Jasperite races in six-day race

After taking a six-week hiatus to go tree-planting, Jasper’s Cory Wallace is back on his bike again in Colorado competing in the Breck Epic XC after coming third a couple weeks ago in the Alberta Cup XC in Kananaskis.

A six-day ultra-endurance mountain bike stage race, the Breck Epic XC is held in Breckenridge Colorado and sits at an elevation just under 10,000 feet for the duration of the race.

“Riding down here is not easy,” wrote Wallace on his blog. “When there’s acclimatized racers like Jeremiah Bishop and Travis Brown leading the way, the pace is not slow.”

The course, which is broken into a nine mile time trial with 2200 feet of climbing, and five stages of about 40 miles each, spans about 320 kilometres (200 miles) in total gaining around 40,000 feet.

Thus far, Wallace’s best stage was the third, a 28-mile ride on Tuesday, that he finished fourth and just 5:15 behind winner Jeremiah Bishop who is the 2008 USA National Champion for short track and marathon mountain bike. 

Despite writing that Stage 1 “blew my lungs apart,” Wallace managed to come in tenth overall and finish just 4:17 behind first place winner Jeremiah Bishop. 

In Stage 2, which was just over 25 miles long, the Jasperite kept up with the six leaders in the first seven kilometre climb but “soon blew up like the fireworks down here on the 4th of July and began pedaling backwards,” he wrote. 

“Twenty minutes later I started pedaling forwards again but then my wheels start mimicking the 4th of July and three blown flats later, I slowly crawled across the finish line,” he added.

These mechanical misfortunes resulted in Wallace placing 40th overall in the second stage and 39:43 behind the stage winner, Jeremiah Bishop.

Obviously still tired from what he describes as the tree-planting “hangover”, the biker added that, “my lungs are blown, the legs are still warped from planting and the pain threshold is growing through each pedal stroke.”