The final BC cup brings us to Hemlock mountain. I am sitting in third place overall needing to get podium to maybe get second. I raced this course last year and crashed but am feeling confident now. I heard that they changed some features and I’m looking forward to track walk very soon, friday track walk is on!

Hello All–

Hope all is well with you and yours.

Last night was the final for the Northstar Thursday Night XC MTB Series. I was looking forward to it, as I noticed on the overall page that I had a good shot at #6, even #5, for my division. As I was watching who was showing up, I noticed the two ahead of me were not there, and now I just need to see how my points earned move me in the standings.

It was a short loop, about 2.9 miles, which started, as usual, going up the service road to the water tanks, over to 6% and up Easy Rider, then the switchbacks, and once out, down Mine Shaft, up Deer Run, down Woods, around a small section of the Village, and back out. Two laps for beginners, three for sport, and four for experts. I felt good the whole time, and with the exception of a couple of bobbles, finished without a hitch. Though a bit short for a final race, it was well worth the effort.

I spoke with Whitney and Eric, the main folks handling the series from Northstar, and gave them two small suggestions. First is a Clydesdale division for those of us tired of chasing jackrabbits, and an endurance event other than the Leadville qualifier. I sure hope they add both for next year. As for this year, I have yet to check the calendar to see what may be left to ride in, though I’ll keep you informed if anything does come up.

Shawn
Alaina’s daddy

crossing the line after my garbo run

This year i decided to head out to whistler and participate in Crankworx. The last time i was there was in 2010. I headed out with hopes to better my results from last time and to have fun and ride with friends. My first day i spent practicing for the Garbanzo DH race. Practice went well and i managed to get a few full runs in before the course was closed.  When race day rolled around i ended up crashing in my mornings practice run which ended up affecting my race run. In the end i ended up coming 33rd with a not so great race run. I wasn’t totally happy with the result but decided to forget about it and practice for the air DH race. Practice for that race went well and my race run seemed to come together. I ended up coming 39th.  The rest of the week i took off from racing and decided to just hangout and do some laps with friends. Overall crankworx this year for me was amazing, i will for sure be going back next year!

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!!

Well, the best series I know of is coming to a close next week.  Northstar puts on 8 races, length depending on ability, and times from about 45min to 1h30min.  I love Northstar, as it was where my riding for me daughter started with the Granny Gear 24 Hours of Tahoe, 2003.  Last night was a repeat of #1, only a touch shorter, since lots of the trails were washed out from the downpour they received last week.  Best part for me?  Not only does it appear I finished ahead of some riders, I won a pair of gloves that I gave to my wife!!

It’ll be interesting to see what they do for the close next week.  I look forward to being there, riding for my daughter and all the angels of Compassionate Friends……

Hey everyone, I wanted to post something about the Adrenaline Festival in New Brunswick which took place a couple weeks ago at Sugarloaf Mtn. It was my first experience there and I really enjoyed it! The mountain is a small one, but it’s so sick to ride. The trails are perfectly build and the mountain is used as it’s full potencial.

5 competition took place during this weekend. Pumptrack challenge, pond-crossing, air-downhill, slopestyle and finally downhill. I swear to you, there’s no time to get bored.  I entered 4 of the 5 comp and I found myself riding a bike all day long. Good times.

Here’s a view of  Bastien Major and the half of the pumptrack

Pond-crossing was the funniest competition of all. We had to ride on small wood bridge supported buy big tube. It was sketchy, more than the 3/4 didn’t make it to the other side, me included.

Marc André Roy doing huge backflips during the best tricks event, just after the slopstyle.

Finish jump which was used for both air-DH and DH.

Have a look to the racap made by Maaxxevents  http://www.pinkbike.com/forum/listcomments/?threadid=137866&pagenum=1#commentid4574045

The Adrenaline Fest is certainly an event that you’ll hear about because it will get bigger and bigger through the years. See you there next year!

Crankworx-Deep-Summer-2012-Hayward from Identify Photo on Vimeo

Sometimes I wonder if I could lose my mind driving tired through the mountains at night. Long and broken yellow lines chasing me on the left, occasional reflective eyes startling me on my right, never another vehicle in sight. Drifting off in dreams of days gone by and fantasy’s of what tomorrow might bring. I was cruising home from Crankworx and watching the road roll away beneath my truck. That whole week takes a toll on you and this year was even more taxing, having competed in a few events and spent the rest of my week crushing dusty laps in the bike park under the most violent sunlight I’ve seen this summer. It didn’t really feel surprising that after nearly 9 weeks of either riding, flying, or road tripping everyday for various bicycle expeditions, I was ready for few days off my bike.

After returning home from the Yukon in late July I went straight to Sun Peaks Resort to host a few rounds of camps. Helping young rippers to find their confidence and do so with style and safety in mind is such a privilege for me. As always, I may have enjoyed myself even more than the campers did and everyone went home with a few more tricks stuffed up their sleeves. The riding at Sun Peaks was spectacular at that point. Sticky trails, mellow lift lines, low temperatures and great company. So it was almost killing me to leave home and set up camp at Crankworx this year, but I had some exciting new opportunities awaiting and they worked out to be well worth the sacrifice of local laps.

This year I was invited to participate in the Deep Summer Photo Challenge alongside Seb Kemp and Paul Stevens. We would spend three days slaughtering Whistler in pursuit of bicycle photography genius with Jon Hayward on the lens. Working with Jon was a huge risk. He hadn’t shot MTB in the past and I didn’t even know the plans for our slideshow until the night before shooting commenced. But I was feeling like a gambling man and after the event was over I was proud for taking that chance. We didn’t win the event, but we won the applause of a 5’000 person audience with a light-hearted show. Shortly after, I was shocked to see our images circulating beyond the confines of typical mountain bike media. We’ve had photos displayed in the L.A. Times, N.Y. Times, The Guardian and the Huffington post. Those are seriously sized mainstream publications I would never expect to see my photos printed in. In addition to such splendid surprises, I came home to find a new two pager in Freeride Germany and some sweet photos from the Unofficial Whip Off World Champs.

And now it seems the Summer season’s gone. With Crankworx now in the bag I’ve got nothing on my plate for the rest of the summer and that’s alright, cause I’m feeling full. Its been a long, crazy summer on the road. Sleeping on couches, chasing sunsets and scraping together dimes for double doubles. I’m happy to be home and relaxing for a few days before I dive back into hot laps in the loops. I’ve got a lot of digging to do in preparation for slaying photos in the fall light. And I am really looking forward to a long fall of shredding leaves and loam all day followed by campfires and beer cans at night. I’ll be checking in again when the weather is less warm and the red lettered license plates have left town.

Shredhard

I’ve been gone almost all summer, but I have been busy everyday! I’ve raced and rode almost every bike park in BC. Silver Star is definitely my favorite. The jumps there are all perfect and Pro Star and Walk the line have some fun big hits! I went to the Panorama Canada Cup/BC Cup race with my team. ( Cycling BC ) I do not understand how so many people can be awake when they had to wake up at 4AM. After a couple hard days of training this is how a couple of us loosened up. Me, Forrest Riesco, and Ben Lesley
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It was a VERY dusty weekend! Forrest showed me some super steep lines down ski runs. Carving on a bike is soooo much fun.

My Race Run
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Golden’s course was steep! So gnarly! I love riding it tho. Most the course flowed together but there’s a handle full of tight corners that would take you out of the flow. The upper half of Golden’s like your riding a back country trail. Probably the fasts trails I have ever ridden.

The last drop.
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My bike is looking colorful and riding amazing! The low Atlas bars and short Atlas cranks are the perfect stiffness. They handled amazing on all the tracks I have ridden this year. I raced the Garbo DH at Crankworx. The hardest race I have ever done! I’m guessing its because I gave it my all from the start. Not knowing how long 15 minutes is at race pace I tired myself out pretty quick. I finished in 13th place.

My Bike!
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Huge thanks to Raceface and all of my other sponsors!
and also to Cycling BC and Mark Bunyan for preparing me for my races!

I went up to whistler last Friday until monday for the canadian open dh at crankworx. After 3 days of training on the incredibally blown out course it was time for my race run. I had all my lines dialed and my bike was running great. After having a great run I lost my luck before entering lower canadian open dh in the bonyard when my tire exploded. So I coasted down the trail rolling over all the jumps. I ended up getting a very dissapointing 15th with a time of 3;51. Heres the link to one of a video of one of my training runs on pinkbike.canadian open dh training run (crankworx)

-Kurt

This spring we decided to check out the Finnish downhill scene
Decision was made in last minute, before the first race of the season.
Since I had only heard all the good stuff about Finnish riders and their level of skills.

Today, have been racing in Europe and this season in Northern countries I can tell,
that the Finnish races level is as good as in any place Europe. Only difference is that
the Northern tracks are very different from the European ones. There are not so many
jumps, drops and this kind of stuff, but instead – lots of rocks, roots and
very fast tracks- Pure race!

So , coming from Europe it takes time to get used to the Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish tracks,
but when you learn to love it you are so IN.
Today I`ve done it. A full season of races in Finland and Sweden.
The goals I made for myself in this spring- fulfilled.

Finnish Cup #1 Elite Woman 4th place
Finnish Cup #2 Elite Woman 2nd place
Finnish Cup #3 Elite Woman 2nd place
Finnish Cup #4 Elite Woman 4th place
Finnish Cup #5 Elite Woman 2nd place

In overall I got silver medal for the Finnish DH season 2012 results in Elite Woman
My team mate Paul Raid won Finnish DH Cup M18 group gold

The races are not over for this season, but I feel that big work is done, and all thats
left, is pure fun

For everyday updates You can follow me in Facebook  http://www.facebook.com/triinu.laurits