July 7, 2009 – The Durian Cup race mountain bike series continued with more offroad excitement in Victoria with last Thursday’s ‘Get Oriented!’ orienteering-style race. A total of 22 riders were given maps with marked points, and they had to ride to each mandatory point in their category, as well as any bonus points they chose to, and use the color crayon at the points to mark their sheet. The more points hit, the more points received, although every minute late resulted in a drastic loss of points, so racers had to keep an eye on their watches as well, to ensure they made it back in time. Also, there was an artistic element included where bonus points were awarded for drawing a butterfly in the space provided. Check out the photos to see what people came up with in their haste!

The C field opened up with four competitors, and the top finishers were Danielle Stevens(Ind) in 1st, folllowed by Katie Rabien(Oak Bay Bikes) and Daegan Reimer(Ind). For the C Series title, Leon Tulevski(Ind) remains on top (although didn’t compete this week), and Danielle and Katie fill out the top three.

The B’s had 6 riders competing, and five returning from last week to defend their positions. The returning Emily Pridham(Dirty Girlz) took top honors, followed by new-comer Ian Lindseth(Ind). Eric Simonson(Ind) returned to collect 3rd and more series points as well.  Emily is sitting safely in first for the series with 2pts, our sole Junior rider (at 13yrs old!) Logan Simonson(Ind) is holding onto 2nd place with 10pts, and his father Eric trails by 2pts in 3rd. We also had two disqualified riders for returning late and giving organizers a scare!

For the A’s , we saw a whopping 10 riders out to challenge each other! Jeff Clarkson(Schwalbe), despite a flat, was the only rider to visit all 12 stations, and safely collected 1st place points, despite a butterfly that more closely resembled a black heart!  Roger Macleod(Ind), another new-comer to the series hit enough stations to collect 2nd, and Dave Shishkoff(OrganicAthlete) rounded out the top three, taking this opportunity to compete in the series and represent the organizing club. In the overall A Series, Kate Scallion(Ind) who finished 4th on the night and drew the best-rated butterfly, has a commanding lead of the series with 5pts. Kat Wright(Ind) is holding ground in 2nd place with 9pts, and Halldor Gunnarsson(Riders Cycles) is doubtless making Kat nervous with 11pts.

In our other recognized sub-series, Kate is unsurprisingly our Top Woman, Halldor retains Top Master, Logan remains our Top Junior, and Dave is now the Top Vegan!

The evening’s full results can be found here
Series totals can be found here (note: Omnium scoring format, so lower points = better score)
And our photo album, including the butterfly drawings, is here

This Thursday, July 9th features our Poker Night – essentially it will be a short (4-6min laps), off-road crit where each lap on the climb riders will be handed a card, and when they wish to play their hand, they can stop rather than pass the Poker area. Riders will play their hands in groups of three – winner gets 5pts & 2pts for everyone else. Then, they jump back into the race, and continue collecting and playing cards for the length of the hour. There is a lot of potential strategy – play hands as fast as possible, or collect a bunch of cards to get better hands and play them later in the race? We’ll see what the winning strategy is, and who will collect the most points and has the luck of the draw!

Registration begins around 6:15pm, and racing will begin at 7pm.  All riders are welcome and there’s a $3 entry fee. This is the last event we can offer an OrganicAthlete free ‘trial’ pass for first-timers. For our final event, the Gravity Challenge, a CyclingBC race license will be required (and can be purchased on-site for $41.  Useful for other local cycling events!)

Our gratitude goes out to our volunteers, Ian and Rita, who organized and arranged the markers for this event, as well as OA members Jen and Evan for volunteering, and also to Deb for coming out and helping make this a success! Thanks once more to OA Victoria sponsors: Green Cuisine, Vega, Oak Bay Bikes, Eatmore Sprouts, the Victoria Soap Exchange, Pink Sugar (vegan!) Cupcakery and Crag X Climbing Gym! A big thanks also to the Trek Shop for their prize contributions, and to SIMBS for helping organize and promote the series. Be sure to join SIMBS and help support local mountain biking!

We hope you can make it out!
Team OrganicAthlete Victoria Fueled By Green Cuisine