It was a good turnout for the inaugural PCDI Ride the Ride competition which featured riders through the province at River Ridge Trails on August 22.
The event was race two of the 2021 Mountain Bike Sask. Cup series as it was hosted by Prairie Cycling Development Inc. (PCDI).
Craig de Gier of PCDI was happy with the amount of competitors at the event and he believed it was success despite the gloomy and windy weather.
“I was hoping for a few more kids in the “kids race,” but especially given with what the weather forecast looked like, I wasn’t surprised that it was a little bit leaner than what I was hoping for, but the main event exceeded all expectations,” he said.
According to de Gier, there were 15 children that participated in the “kids race” while 73 riders took part in the main event competition.
The course for the main event race was 5 kilometres long and it was a cross-country race using the majority of the established trails at the park.
“That’s the nice part about having the whole network being somewhat modular where you can link different trails together to achieve the type of race course you want,” said de Gier.
The max number of laps on the course was five and depending on the skill level of the rider some only did one lap where others did, two, three, four or five laps respectively.
All riders raced the same course which consisted of challenging obstacles but it was a layout where all skill levels could be successful.
“When you get in to the advance features, the fastest line may be advanced, but there are other options available to allow people who maybe aren’t comfortable with the advanced feature to go around safely,” said de Gier.
When it came to those advanced sections de Gier mentioned that it was a great opportunity for the inexperienced riders to see other people ride them and how to properly navigate some of those intricate obstacles.
Overall it was a challenging course. The riders started the race going up hill and after making their way downhill, they had to make a steep incline once again before going back downhill.
This is the first time that a mountain bike event has been hosted at River Ridge Trails and de Gier was happy how the overall competition went.
Since this was a provincial race there were riders from across the province that converged to the park north of Langham.
“We had people from Regina, Prince Albert, Esterhazy and several other areas around the province all coming here to Langham to do this race,” said de Gier.
De Gier, who also works closely with the River Ridge trails committee, was very excited to have this race since the development of the park has come a long way in a short amount of time.
“We broke ground 11 months ago, and before that, there were no (mountain bike) trails out here,” he said.
The next cycling event scheduled at River Ridge Trails park is the PCDI Crossin’ the Ridge Double Cross, cyclo-cross race which is set for the first weekend of October.
“It’s going to be a two-day event,” said de Gier. “We haven’t designed the course for that yet but we’ll be designing it coming up real soon.”
