I think I had to hit the brakes twice up Taylor way due to traffic, crashing, people shifting into the small ring. You can’t shift chainrings in a pack, uphill. I also went left around that traffic island. That was a huge choke point. Not willing to risk squeezing in there.
That was a seriously hard ride at the start though. Lol neutral roll out. Everytime I hear that at any event it’s not true. Neutral roll it is a race to the front.
first legit downhill and people eager to show how well they can supertuck. Fun fact, supertucking mid-pack is useless. Just sit-in and grab a drink/food and chill. The guys on the front i get why they were doing it, but if you’re 50 riders back, keep your head up. I have video of the cone crash, I’ll see if i can get it posted. Still don’t know how it started, sounds like a tire pop, but just chaos immediately after, and people clearly not paying attention.
Please post video. Youtube works great. I was in the pack where that happened. I also thought it was a tire popping. Thankfully I was a little ways behind it and to the right.
This is the video (not mine); https://www.facebook.com/michaeldrothwell/videos/10157119162626690/?t=0
some comments; the people running out of the way seemed to cause more issues than if they had simply stayed down in turtle. the later accidents were worse than the initial one
First read through and I thought that said something else. 
Obviously supertuck led to the other superthing.
This was my 5th time for this fondo. Its been a bumpy few years:
2015 - 5:11 - moved from Toronto to Vancouver so hills were not in my biking vocabulary
2016 - 5:21 - had just recovered from a major injury (ruptured achilles)
2017 - 4:48 - wet and cold AF and started using TR
2018 - 5:42 - rode with my buddy (his first time), and I had a chest infection…don’t do this…EVER
2019 - 4:16 - TR really does make you faster! But I will likely miss the cut by 5-6mins. Had quite a bit of cramp near the 100km marker. My first time with no rest stops too, just carried a 3rd bottle.
One of my riding colleagues says he saw that rider…had problems and rode into the stationary traffic and the drivers rushed to get him help…not heard anything but he said he didn’t look good.
I think if I come back next year I can do sub 3:20. I gave up 5 min in the last 20km from just cracking. I also didn’t know what a single downhill looked like so I was never able to get to the front to make it over the KOM with the break away group, even though I got 13th overall on that KOM section.
Next year I’ll put some shallower section wheels on too, they will have more stability on the downhills. Being crazy aero didnt really help much.
Congratulations to all those who did the Whistler Fondo and avoided a crash! It certainly sounded like a bad year for crashes - I’m sure the whole UCI Grandfondo world championships qualifying had something to do with it.
I haven’t done the Whistler Fondo for 2015. I was considering the Forte this year, but then it sold out before I could make a decision. I also don’t love the $300 price tag.
I opted to do my own solo North Shore Fondo on Friday: Log In to TrainerRoad. It was probably the hardest ride I have ever done.
Wanted to give a more thorough detailing on my ride after having a few days to think everything through.
I will try and be thorough but if anyone has questions or advice please let me know!
Strava Ride: https://www.strava.com/activities/2688354129
Trainingpeaks: Activity | TrainingPeaks
My plan was to try and draft as much as possible until past Squamish, from there I would try and find a few people around my pace and stick with them as much as possible but mostly ride to my own power and not overreach.
I was looking to be ~280-300w on the climbs then recover a bit on the flats and descents.
For nutrition I brought 3 bottles filled with SIS Beta fuel along with 3 caffeine gels and 3 normal gels.
Neutralized rollout was anything but, mostly a race to stay near the front before the squeeze and sharp right onto Taylor Way. I knew there was a crash there the year before so I made sure to stick with the front group and pushed hard up Taylor Way averaging 434w for the climb.
Things started to calm down a bit after that but the pace was still high, I was having to push between 300-600w on some of the climbs to stay with the pack but had plenty of time to recover on the downhills and flats where you just get pulled along in the draft.
From around Horseshoe bay to Squamish I was able to recover a lot, still had to push 300-350w on the climbs but it was much more relaxed than the starting kilometers of the ride. Here I should have pushed a bit more as I let a few groups near the front of the ride go. If I had been more towards the front of the group I think I could have ended up with a better time.
After Squamish the hills started, the first real climb is just over 9k with the last bit pitching up to a maximum of ~8-10% for some short sections. Things mostly kept together until that last slope where everyone started to self seed into smaller groups.
From here onward there were a lot of smaller groups of riders all over the road, I was able to work with a few others along the way and take some turns slowly pulling in and then passing other riders, did my best to recover when I could and made sure to never push much over threshold so I could save my legs. At this point I was down to my last bottle and a caffeine gel but was feeling strong.
Things mostly went the same all the way into Whistler, we reeled in a few more groups but my legs still felt good.
Right around the 116k mark I was able to bridge up to a group up the road by ~100m and drop the group I was in, it cost me a bit of energy but was worth it in the end as I dropped a few other people in my age group. It was a 15 second sprint to gap the group I was in where I pushed 700w. I was then able to sit in and recover for a bit before the finish.
The finish is a right then left before a sprint to the line, I overtook a few more people just by not slowing down nearly as much taking the final corner at around 36k/h and crossing the line around 55k/h.
Unfortunately not able to catch one guy in my age group just ahead of me but overall happy with the ride and result.
I was sick leading up to it and had not been training super seriously in the weeks beforehand but was still able to do a good ride.
Nutrition worked out great for me, I never felt like I was out of energy or not consuming enough.
One bottle was kept in the back of the jersey until the second rest stop where I chucked the first bottle.
If anyone has questions or advice on how I could do the ride better please let me know, I dont do much racing so I am always looking to get better at it 
Thanks for sharing your experience. You are probably looking for more feedback than advice, however, I am not in a position to provide the former but if you had any advice to share that would be greatly appreciated. In no specific order: (I am a first time fondo rider, ~1.5 years into cycling, been using TR for almost a year, low volume plans only as splitting my time between swim and run as well). Time was 4:48, 2 rest stops totalling 14 min. I would like to do 3:59 next year).
Thanks for any advice to share. I am far from the pointy end of anything and that is not my goal either as you can tell from my goal time, but any low hanging fruit would be great. Needless to say my plan also includes more strictly following the TR plans this year and perhaps decreasing my swims and runs.
Hey, congrats on your first Fondo! Hope you had fun with it
On the downhills I found I could just coast with the pack most of the time, it seemed to really bunch up after the bottom of the hill so I was never really stuck trying to catch up or anything, mostly just making sure to stay safe in the pack the let myself roll up the group as they slowed down at the bottom.
I generally prefer to take my fuel in liquid form, the Beta fuel is a pretty simple mix but annoyingly expensive, I only use it for hard rides and races. There is a thread here on making your own so I will probably give that a try once my current stock runs out.
I never stopped on the ride, it costs too much time if you are trying to go fast. Never needed to pee stop but if you are taking longer on the ride or doing the Forte you might have to make a stop.
5,300kJ…13,000ft…
WE’RE NOT WORTHY!!!
I did something similar earlier in the year: https://www.strava.com/activities/2327111960
I was dying a thousand deaths on the way back from Horseshoe Bay, been a long time since I did something that tested me that much!
I did 559W up Taylor way…
Then 310W avg for the next 2 miles.
I let about 15 people pass me at the finish. I don’t actually think it affected my placing as I think a lot of them got through the start gate before I did.
I will never sprint finish a race I’m not going to podium and/or I do not know the exact layout of the finish line.
If I threw down a sprint there w/o knowing the layout I could have crashed or caused a crash. I can sprint over 60km/h, that finish line didn’t have a super long run out, and then there was a right turn you only found out about at the last min. Also people stopping and slowing after finishing.
I’m actually kind of surprised I didn’t see any finish line crashes.
Yeah if you dont know the finish it can be a bit sketchy, thankfully I had ridden it a few times before so I know what to expect and I was only arriving with a group of 5 or so, I can imagine in a bigger group it could get pretty dangerous.
Would be nice if they had some signs warning of the 2 turns or even some of those blinking arrow things they use to signal during construction along the highway, would have helped people to know what was coming up.
great to see so many vancouver folks on the forum, may need to organize a meet-up one of these days.
Great to read through some of the race analysis, thanks for sharing! I’ll add in mine here:
Last year; I finished the fondo in 4:26 and this year, I came in at 3:43! I think a big part of the success was the structured training via TrainerRoad which started in Oct 2018 (sweet spot base 1 and 2, sustained power build, sweet spot base 2, sustained power build, climbing road race). Over the season, I averaged 5 hours per week and a weekly TSS of 360. This was my second year of structured training.
With 2020 coming up, I’m motivated to started base training again in October!
I appreciate how much intelligent and careful thought and planning you put into designing your ride strategy, from equipment choices to motivational issues. Well done (and on only 5hrs/week!!). 