Rowbotham Lake MTB Race

Nanaimo’s Normon Thibault records fastest time at 4th Rowbotham Lake Ramble

More than a decade has passed since Normon Thibault (Frontrunners-Brodie) has placed first in a mountain bike race. Last Sunday the Team Frontrunners athlete was the fastest person over the 70k Qualicum to Parksville Rowbotham Lake Ramble course.

The “Rowbotham” as it is known started 4 years ago by the Arrowsmith Mountain Bike Club and has become a tough challenge for any mountain biker. The course starts in Qualicum Beach and winds it way above Rowbotham Lake just below Arrowsmith Mountain before it drops down to Englishman River. The event features 3 unique mandatory 5 minute stops; 1) Tea and Crumpets 2) Beer 3) sugar with each of them having live music in the middle of the wilderness. All competitors must stop and most choose to enjoy the food, drink and music in the middle of a very difficult race.

This year’s event had 104 athletes start and 95 finish.

The range in finishing times was from Normon Thibault 4:33:41 to Devin Wolski, Russ Dodd and Seth Kraushar who all finished together in 9:40:25

Fastest Female was 23 year old Melissa Dekker in 5:32:52


Quotes:

2nd place finisher Andrew Kent, “Today was a day for the weekend warrior to shine. The “Elite” or semi-pro racers did not show up so the 9-5 workers had a chance to go for victory”

3rd place finisher Fred Hodgson, “I blew up after the first mandatory stop and Andrew and Norm dropped me. There was nothing I could do”.

Normon Thibault, “One year ago today I finished the Rowbotham and had a phone call that a good friend of mine, Dave Smart, had died after a long battle with Cancer. When I woke up this morning I put on my orange “Smart Socks” that we made to raise money for Melanoma research. From my first pedal stroke I was thinking about Dave. I have not won a mountainbike race since 1993 so did not have any grand ideas of victory. I wanted to have a great race but as the race progressed I felt better and better. Literally it was like I felt the strength of two people. Every time Andrew or Fred attacked I dug deeper, thought of Dave and went harder. When Andrew struggled I just took off and pushed all the way to the finish. At the finish I was in tears because we all really miss Dave.”