Justin: So… BC Bike Race? Well, it’s been on my radar forever, really.
But life get’s busy… our entire family works pretty hard, and there’s always a reason to not sign up for a race halfway across the world… But at some point, I realized you have to prioritize the things that are important to you, and to me, riding a mountain bike through some of the best trails in the world was one of those important things!
I figured, “Why the heck not?”
In 2024, I registered – and, spoiler alert: it was so good I don’t know why I took so long to finally check it off the list!
But let’s not skip ahead yet.
I ride with my daughter, Dulcie, all the time in New Zealand. She races across the country as a junior, and over the past few years, it has always shocked me how close she was getting to being faster than me on a bike.
Wanting to share the experience of traveling to Canada to race with her – and if I’m being honest, wanting to do it with her in what is probably my last chance to actually be faster than her – I decided to register us as a father-daughter team.
Plus, more than just the amazing riding, I thought it would be a great bonding experience for us!
Dulcie: Sometimes… Sometimes maybe not. [Laughs]
I’ve always wanted to go to Canada to ride. I saw it everywhere – mountain bike magazines, websites, bike brands social media… it seems like no matter where I looked, there was always a photo of some sweet singletrack in British Columbia.
It looked soooooooo good, which is why I was actually kind of nervous to finally experience it myself. What if it didn’t live up to the hype? What if it’s not as good as I have built it up to be?
After long travel days, when we finally arrived and I was able to get my first ride in on BC trails, my worries around my expectations were gone.
This really was as good as all the hype!
Justin: The only way I could describe the prologue was… interesting. It really drove home the point that the riding here was quite different from what we were used to in New Zealand.
Dulcie: Of course landing in Canada jet-lagged only the day before didn’t help…
Justin: True. But even then, that prologue course was so technical. It really was eye-opening…
Dulcie: We knew we’d need our A-game for the next 6 days.
Justin: This might be a good time to talk about our expectations. Going into the race, we didn’t really have any. We didn’t have our sights set on a win, or even a podium. We just wanted to enjoy ourselves, push ourselves, and ride some of the best singletrack around.
Which is why, when we checked the results after the prologue, we truly were shocked. We were in the lead in our category!
Dulcie: It was like “Woah… now we actually have to race. The pressure’s on!”
Justin: It was a new experience for us both… it really set up for an exciting week.
Dulcie: We were still trying to keep it chill – no pressure – but when you pull on that yellow jersey, you can’t really ignore that you’re racing. You have it one day, but you could lose it at anytime. One mechanical, one bad day on the bike… nothing is ever to plan.
Justin: Speaking of never to plan, should we talk about stage 3?
Dulcie: The Queen’s Stage… that’s when the racing was really starting to feel real. The team behind us had started to catch up so we were going as hard as we could. I was in front with my Dad behind, and because we were really trying to go hard, he kept telling me: “Take a gel, take a gel, take a gel…”
So I’d had about 5 of them in the first half of the race, and then midway, not long after the aid station, I started to have some of the worst stomach cramps of my life!
Justin: Lucky for us, this happened in the neutral section in the middle of the stage… That’s when Dulcie’s upset stomach became so bad we had to take an emergency stop if you know what I mean…
Dulcie: …After that I felt better.
And I also learned that all those gels I had been taking were caffeinated.
Justin: Stage racing can teach a lot, and for us, in that moment, we learned that downing 80mg caffeine gels when you don’t even drink coffee is not a good plan…
Dulcie: Not good at all!
Justin: But we recovered, and by the time we hit the second half of the stage where timing restarted, Dulcie’s legs were back.
Dulcie: That climb up Maple Mountain really saved us – we had seen 2nd place at the aid station, and we didn’t want them to catch us. We pinned it!
That was actually my favourite stage too… it was so fun!
Justin: Stage 3 was your favourite?!? I think Stage 5 was mine…
Dulcie: Yea, you absolutely thrashed me up that big climb on Stage 5… That’s why I liked Stage 3 more!
Justin: Our competitors were faster than us on the downs, and we were faster on the ups, so we were really pushing on that climb…
Dulcie: I was starting to get pretty tired as the days wore on. I wasn’t used to that many days in a row of full-tilt racing!
Justin: We were definitely going faster, knowing we wanted to try to keep the lead.
Dulcie: Even though it was so much fun, that final day really was a relief. I thought to myself, “I can sleep in tomorrow! I don’t need to eat pasta for lunch again! We did it!”
Justin: We definitely got better as the days went on, and of course, if there was a Stage 8, we would have figured out how to race it too… but being done was great. We’d finished!
Wrapping this up I don’t know what took me so long to finally register for BCBR. Maybe I was just waiting for Dulcie to be old enough so that she could join me… And honestly, I can say it was the best father-daughter trip I could ask for.
Dulcie: You’re just saying that because we surprised ourselves and won! [laughing]
Justin: No! It was an amazing time with you either way!
…Although we should probably go back one day to defend our title!
Dulcie: [laughing] BC Bike Race really was amazing!
Justin: Wrapping this up, why’d I wait so long to do this? Racing through BC with Dulcie was unreal. I thought it’d just be ticking a race off the bucket list, but it turned out to be the best father-daughter trip ever. We got to tackle those wild trails together, and honestly, it was more about making those memories than hitting the finish line.
