BC Bike diary: stage two's Dog Day

By Jon Posner

I love it when a term can have two completely different meanings. Today [stage two - ed.] was the dog day of the BC Bike Race.

Meaning 1:

We've all heard of the "dog days of summer" when it is so hot you don't want to move, much less ride a 125 km stage of a mountain bike race. Today the temperatures hovered around 34 degrees [degrees Celsius]. That's Canadian for 93 degrees [Fahrenheit]. That's a reeeeeal hot day for these parts.

Meaning 2:

Have you seen 24 Solo? There's a great scene where the Aussie Craig Gordon is talking about his racing strategy. He rides in "the dog" or, the big ring of the crankset. In fact, we quote him all the time from that scene..." It's in dog...eh...I say, 'Have you got it in the dog?'" Today's stage consisted of 122 km of open gravel logging road surfaces, with about 2.5 km of singeltrack trail at the tail end. It was really good trail. But the gravel road was a mind-numbing five hour slog in the big ring at high speed with very little shelter from the sun. I estimate we spent 90% of the day "in the dog".

The race started innocently enough, with a police escorted, rolling start out of town. We must be a sight to see, our unruly mob of 450 or so brightly clad lycra covered bike racers, about a city block's length and taking up nearly the full width of the road. Most people pulled over to let us go by and just watched with mouths agape, wondering just what is was they were witnessing.

Read the complete diary for this stage two entry. Or check out entries from other stages of the BC Bike race. Jon Posner, Jason Berry, Chris Eatough and Jeff Schalk are taking turns writing the diary.

Also see Cyclingnews' full stage-by-stage coverage of the BC Bike Race.