Nimby Fifty

This event came on the radar only about a month ago. A new event in a new location that I heard has some great trails - Pemberton.

Drove up on Saturday morning - pouring rain the whole drive up! It managed to calm down to light rain by the start. There were about 250 riders lined up at the start in the middle of grass field, and I was super excited to ride the trails that I had heard about over the last few weeks.

The start was actually for once great! Threw a couple of mud puddles just to get us all dirty from the start and a flat start for about the first 5mins then into a 10min climb that I actually felt stronger then normal. The field spread out pretty well by the first single track. About 30mins into the race we start the single track climb - I heard about this 1hr+ single track climb with 101 switchbacks! Was loving it but it was tough. Tight switchbacks, technical sections, where you could look up and see a line of riders on all the switchbacks ahead of you. I could see a couple of girls in sight and that was my aim now - to either keep them in sight or catch them by the top of the climb. I was closing in slowly. I passed and few about 15mins we kept swapping positions depending on who would dab and get caught off balance on the climb.



They managed to both be in front on the start of the the descent, much to my disappointment, but Joele went down and the other girl past. She was ripping it, so I just tried to hang on to her wheel on what was some amazing downhill trails, so much fun. Trying to put a gap between us and Joele. We were all fighting for 3rd place. I managed to gap the other girl on the next climb, it was tough and steep and then we went into the last loop before heading to the finish. At the time I wasn't sure how far there was too go. This loop included some sharp painful hike a bikes, that was crushing me into the ground!

I caught and past Wendy Sims, she was having some mechanicals, but with no effort she took back off ahead. So I am now working to hold my 3rd place finish. We go into the last descent, wow what a bunch of fun!

I cross the finish line 25mins behind Catherine Pendral (the current world cup leader) and 2 mins behind Wendy Sims. What a great race.



We were covered head to toe in mud - no hose, creek or water to be found. We wipe ourselves down with a towel, change, put our disgusting muddy bikes on our car and head to the beer and band. We hung around for the evening and party of a fire, some hay bails, a band and some great company to camp there the night.



We headed back to Vancouver in the morning after breakfast at the wildwood and stopping in at Whistler to get a few runs in on the Whistler Bike Park - what a great weekend!!

Top 10 Results:

1 Pendrel , Catharine 02:29:31 Kamloops
2 Simms , Wendy 02:52:32 Nanaimo
3 Rose , Megan 02:54:15 North Vancouver
4 Guynup , Joele 02:57:46 Victoria
5 Heisterman , Brandi 02:58:03 Brackendale
6 Paquette , Fanny 03:02:36 Whistler
7 Short , Katherine 03:05:34 Halfmoon Bay
8 Robichaud , Linda 03:07:02 Victoria
9 Allen , Sylvie 03:13:29 Pemberton
10 Bell, Page 03:17:31 Pemberton