreed with her line of thought after some talk – better to free-ride than ride for free. Poor Wade was flying when he went past everyone who saw him on race day. Unfortunately, he hit a big tree at the bottom of the second RTC steep, high-up on the course and doesn’t remember too much after that! He was not making a lot of sense after he powered across the finish line! Needless to say he must have been disappointed because he was riding extremely well leading up to the race. I was expecting Wade to be on, or close to the podium. He didn’t mention it but I think he thought so too. Next year. (Thanks Wade, and especially Danielle, for driving us back up the mountain so many times.)
Mark and I were so exhausted after the race. The beers we drank wiped us right out. Neither of us felt we could possibly drive the 3 hours back and stay awake so we ended up sleeping in the van again that night in Yasmin’s driveway. We moved slowly the next day unraveling our brains from the tangle that the race and the weather had put them into, arriving back in town again on Monday afternoon - one day late. Hopefully Cath can forgive me for the 24 hour delay!
I hope I’ve convinced some of you to join me doing the race next year - I can’t wait! The race was really well organized, the course was in amazing shape, even though the weather was so wet, and the people in Golden were "golden".
Peace,
Paul.
Thanks to Will Doyle for the race action photos used here!
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