The final race of the Hell of a Series is just around the corner. For the second straight year, the series will conclude with the Just Another Bike Race (JABR) on Aug. 20.
Race director Dwayne Kress said it was a good debut for the event last year and he hopes to build on last year's success for the 2011 edition of the race.
"The reaction last year was pretty good," he said. "It was a new race but with the Test of Metal group of events, it's almost a race in the box type of situation. A lot of the signage and pre-race prep is all organized and we have a fantastic sponsor in Pearson Financial."
Kress said the idea behind the JABR was to spotlight some of Squamish's lesser-known trails, along with the entire trail system as a whole.
"The idea last year was that 麻豆社国产has a lot of great trails but there's no real connectivity amongst them other than the Test of Metal," he said. "I wanted to help create a race that could link other portions of our trail system together and also to inspire people to come up with reasons for making trails."
He said that the course features a number of trails that are well known among local riders who participate in toonie races, but aren't familiar to most out-of-towners. According to Kress, the JABR differs in several distinct ways from established local races like the Test of Metal or the GearJammer.
"How it differs is that it's not quite so much a rolling course like the Test and it's not so much an up-and-down course like the GearJammer," he said. "So it fits in between those two for difficulty, both in length and technical ability. I tried to keep it completely off of trails that the Test and GearJammer use but that's literally impossible to do."
This year, the course will not run on Credit Line but has added the Word of Mouth trail to the race. Just like last year, the race will start and finish at Quest University. Kress also said that with the Live at 麻豆社国产music festival moving its date up to the same weekend as the JABR, it should be a busy weekend for locals.
"I thought a little about moving it later, but then you get too close to school and moving it up would mean one less week between JABR and the GearJammer," he said. "That's just not enough time to organize and we couldn't really move from our position. Maybe the race will benefit from having more people around and it will also put some pressure on us to wrap up the awards a little sooner because of the main acts hitting the stage on the Saturday."
Ricky Federau of Chilliwack won last year's race with a time of two hours, two minutes, 47 seconds. Kress said registration has recently opened and he expects several top names to sign on.
Organizers are also looking for volunteers. Those interested can contact Kress at [email protected]. Riders who want to register or those who want more information on the race are urged to visit www.testofmetal.com/pages/jabr.php
