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Riding For Real with Yoann Barelli and Josh Carlson
What you have here is a real mountain bike ride, a day in the life of a pro. Like the postal service, neither rain nor shine, snow nor sleet…Professional mountain bikers are apart from their bikes for only a small handful of reasons: travel, sickness, injury and strategically chosen rest days. When you compete for a living, travel is inevitable, rest days are a rare blessing, and sickness and injury keep you from making money. Training days are paramount. Sure, it’s the race days that pay the bills, but it’s all that time preparing that gets you to the finish line faster.
What you see is not a video edit pieced together with care fully choreographed and sessioned bits of trail. There was no “una mas” uttered during the filming of this, no “go back up two turns and do it again.” Instead, this is an honest look at how a Frenchman and an Australian spend a springtime training day in Vancouver. Apart from a wee bit of smiling for the camera and the odd stop to play with tire pressures and suspension settings — the two teammates were also testing their new SRAM ROAM 60 wheels
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Barelli and Carlson just kept “swimming” up and down Mount Seymour, banging out 33.9 rain-soaked kilometers and climbing 1,324 meters over the 4 hours and 40 minutes we filmed them. They weren’t quite finished when we turned off the cameras, either. Like the Frenchman and the blue cartoon fish say, “Just keep swimming.”
Video by Mind Spark Cinema
Photos by Adrian Marcoux
Words by Joe Parkin
TRAIL INFO
Severed D, 5 laps —One of the oldest trails on Mt Seymour, the trail has seen a major overhaul
thanks to the NSMBA TAP program and it need be mentioned, this re-birth was only made
possible with thanks to the hard work from Martin & Penny. The boggy swamp traverse across
the top has now become a fast & flowy pump track that puts you into a rowdy descent. Includes a few skinnies all low to the ground, and several small rock rolls, some of which maybe dropped. Lower Severed (after the Shorn turn off) has a very steep section with some black/double black optional lines. If you wish to avoid the technical descent, turn off at CBuster to take a cruisy descent on Asian Adonis or bail out lower down at Shorn Scrotum to connect to CBuster. Unfortunately, both options mean you’ll miss the happy ending on Severed, one of the trails’ best parts.
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Upper Dale’s Trail, 2 laps (combined with Forever After)—Newly machined by Joy Ride Bike Parks, this trail is now very fast and flowy. If you wish to continue on flow trails it is suggested that you turn left at the bottom of this trail (before the ladder bridge), climb back to the Mushroom Connector and back down to the New Severed entrance to access the lower trail network. If you want to continue on Lower Dales expect Old School technical.
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Forever After, 2 laps (combined with Dale’s Trail)—Described as mostly blue with a couple
‘black diamond’ moves, this is primarily a downhill XC trail complete with climbs, some pedaling and a downhill section at the end with rock faces, berms, some high speed and even an optional drop. Going through some stunningly lush micro valleys, this trail was primarily built with efforts by the NSMBA. Continue straight across Bridle Path into the High School League trail, another NSMBA project, to feel the full power of the FLOW! The name is a combination in tribute to the Trails Forever Fund, from which funding was derived to complete the project, and the utilization of existing portions of Aftertaste.
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