Distance: 73.7 km Climbing: 3813 meters Descending: 3641 meters
From: www.transrockies.com

It was a long day for everyone on the TransRockies trail today, as an already grueling stage got longer when the front pack went off course and everyone played "follow the lemming," as today's 1st Place Open Men's finishers, Sobe Cannondale riders Mike Garrigan and Jesse Jakomait explained at the finish. The riders went awry when some of the top teams missed the flagging tape on course indicating a right-hand turn. Instead, the group marched up a steep avalanche gully, shouldering their bikes all the way to the top, missing the turn and finding out upon summiting the chute, that the trail had gone cold.

"We were so focused on putting one foot in front of the other that we ended up just playing follow the lemming," said Jakomait. According to him, a group of about 20 riders at the front of the race, realizing their mistake, turned and began backtracking, eventually finding the route and getting back into race mode. Jakomait and Garrigan completed the course with a time of 5:50:37, about an hour and a half later than the projected top finisher time for Stage 2. Xprezo.ca team Matthew Hadley and Frederic Bussieres came in three minutes later.

"There was a lot of climbing today even without adding an extra hour and a half of uphill with my bike," said Frederic at the finish line, still sporting a smile but showing signs of fatigue after two straight days of steep vertical.

Steed Cycles rider and recently retired NHL hockey player Trevor Linden also commented on the degree of difficulty for Stage 2, saying: "It wouldn't have been bad had we not gone off course (uphilll) on that scree. It was a big day without that, but that made it massive," he said. Linden said he was looking forward to the Stage 3 time trial as a much needed rest from Stages 1 and 2. Nipika Mountain Resort promises to deliver that with some exceptional private singletrack along the Kootenay River, bordering Canada's Kootenay National Park.

Stage 3

this year will be a brand-new format for the TransRockies. The racers will be separated into three waves and will tackles a short, sharp 45 km loop through the singletrack of Nipika. Along with providing a respite after the incredibly tough first two days of TRVIII (over 6000m of climbing already!), the time trial format will allow riders to cheers for their friends competing in other waves. Nipika Mountain Resort has a spectacular network of trails and the course will wind its way through them combining short, nasty climbs and technical descents with high-speed jeep track and longer uphill sections. It will be a mountain biking feast that will get the riders ready for the return to big miles and big elevation change on Wednesday.