Deniz Does the BCBR MegaVolt

Turn It On

BC Bike Race has a long standing reputation for putting on one of the most exciting and demanding races in North America. It's a multi-day event that hops from one amazing trail network to another with 400+ people ready to rip each other's legs off. It's a race for an elite few, a journey for most, and mad survival for some. We are riding in British Columbia after all. It is steep, it's janky, and most often wet, and it demands a special set of skills and fitness to have fun in a Race-like situation.

The Pandemic threw a few proverbial spoke-wrenches into the BCBR's 2020 and 2021 plans. The team has creativity in their blood to make things a little juicier for a wider crowd and now offers 3 different rides through the season; the original BC Bike Race, the BCBR Gravel Explorer, and the Megavolt.

2022 BCBR MEGAVOLT

I try to be a spontaneous guy. It's not unusual to set up photoshoots with my fellow NSMBers in the minutes following our phone conversations. I sometimes pick unfamiliar items from the menu, and I love a good last minute road trip. My attendance to BCBR was of a similar nature but a little more annoying.

There hasn't been an opportunity to test an E-bike for me since joining the team at NSMB.com, but a visit to Sea Otter changed that dry spell and I was expecting a beauty of a machine just in time for Megavolt which made a lot of sense. Lets get a new bike for this race and shake it down! There should be plenty of great opportunities for failure and victory.

As it usually happens with any plan you've made and Murphy's opinion of the matter, the bike showed up minus the battery required to operate it at my door. So if you go around asking me If I'll be reviewing the Orbea Wild I borrowed from Obsession Bikes for the event, you'll get a big fat NOPE... But I will tell you if I got along with it after a 3 day E-Bike Loolapalooza.

You are responsible for your own transportation and accommodation for the new generation of BCBR events. I glued myself to James and his 6 person Coleman tent and pitched it next to the touching RV awnings of Dean Payne (founder of BCBR) and Elladee Brown (intro not necessary).

We had a sweet athletes village setup for the 3 days we were Not Racing in the waterfront RV campground of Crofton, BC. Rain was in the forecast and for once they weren't wrong, making the E-Bike tent life a little challenging. Where is the AC plug on my tent wall, man????

That was the first smack on the back of the head for this trip; trying to figure out how to charge a power-hungry bike. I knew we should have brought the 2 strokes. We could have just refuelled and went on with the day out there.

It turns out you can only charge 2 bikes per RV when they are hooked up to a 20A power source. Most E-horses use 4-5A chargers to guzzle up the electro juices. Collectively we had 9 bikes to charge at our camp granados. So we had to get creative. Turns out those Hyundai generators are quiet and do a wicked job charging 2 bikes at a time. What? Did you just charge an Ebike with fossil fuels? F'in Eh we did. It's an electron zoo out there, man.

Not Racing

As we lined up for the first ride of the weekend, we got the talking to from Andreas Hestler. He is an ex-Olympian and was rocking quite the moustache between his sniffer and his talker. A second handlebar if you will. Naturally we listened to what he had to say. I was surrounded by the faces of Elladee Brown, Kelly Sherbinin, Joe Murray, Thomas Vanderham, Fraser Newton, Brian Lopes and Hestler himself..Friends and family alike but all with a pedigree of heavy duty racing under their belts. As I looked further into the crowd of 50, I noticed more diverse shapes and faces. I relaxed a little remembering that this was not a race. We were all here to ride our bikes, on wicked trails in the Cowichan Valley, a pro e-bike trail network that gave us a sampling of Maple and Tzouhalem Mountains.

As our MC pulled the trigger, there were exactly zero riders who took on the opportunity to get a head start. I looked to my left and right for seniorities to move but they were looking at me like it was a Canadian Standoff... For 5 mins!

You go, no you go! nooo way.. you go.

This first stage was to be a consistency race, as each one of your 5 laps needed to be as close to one another as possible. Laps were estimated to be 15-16 minutes each through some wicked blue square trails on Maple Mountain. As the gypsy caravan of me and a few others dropped in, our pedalling cadences started increasing rapidly. It was obvious we had no plan and no clue of where we were going. We were just pedalling as hard as we could up the hill on a fire road to the singletrack section. Following Joe Murray on a meat-powered bike is an exorcism on a good day, so being able to keep him in sight on the climb was a great joy. He was still pulling away from me on the similarly-powered Norco Range he was piloting. Even though the E-bike is the great equalizer, he was topping up what the bike could put out to increase his speed.

Not being a huge fan of Turbo/ Boost modes on these machines, I left mine in E-MTB mode that senses power input and caters the power to the chain accordingly. The whole 85Nm would be available I was willing to work for it. The beauty of the E-MTB mode is that the bike behaves more naturally in power delivery.

I'm not racing, you're racing

If you invite 2 racers to a non race, they'll find a way to make it a race. That's pretty much what the recipe was for the weekend. As soon as bikes were charged and the mic was dropped, we sprinted with all our power to take the lead and stay there as long as we could. The second day had 2 stages with a 4-hour charging break in between. The wet and soaked trails of Cowichan were begging for seated pedalling to generate as much traction as possible at the rear wheel. Climbing up what seemed like vertical walls with the 55-pound bike is a mesmerizing feat. The harder we pushed, the faster we climbed and I immediately regretted bringing a camera and keeping my bottle of water in my backpack. Sure there were plenty of opportunities to stop and take a picture and a sip of water. No doubt about that. But I got sucked into a cross-eyed zone of racing all my buddies. Because I was emotionally tricked!

Averaging 165 bpm, this was a full on wrestle with a bear until the bear's power runs out. An hour of max heart rate exercise. I thought e-bikes were supposed to make riding easier. The two stages of the day damn near killed us with the amount of energy it took to finish them. Both were around 25 km or so in length and had about 1200 meters of climbing. The real hero of the day was Lorenzo (fellow with the Cat on his shoulder) as his bike died on the uphill of stage 2, he finished the whole course with his dual-crowned Yeti turned off. Pedalling like a zombie back to the finish corral, he got a cheer from the entire crowd. What a beast!

As we receded to the comfort of our so-called camp grounds, we washed, lubed and checked our bikes. There were indeed casualties. The multiple day rain and hose soaked punishment we were dishing out was killing bikes left and right. There wasn't a clear winner as to which bike and motor system was superior but The Bosch-equipped Orbea Wild I was on didn't skip a beat. CushCore front and back at 15psi in the 2.6" Minions, resin brake pads, non Grip2 dampers and all; the bike lived and prospered.

It was a unique experience racing but not racing e-bikes in Crofton. Once a mining town now survived by a pulp mill and a ferry terminal that connects Salt Spring Island to civilization. We felt like strangers at times. Lovely people were eager to make us great coffee at the local shop and chatty locals seemed to have the answers to why the Police chopper was circling us and preparing for landing. We swear we don't have any affiliation to the H.A. We are not the bikers you are looking for. Once the peace was restored to town, everybody went on with their lives. Boats rocked side to side, seagulls dropped another oyster onto the pavement and another e-bike stripped a freehub.

It was a zoo out there. It was a zoo where all the animals got along in a fable like story. We were there all on different agendas following the BCBR circus. Some to go fast, some to explore. But we all rode together. The difference between the fastest finisher and the slowest was not hours apart. It was barely minutes. It was the great equalizer that the bikes with assist brought to the table.

We'll be back for the next BCBR MegaVolt event. I may even consider other e-bike events if they promise to be as laid back as this. The price of $500 is well worth the 3 days of riding you get to do with an awesome crew on the best trails in the world. And you get to yell MEEEEEEGAAAAAVOOOOOLLLTTTTTTTTT. A lot.

Learn more or register here for the 2023 BCBR Megavolt.