Yep. Here it is. Winter. Patrol training last week. Current holding pattern for full time on the mountain again. Getting really great at riding stationary bikes so I figure I’ll have slow race domination down to a science come spring time.

I usually try not to double post photos from the Canadian DH Girls site to my own, but this is worth it. Patrol training last week - gondola evac process.

-Leishner

From almost a month in Calgary/Fernie, that is. I headed out to my old zone of Canada Olympic Park to run some sliding sessions at the bobsleigh/luge/skeleton track there for my old Vanoc friend Tyler. He needed a hand getting the Control/Timing operators all set for their winter season over there and was shorthanded experienced folks for a couple of weeks. Perfect for me – he sent me out there, I got to stop in Fernie to hang with the Leishman clan and then I caught up with my old colleagues at COP for a bit. Even got to hang out with my very good friend Laura Frank. Gunner flew in at the end and we shredded Moose Mountain too…I call that winning in the off season!

Mid climb up the Moose Mountain shuttle road on my first attempt. Found out later that there is a designated climbing trail in place there now - 10k of mellow climbing to super fun descents!

Inside Canada Olympic Park's Ice House - indoor training facility for sliding athletes to work on their track starts in the summer.

Driving along a chinook arch on our way to Longview, Alberta.

Ranch Time! My friend Laura's family's 1920s ranch outside of Longview, Alberta. So impressive.

And now I’m back and it’s already snowing to the valley in Whistler. This week is ski patrol training week and I’m prayyyyying that I can get back on the Vixa next week before I’m in my ski boots full time again. Fingers crossed.

-Leishner

This has been coming for a while but what I love about being in Bern Unlimited’s catalog is that it’s with a photo that Gunner took. Sweet. Chad Hendren (especially) introduced me to Josh from Bern last year. They have the best pumptrack and ski helmets out there (and they’re working on a fullface design!)- I love mine so much. Thanks Bern!

Ya Bern Catalog! Gunner photo.

-Leishner

Yep, that’s me these days. As I book my time into October and our “off season” (not really!), I am looking back at my September calendar. Kinda nuts – after trips to Stevens Pass, the Gravity Logic Forum, our recent trip to the Chilcotins and days here and there patrolling and working at the shop, it’s been completely non-stop. Not that I’m complaining – I’ve had tons of time on my bike and as soon as we got back from our awesome trip to the Chilcotins, it was go time in the bike park with all of our friends in rad indian summer weather.

Stopped for a second in the Chilcotins with 3 of my favorite women and another 11 of my favorite shredders from Whistler (you can also see Jay Cyr, Paul Stevens and Chris Kovarik in the background).

Todd Hellinga snapped this one on our big day up to Camel Pass. There were moments when it was hard to take in the views because of the wind or just having my head down grinding out the distance, but it pretty much looked like this the whole time. Rad.

The Chilcotins trip last week was great. A new experience for me, but I enjoyed myself. We didn’t exactly rough it, though, as we all stayed in one of the Morrow Chalets in Tyax (the biggest one for all 12 of us) and cooked amazing meals for the entire 3 day trip. We managed one alpine day (above) but were forced into the lower areas of the area after the crap weather settled in. Still awesome and a bit of a learning curve for me – even though I have spent more time on my trail bike than ever this season, it doesn’t come as easily to me as being on my big bike does. It’s getting better though!

Strand says I should be entering the “active recovery” stage of my training cycle this season, meaning still riding but not as hard or far or long as we did all summer. Feeling a bit tired but already setting goals up for next season that are motivating me to do double headers on the gym/trails. I guess it’s still a one step at a time kinda program…

-Leishner

Very excited to start working with the newly reconstructed Race Face in the women’s soft goods world as of last week. The company had a bit of a rough go last spring but is famous for over a decade of time developing products for mountain biking based out of their Vancouver location. So pumped – this is a small group of people who wear so many hats with the company. They love the sport, love their brand, work their asses of to come up with stuff we love and are good to riders like me. Thanks Race Face!

Thanks Race Face! Stoked...

Now off to Stevens Pass, Washington to check out their brand new trails with Strand, Claire and Mason Mashon!

-Leishner

Otherwise known as the Phat Wednesday final. After three years of Phat Wednesdays and two consecutive seasons prior to this one as a second placer overall, I won the coveted Phat Wednesdays overall. Hah. That means I was third in the overall standings of the PhaSt Wednesdays series (I won the one event I entered of the three and Strand and Claire tied for first) and won the Phat. I’m pumped. I also won by a margin I was happy with in the Nick Geddes Chainless ALine Classic, which was cool – I was only off my Crankworx time by 6 seconds.

Here are a couple of photos from the night (oh, and there was over $3000 raised for the BC Kids Cancer Centre in the name of our friend Nick Geddes, which is awesome):

That's me in my B Ball stance for the dress up Phat Wednesday final! Bernie Duval photo.

You had to come to all the races to win this one! Me and Julie Istvan are shown on the overall podium - Casey Brown is missing (she was at World Championships in Switzerland!).

It’s kinda nice to check that one off the list, so thanks to everyone who volunteers their time and lets us race these things every week. I can safely say that my summer social life is largely built around these events in the summer – alot of my good friends do it and it is a great time. This season the competition was legit, too – with heavy hitters like Claire Buchar, Strand, Casey Brown and Gabi Molloy around, it was tough to put down a win (I think I only won 3 of the 6 events this season, thanks to these pinners!). So nice to have this available to us riders.

I think I should also mention that Claire Buchar is my hero. She and her husband Chris Kovarik waited for months for their bikes to come from their sponsors – they missed the entire World Cup season as a result. She only got her bike the day before Crankworx started, won the Garbanzo DH, was second in the Canadian Open (to Rachel Atherton no less) and then headed over to Panorama to win Canadian National Championships. Claire just finished 3rd at the World Championships in Champery, Switzerland, which is huge and so well deserved. Congratulations, Claire – you really are amazing.

Claire Buchar, 3rd place, World Champs. Ya Bucker!

Here’s a clip of Danny Hart’s winning World Championship run on what is famously known as the steepest, gnarliest, toughest courses on the World Cup Circuit, not to mention in the most harrowing of weather conditions:

-Leishner

Yep – I predicted it on the Whistler Bike site that it would be the hardest race I would ever do. And I was so right.

Last Saturday, I lined up with 180+ other women to open my morning up with a vicious hot lap down Crank It Up, only to be followed up with an afternoon in 30 degree heat on Whistler’s West Side trails. It felt like I went into a vortex one day of not being registered for this event and I woke up on the other side registered and struggling through Danimal. Seriously – why did I say I would do this thing?!

Crank It Up was ok – I don’t think I could have done much else in my run than what I did. I was certainly taxed by the end and I made fewer mistakes than I did in my 2nd place showing at the last Phat Wednesday on the same trail. This time we rode all the way down to Heart of Darkness, and I know from experience that I can be really fast on that section-  my run felt pretty clean. Honestly, I’m not sure what else I could have done to be faster – I rode my Vixa (with my “bike park conversion kit” on it – Maxxis Minions, 40 mm stem, my Aurum’s front wheel and DX pedals instead of XTR) and pedaled my ass off. I’m more impressed by Kathy Pruitt than ever – I think after the last Phat Wednesday she wasn’t pumped with her 3rd place so she got her clips out and pedaled World Championships style – and won the DH portion (and the overall in the end!), which is pretty mind blowing, if you ask me. She also beat me by enough of a margin on CIU that I wonder if I should have even pedaled more (is that possible?). I guess 2+ seconds is relative to the fact that the course was 6 and a half minutes long for us. Phew. Strand was 3rd and she said it was hard too…

Lena Martin photo. Looks like she was chilling in the back of the crowd before the XC start while I was foolishly parked right at the front - you can barely see me right at the top on the right hand side in all yellow facing the group. I thought I'd have time to get more into the middle but alas...I did not.

I felt sick all day (especially after maxing out in CIU) and was sure it was a nerve thing so I tried to be super sensible with eating before the XC stage. I ended up accidentally putting myself in front of the pack at the start of the race and was horribly ill pretty much right into the first climb. I guess it was just one of those days when most of us would have been happy to call it a day – but I couldn’t. I thought if I fought through it for the first 3o mins I’d start feeling better but I started trainwrecking super hard the longer I went – water didn’t help and supplements were out of the question. I had to stop at the second climb to try and pull myself together – at that point I was ready to fall over and was cramping everywhere so pedaling was becoming impossible. 99er was exactly the gong show I expected (people flailing everywhere), Middle Danimal was absolute torture under the circumstances and when I got to Dylan Wolsky and Todd Hellinga the first time at Sproatt I was ready to pass out. I figured into Danimal South I’d get myself together but the illness got worse and I was flailing harder. I was just about to deek out and head home at the bottom of THC before the climb started again when I found Gunner right at the final climb and he wouldn’t hear it. So I kept going…READ MORE!

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Just got back last night from a big week on the Island. Darcy Turenne’s See Jane Jump festival went down at Mt Washington, which was just a few days after I finished another weekend with the Dirt Series. Coaching biking is pretty sweet – I meet some great people, show them some sweet skills and get to hang with other stoked professional riders who live a similar lifestyle to mine. The Dirt Series was great (as always) – full of people and tons of laughs. See Jane Jump was a first for me – Strand sourced the coaches out and I was asked to join a task force of National Champions, World Championship athletes, Dirt Jump and Freeride queens and all around shredders. Mt Washington had so much snow this year that they didn’t have as much open for us as they wanted to – but it was still a rad time and I had fun on their trails for sure.

Dirt Series shredders line up for another rad weekend in Whistler.

Blurry outtake from the train of women walking bikes and gear onto the ferry. Strand, smiling as always.

See Jane Jumper Marie smashes a corner while the other girls look on...

I really enjoyed the tone of the SJJ event. While Darcy still worked to engage sponsors like Norco and Oakley for prizing and tech support, the event felt very grassroots, super inclusive and very chill – I could tell she was really going for an event that celebrated women in the sport of mountain biking; coaching on the trails was a nice complement to the whole thing. It was also a great opportunity for Gunner to rock out with me on the trails after the camp and then we headed to Cumberland, BC. READ MORE!

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A couple of weeks ago, Todd Hellinga and I got together so he could finish writing and reviewing the 2012 lineup for Norco. I’ve been on the Aurum since mid-June so I was pumped to do some photos and talk about how much I’ve enjoyed riding the bike…I would even venture to say it’s been a game changer for me…

The 2012 Norco Aurum eating up the chunder on Afternoon Delight. Todd Hellinga photo.

Thanks Todd for your hard work and effort on this. Gunner even pre-ordered his after hearing the boys at the shop rave about their protos and seeing what the Aurum did for my riding. This bike really is something special!

Todd Hellinga's photos of me for the NSMB Norco 2012 Line write-up.

-Leishner