TOUR de BELIZE Mountain Bike Race - 02/16/06 11:42 PM
http:/
TOUR de BELIZE MOUNTAIN BIKE RACE
Tentatively for August this year, 2006
The Auxillou extended family of Caye Caulker by the Barrier Reef and Hillview in Cayo District are donating the Annual Perpetual Trophy and some 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes. The perpetual trophy will be called the AUXILLOU CHALLENGE TROPHY.
In the planning for four years, this is the year the Auxillou family say! The first race will be into the Belize Alps. This is not a race for bicycling wimps! The bicycle race will be three daily legs of roughly 30 miles each. The first leg starts in Hillview by the family owned FALCONVIEW BACK PACK ADVENTURE HOSTEL. Your home away from home when exploring Western Belize Mayan pyramids and Mayan underground caves of XIBALBA. Hillview community is 400 ft in elevation above the coastal sea. The first day race leg ends 3,200 feet elevation high above the Sibun Gorge. You will pass very close to Hidden Valley 1600 ft Falls enroute and Baldy Beacon radio towers via Cooma Cairn road. The second leg is from Sibun Gorge headwaters in a downhill run from 3,200 ft to 800 ft elevation, along Brunton Trail to the Forestry village in the foothills of the Mountain Pine Ridge by Rio Frio Cave and Rio On rapids. The third day will be from the Forestry village campground back to Hillview, a suburb of Santa Elena town in Western Belize. If you don't drop out of the race on the first day, you can make it all the way. The first day is the toughest! This is when we seperate the wimps from the survivalists.
Entry fee will be $50 and half of that will be pooled for cash prizes. The rest of the money goes for advertising and other costs associated with the race. The Auxillou family want to give something back to Belizean youth of a new generation. This country has been good to their family, they work hard but they also play hard. Businesses can donate cash for prizes, or to sponsor special trophies and are invited to sponsor individual riders. Adventures abound throughout the natural beauties of our Belize. Many youth have never seen the magnificent pristine beauty of the wilderness areas of our remote Belize Alps. This is one way of getting them up there, high in the beautiful mountains. Each race should finish early enough that contestants and supporters will have time to set up camp and explore the area and take in the grandeaur of the wonderful vistas overlooking the interior plateau jungles.
We are going to start this first year off easy, the patriarch Mr. Auxillou says. Mountain bike racers will be on logging roads the whole way. But in coming years, we plan to go off the roads into more difficult terrain and jungle tracks. This year the highway racing thin tired bikes could probably make it along the logging roads, but in future years, without a mountain bike you will not make it. As country people and sea people, we believe strongly in self reliance and preparation. There will be no back up, if you pop a tire, or run out of water, or any other fool thing. You break down up in those mountains, you can walk out thirty miles on your own two feet. Survival of the fittest! Each contestant is expected to have a repair kit, sufficient food and water, expected first aid supplies and sleeping gear.
Websites with more information can be found at: http:/