August 07, 2018 (Mont Saint-Anne, QC) – If there was one day at the QSE that had me in equal fits of excitement and trepidation it was today’s stage at Mont Saint-Anne. These fabled, fern-lined trails have hosted the UCI MTB World Championships twice (with the third planned for 2019) and have been an annual stop on the UCI World Cup circuit since 1991.

The DH and XCO races take place over the weekend directly after QSE ends, and I am very much looking forward to being trailside at that time. But first I got to stake my own claim on the mountain.

As the longest day of the race at 44.5km, Mont-Saint-Anne fittingly offered the biggest day of both climbing and descending. The stage profile looked deceptively downhill, but with over 1,400 metres of ascending, it was anything but easy. My strategy was to start slowly, as I have done the past two days, but to also make sure I used the few gravel road sections as recovery.

After some cramping in my calves on Stage 1, I also took extra care to replace my electrolytes. I wanted to make sure I finished strong, and even though there was a point at about the 28km mark when I renamed the entire race the Quebec Singletrack Survival Experience, I’m happy to say I achieved my goal.

I know there were several riders who were similarly challenged to survive the stage – most did and a few didn’t. There were also challenges with mechanicals — broken spokes and lost pedals (read the story from overall women’s leader and pro racer Emma Maaranen here). I also passed so many riders with flats being repaired that I lost count.

Mishaps aside, today’s stage was brilliant. The organizers did a fantastic job of pulling together a mix of just about every kind of trail you can name: downhill tracks (the xc-friendly variety), enduro, gravel, rock gardens, root and bridge networks, and smooth, bermy flow trails. Even better, they were mixed together in a way that was constantly changing, making the 45k seem much shorter somehow.

Favourites for me were Riverside Down and Longue-Rive, two old-school, rooty and mucky (thanks to some rain yesterday) sections hugging both sides of a river that demanded full attention and quick reflexes. The forest here also happened to be infested with freshly-grown wild mushrooms, and being an amateur mushroom-hunter, there were moments when it was all I could do not to ditch my bike to pick some particularly beautiful and highly-coveted edibles.

Far and above all that were my last 15km, which I rode with a former Québecer now living in Texas. For the past two days, she and I had been trading lead on the stages; she would overtake me on flats and climbs and I would jump in front on technical sections or steep downhills. Inevitably, we’d connect several times during the day and, at the last food station today, at 30km, we decided to ride the remaining distance together.

As she put it, “we’re stronger together.” And we were. I waited at the bottom and she waited at the top. And we crossed the finish line together. This is what I’ll remember long after I’ve forgotten the details of everything else and I’d say this is what makes this event and experience, not just a race.