We are excited to introduce a Prologue on Day 0 of the 2019 BC Bike Race. This addition will keep our singletrack-heavy courses flowing as smoothly as possible to ensure an optimal racing experience across the entire General Classification (GC).
The Day 0 Prologue course will be in North Vancouver and the sub-4km course is not designed to annihilate your race legs, but instead, to correctly establish your place in the start chute for our first Stage in the Cowichan Valley. It’s a chance to shake out your pre-race nerves and make sure your bike is race-ready while saving your energy for the challenging week that lies ahead.
Also new for 2019, daily start chutes will be based on your General Classification at the end of the previous stage. In previous years, we have used Stage 1 to seed racers for the rest of the week after all 600 racers self-seeded into the start chute. This year, the prologue – which will count towards your overall – will seed you correctly for Stage 1. We believe that start times reflecting the GC is important as it provides a better overall experience on the tight trails of the BC Bike Race.
We will communicate your place in the GC daily and your correlating start box. We expect that it will keep you pushing yourself each day, and reward you for the efforts made to climb up the GC. Ultimately, we believe this will keep the flow of our entire pack moving more smoothly along the singletrack, eliminate the bottlenecks and allow you to ride hard with the space you need to do so.
The only exception to this will be the racers wearing Leader’s Jerseys; all of these racers will be seeded in the front box each day.
The prologue won’t kill you, but it will determine where you will start the week by providing a clear indication of where to seed you on Stage 1. So pay attention to our communication each day, pace yourselves through the week and enjoy your BC Bike Race experience.