As the new year is progressing I am finding that a lot of changes have been going on in the past three months or so. Here I was, the end of winter was coming fast, doing more training than I have ever done before. The snow that was once hiding the trails was melting away, and letting everyone know that Spring was on it’s way. The dirt fresh and wet just waiting to be ridden, and I was ready to ride it. But it felt like something had hit me hard, a sickness. During the whole month of February I had been feeling incredibly weak, I had lost 20lbs, I had the worst pains in my stomach. I had thought that it was nothing and that it would eventually pass. I was in for a shock. At the end of the month I decided enough was enough, the symptoms had not gone away and they were getting worse. I had gone into the local clinic for a doctors appointment to get checked out. The doctor thought that it was most likely diabetes. At the time I didn’t know what it meant, or what this meant for me. After a couple days in the hospital, I was nursed back to health. I now live with Type 1 Diabetes.

For those of you who don’t know much about Type 1 Diabetes, it can happen to anyone, it mostly occurs in teens and kids. Type 1 is when your pancreas stops producing insulin for no apparent reason, it just stops and there’s nothing you can do about it. Insulin is what your body uses to control your blood sugars, too high of a blood sugar and your body starts to eat itself (this is what was happening to me). To low of a blood sugar and you pass out and could possibly slip into a coma.

But enough about that! The fact is that I have learnt to manage it fairly well and I am back to riding. Now this whole thing kinda put a big dent in my training. There were times when I couldn’t ride my bike or do some training. I feel like I have just recently gotten back up to my normal pace just before the first round of the Northwest Cup. I got the go ahead to ride about three weeks before the race and I wanted to ride like crazy. My friend Andrew Taylor and I made a little bit of an edit, some footage of before I was diagnosed with diabetes and some of the footage after. Check it out!

Takoda Crawford Promo on Pinkbike

With the race season all ready underway, I plan on doing was much riding as I can in between all of the races and plan on  training more, as well. Last weekend was the first round of the Northwest Cup. It was a rowdy weekend. Since I hadn’t gotten on the bike or trained as much as I wanted to this winter I didn’t know what to expect. After being sick all that time and then coming into the first race not knowing what the pace is going to be was hard to determine if I would do as well as I wanted to. I had decided to set the goal of a top 10 in Jr expert. Practice days were some of the best practice runs I’ve had, the course was looking fast and wet. The next three days brought on so much rain that by race day the track was getting out of control. It was like riding a muddy slide all the way down the track. With all the conditions and fast racers that were there I managed to slip into a 10th place. I was happy with a 10th but now its time to really get down to it, and start going faster and faster.  The plan is to do better and better at each race. By the looks of things, it looks like its going to be a great race season, and I’m hoping to make the most of it!

Hey guys, so this summer has been super busy this year for me. I’ve been doing a lot of travelling for races down in the states for the North West cup. The last 3 rounds of the NW cup were through out July and beginning of August. The first round of July was at Mt. Hood, Oregon. My race run wasn’t the best at this round, ended up in 4th place, not the best result I’ve gotten. But I was happy to be leaving that event with no crashes.

The next round was at the same location, Mt. Hood. This round turned out much different than the last one. Mid race run I crashed pretty hard. My bike took most of the impact and bent my bars quite a bit. So I couldn’t finish the race. With my bent bars and only a week until my next race I was a little worried. But Raceface got them to be the day after I ordered them, with plenty of time to spare, so big thanks to Raceface.

Last round of the NW cup, which was at Stevens Pass, Washington State. Was a decent race for me. The course had a lot of pedalling in it, didn’t suit me all to well. But I knew I had to do well here due to my last two races. My race run went well. Got 3rd place, unfortunately it wasn’t enough to secure 3rd overall. Just missed it by 5 points. But I was glad to finish the series with a decent place.
My last race of the year was the Mount. Washington B.C cup. It was a super sick weekend at the local mountain. Conditions were super dry and everything was super loose. On one of the roughest tracks of the B.C cup, I got a 5th place in Jr. Sport. Had two little mishaps, where I went off the trail and had to stop. But other than that it was a great weekend. Happy that the race season is over for me, had a great year and stoked to get training for next year. And just a really big thanks to Raceface for supporting me this year. It was super awesome!!

Three words that come to mind when I think back to last weekends race at Port Alice are: wet, sketchy and scary. Three things that make a race exciting and gets the blood pumping. Last weekend my friend Jarrett Lindal, my mom and me headed down to Port Alice for the 5th and last round of the Island Cup Series.

We started out with a beautiful 4 hour drive on our way to the middle of no where. Port Alice is near the Northern end of the Island, its an old pulp mill town that sits right at the bottom of Rumble Mountain. The top of the trail starts near the top of the mountain and is divided into three different sections; the expert course starts from the top and is around 4:30 minutes long, is definitely the most difficult track in the Island Cup Series, starting from the expert course its filled with rocks in the open areas and as soon as you enter the trees its filled with roots and gets really steep. All in all a really good and fun track. The Intermediate part of the course is around 3:30 minutes long and a little more tame than the expert section. And finally the beginner section starts just below the intermediate start and is basically the same as the intermediate section.

When we finally got to Port Alice on Friday in the after noon, we went up the track to do some course walk, I had never ridden the expert section of the course so I thought it would be a good idea to check it out first before riding it blind.  The track was looking really good, everything was dry and conditions were at their best. As soon as we hit the expert section I got pretty stoked, it was looking really sick. It was steep, and it was looking really tech. Just basically tons of rocks and roots all over the place. But all in all a good challenging course.

On Saturday, we woke up early got everything ready to ride and left for the DH course. It was super sunny, the track was looking really good and we were stoked to start practice and get things rolling.

On Sunday, early in the morning we were woken up at 3am by the dreaded sound of rain falling on the tent. We thought that it would just be a drizzle, but by the time we woke back up again at 7 it was still going. I knew that the course was going to be completely different now. All the roots would be wet and slippery and the back end of the bike would be sliding every where. It ended off being way worse then I expected. The entire course was just covered in ruts, all the corners were blown out and covered in mud. I couldn’t even imaging trying to race the expert sections of the course. The expert section was just scary, trying to slow down enough for the steep sections without flying off the hill was very difficult. You basically just had to stay loose through out the whole course.

My friend Jarrett in the berm section. It was completely turned to mud.

I ended up crashing in both of my race runs unfortunately. Just in some sections I couldn’t hold on to the bike. The first crash I went straight into a rock and flipped over the bars, the second crash my back end of the bike just washed out going around a corner. It was good enough for a 23rd out of 28, tied with three other people with a time of 4:59. I was just happy to walk way from that race with no major injuries.

That race ended the Island Cup Series for 2012. It was a good year for the series, and a decent year for my first time in expert category. I got 30th overall out of 61. Now just have to do good at all the other races this year, and I’m just stoked to ride my bike and get ready for next years Island Cup Series!!

NW Cup Rd 2 on pinkbike.com

Weekend at the NW cup in Port Angeles. Brought my good friend Andrew Taylor to the second round of the
NW cup back in April to do some filming, it was a super fun weekend. Thanks to Andrew Taylor for filming.