This past weekend, I attended the 2011 edition of the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal, where world-ranked professional cyclists come with their crazy bikes to climb some of our city’s toughest hills many, many, many times.

Aside from photography and fishing, cycling is by far my favorite hobby. Just like working a camera in manual mode, a bike gives you complete control over speed and direction. The thrill I get climbing some hills or, even better, cruising down on them is sometimes unexplainable. What a rush!

So it was without too much effort that I got up Sunday morning to meet some of these cyclists and a couple of fans sitting, waiting, jumping and cheering their favorites at the top of the École polytechnique de Montréal’s hill. Knowing better, I should have waited on top of Mount Royal or somewhere near, as I’m sure the people were going even crazier! Oh, well…there’s always next year!

For this shoot, I only took my Nikon D90 with a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8.