Even though the day had seen an early blast of fall, by the time the race was about to go off the weather was gentle as a lamb again. It was Aug. 26 and the 17th Toonie race of the season was on.

One-hundred sixty riders had assembled at the Wedgemount parking lot because this was the second Green Lake Loop of the season, sponsored by the Whistler Community Services Society, Fineline, La Scandinave, and Opa!

The main course of the evening saw riders work their way up the Secret North trail to make their way to the beginning of Comfortably Numb. The route would split off from that trail near the beginning and point the riders down to the Green Lake Loop. Riders new to the whole Toonie shindig had an option to ride the Green Laike Loop from the beginning.

If you rode the whole up and down North Secret route, you ended up accomplishing 1,780 feet of elevation gain while riding 7.36 miles or 11.85 km of singletrack. Those numbers, by the way, are brought to you this week by Francis Chiasson, who remembered to turn on his magic Garmin GPS gadget at the start of the race.

North Secret to Green Lake Loop is a fairly intense course, not in the least because it features some seriously gnarly loose shale descents into the Lost Lake trail system. It took Matt Ryan 46 minutes to do this thing, followed by Mike Robinso, who did it in 46:45 and Dave Burch finishing with 47:13. Juniors Mahon Lamont and Mathew Winslow brought in times of 52:45 and 65 minutes, respectively, while Fanny Paquette did the whole thing in 58:28, followed by Brook Baker and Rena Worden doing it all in 67:55 and 69:04, respectively.

The après for the evening was sponsored by Opa! the Greek restaurant beside the IGA, which supplied a choice of their excellent falafels while Nesters sprung for a supply of Veritea ice teas. A big not-much-of-a surprise awaited the throng for this evening because Scandinave Spa had thrown in a free visit to their Scandinavian baths. If anybody can think of a better way to finish a Toonie race than hitting the hot-cold-hot sensation that is the Scandinavian bath experience, please email me. It is no wonder that we had 160 riders show up for this particular Toonie race; the average this year has hovered around the 120 mark. If we can persuade Scandinave to do this every year, we’ll have found a worthy replacement for the Chateau Toonies of the past. Is it time to break out the costumes yet?

Tonight (Sept. 2), WORCA will be the sponsor of the race and the Lost Lake trails will be the route. This is your chance to check out the Austrian Passive Haus if you haven’t already done so because WORCA will have the après there in their new permanent digs.

Next week the Sept. 9 Toonie will be sponsored by Garbanzo Bike and Bean, which means get ready to go up and down in the Whistler Bike Park!