Riding Through The Pain

Banff Bike Fest Criterium

2011-07-11T17:50:00.003-06:00

The first road race of the year is always the most nerve-racking….and this race is not for the timid. I had gone down to Banff last year to watch Cyrus race and the atmosphere had been incredible and the many crashes…not so incredible, but I still wanted to be part of the show.

This was a really important race for me… I really wanted to do well in this race, I was so close to my upgrade to Cat 4. The week leading up to the race did not look promising...a crash during my training crit that ended up cutting the race short…track cancelled due to rain and possibly more rain on Saturday in Banff.

An hour before my start I found myself wading through a sea of kids. They were all so anxious to do the kids races and there were so many smiles despite the rain and cool weather. It must be an amazing feeling for them to get a chance to ride (or run) on the same closed we would be using…. How often do they get to ride in the middle of the road without fear of cars?

I started my warm-up…alone in the parking lot on my trainer, while it started to drizzle. The course was already infamous for crashes under ideal conditions and the rain was going to make this a much more challenging race.

I finished my warm-up on the trainer and proceeded to pre-ride the coure. As I went by the crowd during one of my warmup laps. I heard a little boy saying “I’m cheering for number 79…GO NUMBER 79!”. Awesome. Now I have to kick ass.

Staging started and I seeded myself in the first row. The countdown began, the racers silenced and the crowd cheered. My first official road race of the year and I was ready to put the hammer down.

The race started and I managed to get second wheel going into the first hairpin turn. So far, so good…tires held up and everyone up front went single file through the turn. As we came around the turn to complete out first lap…I saw the guy on my right lose contact with the ground and slide across the tarmac into the fence. The announcers informed the crowd there wa s a crash and that it was holding up some of the racers. The few survivors all knew what to do…we attacked and pushed the pace. We got into a group of 4 and managed to get away from the peloton.

The 4 of us managed to work loosely together and stay away for most of the race. The course was starting the dry up a little on where the pack was riding so it was getting easier to focus on the lines through the turns.

I went up to the front to take a pull and was leading the lead group then I heard the same little boy yell “Look, it’s number 79, I told you to cheer for him!” That was probably one of my best moments of racing.

Nearing the last few laps of our race…it seemed like we were either slowing down or the pack was starting to reel us back in. 2 more riders from RMCC managed to bridge up to us and now we were a group of seven heading into the last lap. The group consisted mostly of RMCC riders so they worked as a team with a couple of us interloping on their plan.

Last lap…the pace went up considerably. RMCC formed a group and it was hard to get past them and I was trying to have enough left for the final sprint. We hit the last turn and I emptied the tank sprinting for a much needed 6th place finish.

It was over so quickly…one of the best crits I’ve ever raced. I went out and accomplished the goal I had set out for myself. It was all smiles as I did my cool down laps. Even though I didn’t win…it still felt like I did. All my anxiety about the race course conditions, my result, my upgrade points were all gone at once. Finally….Cat 4. 1 of 3 season goals complete.

- Kyle

Photo Credits: Christina Hirolta

Day 5: Innsbruck to Venice

2011-04-02T21:04:00.000-06:00

This was going to be another early day but we were finally off to Venice. This seemed like this is one of the places that everybody could not wait to get to. Our our way out from the hotel we made a stop to see the Olumpic ski jump on the top of the hill and we also went inside a church. I found the inside of the church much more interesting then the ski jump. Maybe it's because it wasn't anything new to me as we have a pretty nice ski jump tower back in Calgary. After taking picutres it was off to Italy.

The drive was really scenic as we wound in and out of tunnels through Brenner Pass As we made our way into Italy you could tell right away where we were. The trees different and there were vineyards everywhere.

At our first rest stop we got introduced to the Italian way of ordering food. First you had to go see what you wanted, then you had to line up to pay for it and then after you got your receipt, you went back to order what you wanted. If it sounds like chaos...it is...on top of people butting in front of you in the line and trying to pronounce what you wanted, it took a while to get food but in the end it was worth it.

We made our way into Mestre where we got off the coach and then took a boat into Venice as no vehicles are allowed in the city. The ride was about an hour or so and there were everythign from tugboats to cruise ships in the harbor. As we neared Venice, from a distance you could see some building that were beginning to lean as the whole city is built on a marshy lagoon which why it is sometimes called "The Floating City". As we cruised for the port the site was unbelievable, it was unlike anything I've ever seen before in my life. I never thought in my life I would get to see Venice, so it was breathtaking.

We got off the boat and made our way into the main town center, Piazza San Marco (St. Mark's Square). There we saw the St Mark's Basilica and the infamous square with lots of pigeons, but not as many as there used to be. I was about to take a quick look inside the church but no backpacks were allowed and I didn't want to get seperated from the group so I went with a few people into the narrow streets of Venice.

Walking through the streets was like navigating a maze. There were little shops lining the streets selling all sorts of things. The only thing in my mind was to find the Rialto Bridge. I was able to navigate my way through the streets by following signs that were on the sides of some of the buildings but it would be pretty easy to get lost if you happen to miss one of them. As I made my way to the bridge, it was difficult to get throught eh streets as some of them were only wide enough for 2 people and of course some people walked 2 abreast which blocked anyone from getting through easily. Finally I found my way to the bridge and took a few photos of the spectacular view.

After taking some pictures, I had to make my way back to Piazza San Marco to meet up with the group for the gondola ride. Although I was able to find the signs to point me back in the direction of the plaza, I still managed to get a little lost and asked a local to point me in the right direction. After meeting up with the group, we walked over to the wharf where there were gondolas waiting for our group. We got into groups of six, bought some wine and then set off for a trip though the canals with the sun starting to set. Unfortunately, our gondolier did not sing...even after we asked him.

After the gondola ride we had another couple hours to kill before our dinner at the resturant. About half of the group decided to go our a tour of the glass factory to see how Murano glass was manufactured. The glass master made a few thigns, but he managed to make a horse of glass in just a few minutes. Becasue the glass can only actually be manfactured in Murano to be Murano glass, the glassmaker had to destroy the figurine. I ended up buying a small vase as I found it was something unique to bring back to Canada.

After getting my vase. I went to walk around the city some more and met up with some people from my tour and whom were mostly smashed from drinking wine on the gondola. I waled with them for a littel bit before going off on my own to take more pictures as I had now had some perfect lighting. I wandered back to the bridge while going a different route to see all of the shops. The place really felt much more alive at night then it did during the day. I had enough to do a pretty long walk and really just wanted to see as much as I could of the city. The group met up again a few hours later and we went to an Italian (obsviously) resturant for dinner. The dinner was really good with musicians playing accordians at our table and singing songs all night long while we ate. We had some pretty good wine...but not excellent and some pretty good pasta. This was also the first time I had ever had a risotto, which was delicious.

After dinner, we hurried back to the harbor to catch our ferry back to mainland, then we drove a short while to our hotel in Mestre. Next day we just had a fairly short drive to the city of Rome.

- Kyle

Day 4: Munich to Innsbruck

2011-03-13T01:07:00.002-07:00

The next day I when I woke up, I felt amazingly pretty good despite having 2L of beer. Not even a trace of a hangover or a headache which I usally get when I drink that much (for me that's a lot). Today, we were driving to Austria but it was supposed to be a pretty short drive but we were still going to have a pretty full day.

Out first stop was the in the country side to see the infamous Neuschwanstein Castle. From a distance it didn't really look all that spectacular and I figured that was probably the best look we were going to get of it.

I guess the ulterior motive for the stop was because there happened to be some snow on the ground and probably about half the people on the bus had never seen snow before in their life, so that was a pretty big thing for them. For me...it just made me think of home...and all the snow I was going to have to shovel when I got back.

After a short while, we got back on the bus and then proceeded to the town of Schwangau, which is the town at the foot of the road to the castle. Ther were several ways up the the castle but a few of us decided it would probably be faster to just walk up to the castle which took about 20 minutes.

The castle was huge. I don't even think any pictures can do it justice. The architecture was absolutely amazing and up until that moment, I never really thought castles like this existed. We didn't have time to take a tour of the inside of the castle so just walked around the courtyard and took pictures. After leaving the castle we travelled down the road to a restaurant for lunch. There I had more Hofbrauhaus beer (my new favorite), some currywurst with some pommes frites.

After we got back on the bus, we kept on driving through the mountain passes and then we had another stop at the Zugspitze view point near the Austrian border, which is the highest peak in Germany. After taking photos we hopped back on the bus and made our way to Innsbruck, Austria.

We arrived in Innsbruck and it was a really nice city surrounded by mountains. We proceeded straight into the city and got off to walk around the city. Our first major stop was at the Golden Roof landmark. After a brief history lesson some of us proceeded into the Swarovski shop, which is what Austria is also famous for.

A few of us then decided to go to a cafe to try some hot chocolate, which was amazing! Then we walked around trying to find a cybecafe so that some people could check their e-mail. After leaving the cafe we made our way to the Schnapps shop where you could taste anything you wanted for free. I ended up buying a small bottle to bring back home after tasting about 10 different flavors.

After we the shop we went back to the cybercafe to chill out for a bit before the group had to meet up to go to our hotel. After walking a short distance to the coach we made our way to the hotel for dinner and then got some sleep after a pretty big day.

- Kyle

Day 3: St. Goar to Munich

2011-01-12T23:29:00.001-07:00

Imagine being in Germany for your first night then at 5am you are woken up by an air raid siren. I didn’t know if it was some sort of wake up call or if something was happening but needless to say after the almost a minute of full on siren (and several more off in the distance)….I went back to sleep.

After getting up for the second time we all assembled for breakfast and then we had a stop at the beer stein store next door. The store had all sorts of steins and the owner himself also designed and made them. He explained a lot of history behind them and also showed us a few of the collectibles ones. I ended up buying a couple of steins for myself. After the store, we got a little bit of time to take some pictures of a castle on the hill and some of the valley and then we drove off through the Rhine Valley. During our drive out we found out the source of the sirens at night. It turns out a ship had capsized in the flooded river so they were sounding the alarm went it start going over.

After a scenic drive through the Rhine Velley we arrived in Munich. After getting to our hotel and taking a shower we headed out to the old part of Germany for a walking tour. We got into town and walked for a bit to near the Marienplatz where we met up with our tour guide. Our tour guide started taking and it was in perfect English…a very familiar accent…turns out he was a fellow Canadian who had moved to Europe 5 years ago from Vancouver to be a tour guide.

The guided tour was really good and we got to see some really interesting building as well as learn some really interesting facts about Germany pre and post both World Wars. I was really fascinated by some of the buildings which had the textures painted on after they were rebuilt after the war because Germany did not have enough money to rebuild them to the way they were after they were destroyed during the war.

After the walking tour, it was time to drink massive amounts of beer at the beer hall Hofbrauhaus. The beer house was awesome. A server just walked around with five 1L steins in each hand and just asked who wanted beer and then he put them down the table. The beer was probably the best beer I’ve ever had. Our tour guide Joe said the only ingredients were hops, barley and water so it was the purest beer you could have (and he promised if we only drank beer we would not have a hangover). The beer was really smooth, crisp and it went down pretty easy.

For food, most of us ordered the pork knuckle which was pretty much a giant piece of meat on a bone with a piece of fried fat on top (crisp) served with two german style dumplings. The pork knuckle was really heavy and filling so I’m sure it did a great job soaking up all the beer. By the end of the night I ended up drinking 2 steins which was probably equivalent to about 6 beers. I chugged the last 1/3 of the second beer which turned out to be a really bad idea.

After the beer hall, most of us got on the coach and made our way back to the hotel where my roommate proceeded to pass out after having about 4 steins.

Tomorrow we will be heading to Innsbruck, Austria.

- Kyle

More Photos

Day 2: Amsterdam to St.Goar

2011-01-11T23:21:00.000-07:00

Today, we got a free morning to see some sites and walk around town. It was a little rainy but not too bad…mainly just a light drizzle. After getting dropped off in the town centre we decided to walk over to the Anne Frank house museum as a group. The Anne Frank house was a pretty surreal experience. I don’t think I said even two words to anyone while I was in there. Most people have read the story but to actually see where they lived and understand how they were able to hide for so long in the house is really amazing. Going through the house really made me appreciate the freedom that I have even to do something as simple as riding a bike. After we finished at the museum, three of us decided to walk down to the Van Gough museum. It was a pretty good walk and it was fun to see all of the different architecture and how compact the city is. The Van Gogh museum was really big and it was hard to try and see everything while trying to keep track of time. After the museum we went for some poffertjes. We went to a place that our tour manager recommended and the poffertjes were amazing. They look really small pancakes which they then put on some butter and then dump some icing sugar on.

After finishing up our snack, we now had about 30 minutes to try and get to the other side of town. We starting walking in the general direction but after a few minutes we managed to flag down a taxi. The taxi was an Audi A8 which was pretty really nice but not what I’d expect to be a taxi. The driver was really nice and spoke extremely god English. He was able to get us to our meet location just in time for us to get on the tour bus.

From Amsterdam we drove over to the Rhine Valley where we'd be staying in St. Goar. After arriving in St. Goar after about a 6 hour drive, we got into our hotel and right away there was chaos. There were four flights of stairs to go up to get to our room and there were no elevators. The stairs were packed with a lots of the people trying to get their packed heavy suitcases up the stairs. It was pretty comical sight…but after a while with people helping out, we all managed to get their suitcases to their rooms. After getting settled in our rooms and having a quick shower, we had dinner and then we went for some wine tasting. The wine tasting was held in wine cellar built in the 17th century and the current owner was gave us some different wines to taste from different harvest periods. I’m not a really big fan of wine but his wine was actually really good. I tried some ice wine and I was blown away so I ended up buying a bottle to take home. As a gift they let us keep the shot glasses that we tasted the wine from.

After the wine tasting we all went down to the hotel bar for a few drinks. I went for some German beer which was really good while most people were trying to see how many Feigling shots they could do. I think they said the next day they had about 4 boxes of 50…

- Kyle

Eurotrip 2011!

2011-01-10T23:39:00.002-07:00

Day 0: Calgary to London

The next set of entries will barely be cycling related but I don’t want to start another blog so I will blog about my 2 weeks adventure to Europe. I chose to go to Europe because I felt I needed to experience a few different cultures and possibly have a sneak peek of the cycling for my next adventure here. My tour was going to do 8 countries in about 12 days so it was going to be very busy days.

My flight to London was a 9 hour flight from London so I was trying to think of how I going to pass the time on the plane. After got my seat, I saw someone I though I recognized trying to get to his seat, turns out he was going to be sitting with me for the flight. After a few minutes he turns to me and we both sorta recognized each other and it turned out we went to the same high school 10 years ago. We had a really good chat for a few hours and it really made the time go by fast as we caught up a little bit about life, politics and real estate. He is going to school in Amsterdam and was just on his way back so it was pretty crazy to actually know the person sitting next to you on a random flight by yourself.

After landing in UK, I took the “Tube” (London Underground) from the airport to Russell Square where my hotel was located. Right away I noticed that the public transportation system was much better than anything we have back in Calgary. The map of the transit system pretty looked like spaghetti and I was a little confused trying to figure out where I was but once the train started going, I figured it out and was able to locate where I needed to get off.

I arrived at Russell Square and after walking around a bit, I was able to get my bearings and find my hotel. I didn’t have much time to walk around after I got to my hotel so I just went for a walk to try and locate the tour meet up point which was at the basement of the Royal National Hotel. After asking a few questions, I went to see if I could find a store to sell me a SIM card for my phone.

I found the phones stores but none of them were able to sell me a roaming SIM card so I just went to a Starbucks to grab a coffee. After grabbing my coffee, I went back to the meeting place to meet up with the rest of the tour group. I thought it was going to be a fairly small group, but it turns out it was sold out and we had a full group of 50 people on the tour. I met up with another Canadian, an American and a few Aussies right away. After the briefing we all decided to go out to a local pub for a pint and a bite to eat. The dinner was pretty good and much better then the standard pub fare that we usually get back home. The beer was pretty good but to be honest I was expecting a little better. After dinner we headed back to the hotel as we had to wake up quite early to board the coach the next day.

Day 1: London to Amsterdam

The first thing I did when I woke up was obviously take a shower which was much easier said then done. This was when I noticed that everything in Europe is much smaller and more compact then anything that we have back in Canada. I literally had to stand sideways in the shower the entire time and was bumping into everything as I tried to wash up. I almost fell on my face trying to get out of the tub as the sides were super high.

After boarding the coach we left London in the dark so I wasn’t able to see any major sites except for the Tower Bridge. The plan for the day was to drive to the port and take the ferry over to France and then drive through Belgium to Amsterdam. As we got on the ferry we got to see the White Cliffs of Dover was are cliffs of sheer white. They stretched as far as the eye could see along the coastline but it was really cool to see from the top of the ferry.

I slept part of the way on the drive from France but there really wasn’t much to see. When we arrived in Amsterdam I was really amazed how flat it was. There wasn’t a single hill in site. After the bus stopped at the hotel for us to put away our luggage, we had some dinner then we were onto our first excursion. We took the coach back to the center of town and the first thing that they told us was to watch out for bikes.

There were thousands of bikes! 99% of the bikes were the infamous Dutch bike which is a single speed bike with coaster brakes. Because the twn is so flat, gears aren’t needed and so I’m sure this really helps control the pace on the bike paths. The bikes racks were filled with almost identical bikes and they were literally fighting for space amd some racks just had bikes toppling over each other. There was even a bike “parkade” which probably held thousands of bikes, it was crazy.

The group then got together for a river cruise through the canals with an open bar. On the ride we got a taste for the typical Dutch music (techno?!) and probably the best Heineken that I’ve ever had in my entire life. I guess maybe it was because we were much closer to the brewery (Heineken is brewed in Amsterdam). After the river cruise we walked over to the infamous Red Light District. I wasn’t able to get any photos because it is apparently run by a private security firm and if you’re caught taking photos they will take your camera and smash it on the ground.

After doing a quick tour of the Red Light District, most of us decided to go check out a "cultural show". All I can say is...you have to go to Amsterdam. It was pretty unbelievable what I went to go see but it was a little more culture then I was expecting.

After the show we went to go check out a coffeshop. We went into one of the famous Bulldog Cafes and was pretty much what you'd expect from a palce where it's legal to smoke to marijuana. A couple people bought Space Cakes but most of the others went downstairs to smoke a few joints. I left after about 10 minutes and decided to head down to a bar where the rest of the group was hanging out. After about hour we prety much got kicked out of the bar as they were closing up so we all went back to the hotel. Tomorrow are supposed to get about half a day o free time to walk around the city before heading off to Germany.

More Photos

Red Cross

2010-10-10T01:00:00.001-06:00

I was going into this race with a ton of confidence. I had ridden one of my best races ever and gotten enough points for my upgrade. A couple of us were told that they were 99% sure we’d be able to race in the Expert race the next day….so I prepped the next day to race in Expert. I got to the race site a little late but left just enough time just in case something happened and I would have to race in Sport again. Once again the race was at the same site as the previous day and once again it was on the pretty much the same course, only backwards. The only difference was the two run-ups were eliminated for a 2 barrier set into a short run-up.

I got down to the race site and strolled over to registration when Chris comes out and tells me that we have to race in Sport again. I was a little annoyed as we were receiving mixed messages from officials...but I didn’t want to waste time arguing as I was now running late for my start. I was sort of half-expecting this but I now had only left myself 45 minutes to get changed, get my spare wheels to the pit, pre-ride and stretch. I was only able to do barely get a one lap pre-ride in, which was essentially my warm-up and a very quick stretch.

I got to the start and did the one thing you should never ever do before a race. I decided I was in too easy of a gear to sprint out so I changed my bike into a harder gear to go for the hole shot. I was pretty focused today and didn’t chat nearly as much as usual. The whistle blew and my gear was way too hard and I trouble finding my pedal with three quarters of the field flying right by me. When I finally clipped in, I was near the back of the field going into the hairpin turn.

I was able to start passing lots of people in the first lap but on the longer steep single track sections I got stuck behind riders who couldn’t make it all the way up and had to stop to dismount. Because it was pretty tight I couldn’t ride around them so I had to dismount and run around them in the deep grass. The dismount into the barriers was right hand hairpin which really messed me up. I lost a lot of momentum and had lots of trouble clearing the barriers.

Around 3rd lap in I had caught up to Thomas. I went by him and tagged him on the back telling him to grab my wheel and we could work together to move up the field. 4th lap in I could see Mark up ahead…so I decided to grab onto his wheel. Mark and I changed position a couple of times as I would attack and then he would counter-attack in every chance he got. It was awesome. Then I had caught up to rider who had apparently been lapped so I grabbed on to his wheel and Mark timed his attack perfectly and was able to gap me going into the steep climb as I had gotten stuck behind a slower rider. I was able to catch up again and then attacked again.

Last lap Mark and I continued to battle it out, a rider flew by us…but I thought it was a lapped rider so I chose not to chase him down. On the last power section, I caught up to Chris Coleman who I had raced against the day before. I grabbed onto his wheel and was trying to set up an attack going into the last power section. Chris was going really hard and I had a tough time hanging on. We got the hairpin and I didn’t want to crash him out so I laid off the gas to try and out sprint him to the line. We got the finishing straight and we both sprinted hard for the finish line…Chris had just a little bit more left in the tank and beat me to the finish.

Result: 4th

Because of my start, I had no idea where I was most of the race. I didn’t really believe Craig when he was yelling at me that I was closing in on 2nd place during the last lap, I thought I was much further back then that. There were 40 riders in all and I think I was in 30th place in the first 200m of the race. I was really happy I was able to claw my way back up the field and once again finish in the prize money. In some ways I felt this race was just as good as yesterday…I had a lot of fun battling it out with Mark for 2 laps and having a sprint battle at the end of the race.

All in all, it was weekend of great racing on great courses with some awesome weather. This would probably be my last trip up to Edmonton for the year so glad for all the good times and awesome company.

Photo Credits: Ken Hurd

Jim Horner Grand Prix

2010-10-09T20:02:00.000-06:00

I decided to head up to Edmonton to do the next series of races as I was now pretty close to my Expert upgrade, so I figured I’d be able to do it by the end of the weekend.

Immediately upon us arriving to our hotel in Edmonton, I knew this weekend was going to be awesome. I drove to Edmonton with Thomas and there we met a whole bunch of other riders from Calgary. There at the hotel bar sat 10 of us: Keith, Shawna, Thomas and Charles from Speed Theory; Katie Curtis from Bowcycle; Craig F. from Calgary Cycle; Craig S. and I from Deadgoat along with independent riders Mani and Josh. It was great times, all of us laughing over beers and food even though we’d all be racing against each other the next day. To me this is what defines the racing community, the great times we all have on and off the bike.

The next day we rode down to the course from the hotel as it was only about 5 minutes away by bike. I dropped off my spare wheels, registered and went to do a proper warm-up as per Keith’s advice prior to doing my course pre-ride. This time I went into the race with a plan. I knew who I needed to stay with and what position I needed to hold on to in order to have a good race. I wanted to finish on the podium this weekend…all I needed was 5th place for an upgrade…but I wanted top 3.

The race course was one that was suited to me. Lots of short power climbs, 2 forced run-ups and it was fairly technical with some good flow as well.

The start of the race was probably one my best starts this season. I was sitting in the top 5 going into the first turn and pretty much right away 6 of us had a slight gap on the field. There was a really strong headwind along the power section so I knew I wanted to sit a few wheels back in the paceline to conserve energy. Going into second lap I moved up a few positions to sit on Chris from Pedalhead’s wheel, who was in the lead.

3rd lap in, I noticed Chris was starting to slow down trying to fight the headwind on the power section so I did a quick check to see our gap on the field and noticed the chase group was closing. Against my usual nature and probably a bit of surprise to many people, I decided to attack and push the pace a little bit. I was now leading the paceline and trying to fight the strong headwind but I figured I would only lead for a little bit and drop back a few spots on the next power section. We went through a technical turn and then I heard Chris drop an f-bomb behind me so I knew that he had slipped out and bailed. I attacked again to get a gap on the field as I knew he had gone down in tight section and was holding up the chase group. I was now by myself with the whole field trying to chase me down going into the next power section.

Every lap I could barely hear Craig yelling my time gap on the field while I ran up the run-ups and Keith yelling at me that I was getting away from the chase group, but I was just trying to push through all the pain in my legs and keep going as hard as I could. It was pretty crazy trying to focus on the race, it was my first time ever being in the lead and having a significant gap on the field. I was now focusing on riding the rest of the race clean and to keep going hard even though everything hurt. There was even a point where I almost ran into a lapped rider as I got tunnel vision trying to concentrate on my lines.
On my last lap as I neared the finish line, I knew I had it…in my last 100 meters I started thinking about my victory salute. There was a bump at the finish line so I didn’t want to do any crazy stuff and then bail so I decided to go conservative with the one arm fist pump as I crossed the finish line for my first ever win.

Result: 1st

After I crossed the finish line I remember asking Shawna “Did I win?”...hahaha...cyclocross can make you delirious. During the race when I was in front, I never once looked back and I don’t even remember looking at the lap counter…I just listened for the final lap bell. It seemed like all the work and all the challenges throughout the season had just paid off. Talk to most bike racers and they’ll tell you how rare winning a race is, so I have to admit it felt amazing to stand up on the top step of the podium for the first time. The best part of my race was all the support I got from my friends during and after my race and I think that’s what really made my race what it was. I also got my upgrade to the Expert category which was my top goal for this race season.

Handlebar camera video of the first lap: (I think it's from a Velocity rider...not sure who though). I'm the rider directly in front (527).

Oval Crash

2010-10-03T22:00:00.003-06:00

The next day we raced on pretty much the same course but with the pump track removed as it had to be opened for the downhill mountain bikers. To make the course a little longer there were a few modifications to the course. The result was a more technical course with lots of sharp, leg shredding power climbs.

I was back to racing my usual Sport category, although a little tired from racing the night before but most of us were in the same boat. I was really aiming to try and make podium this race but a lot of the top guys had come out so it was going to be another hard battle. I once again started right up at the front of the pack for the start.

The start was pretty fast and it was all the usual suspects in the top 10. Personally I like having the long climb to start off the race, it really strings things out pretty quickly and the start isn’t nearly as chaotic. My legs were feeling pretty good and I felt that the course really suited me. There were parts of the course that threw me off because I was so used to the course the day before…so some of the minor changes kept catching me off-guard despite having done a few practice laps.

We got to the sand pit and I decided I would try to ride it the first few laps to keep in the top group. I went behind another rider so I could follow his line through but he lost a lot of momentum and stopped right in front of me. I started to dismount from my bike but a rider had gone really hot into the pit and couldn’t slow down in time so he ended up running right into my bike. I managed to untangle my bike and started running but when I remounted and tried to pedal, I found out my chain had come off from the crash. I fumbled it back on as I was a little flustered having lost about 10 positions. I remounted and now came the hard task of trying to focus to getting back in the race.

I was pretty mad at this point as I was really hoping to get podium in this race and I was now near the back. But it was first lap so I tried not to panic, ride consistently and try to ride the rest of the race clean. I don’t know what it is, but I entered into a zone where I was just concentrating purely on my race and trying to ride cleanly. I was starting to pull people back in by my third lap and that just fueled me to keep going hard. Lap 4 I had caught up to Brent and was now trying to catch up to Thomas. The last lap, I managed to catch up to Thomas and was trying to hang on to his wheel.

After the sand pit we went into the technical section of the course when Thomas lost grip in his back wheel and bailed. I just managed to ride around him, but he was up running with his bike as I was trying to pedal up the hill. He remounted just as I cleared the hill, but I was lucky to have a little more momentum and managed to gap him slightly going into the final stretch of the climb to the finish.

As I climbed I could see Mark in front of me. 50 meters from the finish, I attacked and sprinted for the finish to beat him by 1 second.

Result: 5th

I was completely surprised by my result….even more than usual, I was glad I was able to re-focus after having a bad first lap. I rode a clean race from that point forward and managed to finish up in the prizing again. Mark got me by one second at the Hop N’ Hurl so it was pretty funny that I beat him by the same margin this time. This was also one the reason I love bike racing, after the race Mark and I shook hands and had a great time talking about our neck-to-neck battles in the last couple races.

Photo Credits: Trevor Jensen and Rod Loewen

Dark Knight Year 3

2010-10-02T22:51:00.000-06:00

This race almost didn’t happen. During the crits there were rumors that this race would be cancelled as we were told that we were not welcome back at the University…but the Cyclemeisters team managed to find a new venue on time and saved the race.

The race was a go ahead at COP and it looked to be an even better course than the one at the U of C. Knowing the Cyclemeisters, this event was guaranteed to be pretty awesome and probably even better than previous years. The main highlights of the course were the inclusion of a downhill pumptrack and “high-Speed” barriers.

Battling for position with Judd Fraser

This year I decided to race the B category, because apparently all the cool kids were doing it and I wanted to challenge myself as I was really aiming to make Expert this year. Our category was the largest one with 60 racers signed up so it was going to be chaos once again…but that what makes ‘cross so awesome. Before our race, there was already huge crowd of spectators gathered on the hill where most of the action was taking place.

We had a large contigent of 'Goats show up to the race which was really awesome. Derek was the first to go in the C category and was able to hold onto 3rd. In the B category it was me, Tim, Pat and Ed. In the A category was Devin and Craig. And of course, Ken, on photo duty.

Tim rocking the stealth kit

I took a spot near the front for the start as I wanted to be in a good position as it started off with a fairly long hill climb and I didn’t want to get stuck behind a huge line of riders. The race started and we all went out pretty hard up the hill, but had to file up in order to go on the skinny wooden bridge and then onto the bit of single track on the way down to the pump track. The pump track was super fun but it was hard trying to keep the bike from grabbing air and right at the bottom was a sharp 180 turn on gravel, which meant you almost had to come to a dead stop to make it without bailing.

Devin getting ready to hop the barriers

I rode most of the race on the wheel of Pepper Harlton, who was last years Provincial Champion and member of the Canadian National team. She was racing in her costume, which looked pretty uncomfortable given the unusually warm weather so I’m sure she wasn’t going as fast as she could have been. Pepper is a fantastic technical bike handler and it was fun to see how she took the lines as she weaved through the course in the dark.

Ed running the sand pit

Result: 10th

I managed to finish in the prizes but more importantly I finished about a minutes behind Tim who took 6th and Pat who was given'r to avoid getting chicked by Katy Curtis (he still did) for 3rd. It was great to have 3 of us place in the top ten and I was really glad to not only not get lapped but finish right up there with the people I hope to be racing with soon.

In the A category Devin and Craig gabbed 4th and 5th respectively.

Climbing up to the pump track

I liked this course a little more than the U of C course and was able to ride the sand pit probably half the time. It was pretty technical, had 2 sustained climbs, flowy downhill sections and it felt like a pretty fast course. The pump track was a little sketch in the dark but overall it was a great night of racing. The crowd was amazing and most people stuck around all the way to the end. There were lots of families and so much cowbell...it was awesome.

Huge props to Cyclemeisters for putting on another fantastic event. I already can't wait until next year.

All photos: Ken Hurd
Flickr Photo Set

School of Cross

2010-09-25T15:05:00.000-06:00

Finally it's ‘cross season…and it seems like it’s been far too long. So far it’s been a pretty tough start to the season with 2 midweek CX races cancelled due to rain and the Bow 80 cancelled due to inclement weather. It had been almost a month since my last ABA race and I now really pretty anxious for ‘cross to start up. I hadn’t done this series of races last year so I decided it would be worth the drive up to Edmonton to get a couple races under my belt before the Dark Knight and Oval ‘cross races.

After meeting up with my buddy Simon and his wife for breakfast buffet at our hotel, we headed down to the venue that would be hosting both races. We got to the race site and it was actually really warm outside so the course was probably going to be pretty dry and fast. I went to sign in and I was fairly surprised to see I was going into the race ranked 3rd out of the registered racers based on my results from ‘09. After getting ready, we both went out for a couple warm up laps.

The course had a road start, which went into a criterium like sharp turn then onto the grass portion. The first section was fairly technical with some really high barriers (I read somewhere they were actually 6cm too high). The next section was totally sketch with a deep grass off camber into a really steep descent into a small forest. After climbing out of the forest, it was another off-camber section into a set of man-made stairs. The next section was fairly windy with short power sections and a couple power climbs. Then came the double sand pit…both of which were completely unrideable with a short section of pavement separating the sand pits.

Stappy running the sand pit

After doing another warm-up lap, I went to what I thought was the start line. I waited for a couple minutes with another ride wondering where everyone was…but then Simon started calling me to the right start line. Late again…d’oh. I got to the real start line and had to seed myself somewhere mid-pack. After some instructions and a quick about some of the technical sections of the course we were off.

The race started which a paved section which was fairly fast, but slowed down as we all had to try and make the sharp right turn with a little bit of gravel so the group filed out pretty quickly. As we negotiated the first lap, Simon and I were pretty much calling “on your left, inside, outside” as we tried to move our way up the field. I was trying to move up as quickly as possible as getting stuck behind slower riders through more technical sections can really break your race if the leaders can gap the main field. As the race progressed I tried not to panic about my bad start and just tried to ride consistently. I knew I was moving up the field but still could not tell how many riders were in front of me.

Second last lap, my friend Masa calls out to me that I was only 40 seconds behind the leader so now I started to put on a little more pressure to try and close the gap. I had gotten a cramp on the second lap in my stomach from eating breakfast late so I was also battling through the pain while trying to keep riding hard.

Last lap I was starting to lap riders on the course but still wasn’t sure if I was even in the top 10. It seemed like there were still quite a few riders in front of me so I kept going hard…in fact midway through my last lap my breakfast started to creeping its way back up….which is pretty much a sure sign I was going all out.

I crossed the finish, completely exhausted and surprisingly there were only a few guys there and they were all telling me I had done awesome in the race and I had finished in the top 5. I talked for a bit with the top 3 riders but headed out to do a recovery spin as my heart rate was still pretty maxed and my stomach cramp was really painful. After spinning around and getting back to the race site, I got changed and went to watch the Expert race.

Result: 4th

My best racing result so far (I have finally broken the 5th place barrier) and I was actually really surprised that I finished that high up. I was slightly worried about being burned out for ‘cross going into this weekend as I had been riding, racing and training way more than last year. It was great to see that it all paid off and I was keeping up with the race leaders now.

Photo: Bill Quinney

Hop N’ Hurl

2010-09-25T02:52:00.000-06:00

Today the race was same ‘cross time, same ‘cross place…only backwards with a few modifications.

I was feeling pretty confident going into the race with my results from the previous day. I had a good idea of whose wheel I should try grab and stay on. Most of the guys that had raced the day before were back again for more pain and suffering.

After doing a few warm-up laps and chatting with a bunch of people I got to the proper start line this time but was once again a little too late. I seeded myself in the middle of the pack and then all the guys told me to move myself up to the front, which felt really awesome. After joking around a little bit as staging had started a little early the commissaire announced that there would be call-ups for the top 5 riders based on the previous day’s results. Sweet…I got my first call-up!

The race started and Mark Jung went out for the hole shot on the road part. Right away I grabbed onto his wheel and decided I would sit on him for the first laps as he did really well the previous day and together we might be able to gap the field. Finishing up the lap I was going into the right nad turn on the road when my back tire slid out on a bit of gravel. I was just barely able to keep the bike upright but had to remind myself to corner a little wider and slower due to the gravel on subsequent laps.

After a lap it looked like we had a good group of 5 and developing a good gap on the rest of the field. Second lap in Brian Loewen went on the attack. Mark and I decided to let him go as it was still early in the race. Then Chris Hubrick and a Pedalhead rider went on the attack.

2 laps to go I pulled ahead of Mark and was trying as hard as I could to gap him but he stayed on my wheel and would never let me get to far ahead. During the last lap, Mark attacked and flew off his bike into the sand pit. I was behind a lapped rider so I wasn’t able to respond. I pushed hard to try and catch up to Mark but wasn’t able to get the lead. Halfway through the last lap we had Chris in our sights and we were trying to catch him but it seemed neither of us could close the gap.

Mark sprinted out onto the final straight and I tried to out sprint him on the road but slowed down through the sharp turn on the road as I didn’t want to slide out and crash.

Result: 5th

Today’s race was really good. Our group of the top 6 riders had a wicked battle the entire race with lots of position changes and plenty of attacks and counter-attacks. It felt awesome to have another clean race and finish up in the lead group again.

Photo Credits: Mark Kay

Speed Theory Speedfest Crit

2010-08-21T23:35:00.000-06:00

Seems to be getting harder to write in any blog updates right now. It’s combination of more time spent training and I don’t really feel like it..so this will be a pretty short recap.

This was going to be my last road race of the season. As was going to do the Bow 80, I decided to just do the crit to try and get enough points to upgrade. The race was in downtown Calgary by Eau Claire Market and I’m sure getting the city to buy into this was no easy feat. The course was pancake flat with 2 long straightaways and shorter than any other crit course I had done. After walking the course during one of my lunch hours, I knew right away it would be a really fast race.

After getting everything ready, watching the kids race and running a bunch of laps, I got to the start line…but apparently I got there a little too late and had to seed myself in the second row. Because of issues with light, we had our race reduced from 35min + 3 laps (roughly about 40 laps) to 20 laps….so it was going to be really fast.

The first lap started a little slower then as we had a pretty big group but it soon settled into a double file peloton. I was near the back on the first lap but it we were on closed roads with lots of room to move. As always whenever a gap was starting to open up I went around the packs to bridge up to the faster group.

With about ten laps remaining there was a group of two riders that had gone off the front and were about a half lap ahead of the rest of the group. With 7 laps remaining and a 20 second lead on us, Andrew launched the first attempt to bridge. No one followed him and I missed his attack so he ended coming back to the pack. 6 laps remaining and the MCs said there was a 9 second lead on the peloton. This is where I decided to do a suicide attack to try and reel the riders back in. I pulled out and went to the front of the pack and went off the front to see who would a follow. A couple riders got on my wheel to help me bridge but the rest of the peloton didn’t seem interested in helping us.

4 laps to go we managed to reel in the 2 riders that were off the front and we were a pretty big pack again. As we rounded into the final straight I tried to get myself in good position for the last sprint. Everyone started going right after corner 4 but I was trying to time it so I could pass the people that went too early. There were riders spread out all across the road and I wasn't able to sprint effectively past all the riders. I ended up finishing with the main pack but I knew right away I had not placed in the top 7 which is what I was aiming for in this race. I burned my last match at the front trying to bridge and just didn’t have enough for the final sprint.

Result: 12th

I finished up in a group off 22 riders so it was pretty much a toss up for my placing. I still had a really good race and was able to reel back in the two riders off the front who were almost guaranteed 1st and 2nd place. Andrew was able to time his sprint right for second which bumped him up to Cat 4 but I’m sure I’ll be able to get my remaining points next season.

*Photo credits to all the photgraphers who posted links up on the Speed Theory blog.

Alberta Road Provincials

2010-08-15T14:14:00.000-06:00

I should really take a break.

I really wasn't going to do this race. I wanted to do the Speed Theory stage race to finish off my road season and then start resting up for the Bow 80 and 'cross. I said over and over…I wasn’t going to do road provincials…but I was so close to an upgrade to Cat 4.

I checked the weather forecast everyday…wishing for rain or bad weather to keep me from wanting to do this race…but alas, the forecast settled on being sunny in the mid-20s with no rain…probably the nicest day we’ve had all year so far. Also all the people I normally train with were helping out with the race so I figured this would be a good way to get a good training ride in.

The race was up and down Horse Creek road near Cochrane. I had pre-ridden the north half of the course last year and but had decided to skip the race in order to do the Speed Theory stage race the following week. The course is a fairly selective course with one feature that usually breaks the field apart…a 1km 6% average climb at the halfway mark.

The race started fairly neutral as we were pretty much downhill for the first 11km to the first turn around. At each turn around there was a fairly tight 180 that need to be negotiated…usually not an issue but with a pack trying to take the turn 3 wide…it made for some interesting turnarounds…pretty amazed there were no crashes…although more than a few people got pushed into the ditch.

After the turnaround, the pace stayed fairly neutral up the false flat with no major attacks or surges within the pack. Though there were only about 30 riders in the race it was still fairly hard to move up in the peloton as the pack pretty much took up the entire lane. My first chance came when we approach the first power climb. There was a slight gap developing in the pack so I made my move and bridged up to the lead pack. I wanted to be at the front of the peloton so that I wouldn’t get dropped on the descent on the big hill. As we neared the top of the hill, I moved to the very front of the peloton and went down the hill first. I knew couldn’t go down as fast as most people despite being in full tuck position and not using my brakes I cringed a little after seeing a few close calls with guys weaving back and forth across the road going 70+ km/h. At the bottom of the hill I was near the back of the pack again…but I wasn’t too worried about it.

We got to the north turnaround and in the distance I could see the hill we had just descended looming ahead like a giant wall. We got to the big climb and the pack broke apart almost instantly. I switched into my little ring and pretty spent the entire hill dodging riders scattered cross the road while just spinning to conserve energy. Surprisingly enough there more than a few moments where I had to soft pedal behind a rider to look for a way around and then stand up and keep hammering. I crested the hill and latched onto the back of about 15 riders. I checked behind me and could not see any other riders…so it looked like we had a split in the pack…it was time to hammer. I called out that we needed to form a pace line and take short pulls so we could drop the other riders. A couple riders heard me and rode up to the front of the pack to tell the other guys in the font to start taking short pulls. After not seeing any movement on the front, I rode up to the front of the paceline and did a quick pull and pulled off to get the paceline going, another rider pulled through and did the same…then the next rider pulled though and just sat there which effectively ended our attempt to have a smooth rotating fast pace line.

As we got down to the last 10km of the race, a bunch of riders flew by me and then I realized that the chase pack had caught us and we were a big group of about 20 riders again. They had worked together and caught back…which is something our group should have never let happen with 15 riders...but lesson learned.

After the south turn it looked like everyone was weary of being on the front as we went up the false flat. I did another turn on the front but as it seemed that the riders would not let me pull off. Even after I waved for the riders to pull though and I moved off to the side, the whole pack moved with me as I moved so I ended up having to slow the pace down so that I could get back in the draft again.

When we got to the final turn I was positioned in the front into the last 2km stretch. It was an uphill finish so I was trying to conserve energy so that I could sprint a little later than usual because of the hill. I ended up on the very front of the pack as we neared the hill but I didn’t want to go full out just yet and have other riders sit on my wheel. Suddenly the pack surged around me and I was at the back of about 15 riders. I let a gap develop a bit as I looked for a way around the pack while in my drops to start my sprint. All of a sudden I see a bike literally go backwards, the sound of metal on pavement and a riders head hit the pavement hard right in front of me…not again.

I knew no one was behind so I just managed to slam on my brakes, swing wide and barely missed hitting the rider as he rolled on the ground. I sprinted hard to catch up to the group and somehow managed to pass a bunch of riders going into the finish.

Result: 9th
I was fairly happy with how my race went. I still managed to finish in the points despite having to slow down during a sprint to avoid a crash and for the most part I felt really good the entire race.

My teammate managed to grab 4th in the sprint so it was a pretty good day for our team with two top 10 finishes.

Tour De Bowness

2010-08-10T22:11:00.007-06:00

August long weekend had finally arrived. For most people this is a time for camping and to enjoy the last month or so of summer. For roadies in Alberta, it's time to throw down at the annual Tour De Bowness stage race. This is a great wekend racing event that is organized by Bow Cycle and the Niklas Group which includes a road race, hill climb time trial and criterium around the Bow Cycle shop.

A year ago I remember doing this race just to try out road racing and of course, participate in one the biggest cycling events of the year. Looking back on my first year of racing last year, I didn’t really know how to train properly for an event like this and I also didn’t really fully understand race tactics so things didn’t go as well as planned. Although I did fairly well in the hill climb, I really suffered in the road race and then I got lapped in the crit.

I trained most of July for this event and was pretty focused on doing better than last year. This was also going to be my first ABA road race since my crash in Pigeon Lake so I was a little nervous about getting back into a pack again...but I knew all the courses really well and had a much better idea of where attacks and surges would take place which really goes a long in keeping safe and having a good race.

Road Race:

The first event was the road race which took place on Saturday morning at the Bears Paw golf course just outside of Calgary. This course is a pretty difficult one as the distance is shorter than most road races which makes for a much faster race and it is really rolly with no real chance to rest. The plan was pretty simple for this one…stay in with the main pack on the big climb at the end of each lap. This is where I had lost the pack last year so I knew that all the surges and attacks would be here in order to break the field up.

My only issue with this course is the descent on the back side of the course which usually rubber bands at the bottom as people slow down to take the hard right turn. Every lap I was able to make up the places I lost on the descent, on the climb back up to the start/finish. I was able to stay in every time the pack surged on the hill and didn’t try to chase down every suicide breakaways. I did a couple short pulls at the front just to keep in with the lead group but for the most part positioned myself to conserve energy for the climb. Around the 5th or 6th lap we had dropped half the field but the lead pack kept pushing the pace. As we came around for the last lap the pace went up considerably. Around lap 7, there were only about 15 of us left in the main pack with a start group of around 50. On the last lap, we got to the hill and I went hard as I could to try and gap anyone that could be a threat on the final sprint. This time I grabbed onto a wheel as soon as I saw someone going faster and I knew where I wanted to start my sprint. As we neared the finish line, I sprinted hard for the finish line and was able to pass a few more people.

Result: 5th

After a lot of confusion over the results I got confirmation the next day I had placed 5th so I was now in the running for the Omnium.

Hill Climb:

The second event of the day was the hill climb which was the same course as last year. My goal this year was to try and beat my time from last year which was 4:33min.

The event was in the evening so it was a pretty long break between races. My heat was with 2 guys that I normally race with on Tuesday nights so I was hoping that would they would help me push myself for a better time this year. After spinning for a while on my trainer in the parking lot, chatting with friends and stripping all the unnecessary parts off my road bike, I went over to the start area to get weighed in and focus. After having some good laughs at the start line, it only took the 15 second countdown for us to settle down and focus. Right out of the gate I sprinted out hard in my drops to try and hit a good speed before the pain started. I knew my pain threshold was quite a bit higher than the previous year and due to some testing on a CompuTrainer I knew how long I could stay at certain thresholds.

I had a plan of where I wanted to be...but each person telling me to keep going hard, I kept pushing harder. At turn 3 I looked back and I couldn’t even see the other guys in my heat…so now I just had to keep pace through the constant pain in my legs. This time I remembered where the turns were but by turn 6, I could barely increase my speed anymore as my legs were just burning from the lactic acid buildup. As I closed in on the finish line, I had just enough resolve to stand up and just hammer for the finish line.

Result: 6th Time: 4:21 (12 seconds faster than last year).

Provincial Criterium:

Finally the big day had arrived, the infamous technical crit around the Bow Cycle shop. This was the event I was really training hard for as I got dropped last year 15 minutes in, lapped with 4 laps to go and got pulled out of the race. This year my goal was to try and finish with the main pack and stay in for the final sprint.

This year I ran a few laps on the course after warming up on my trainer to prevent me from having another bad start like at the Velocity crit. Also during the race staging, I managed to sneak my way right up to the front right on the start line. This year we didn’t get a neutral lap so as soon as the race started it was pretty much full-on gas. This year I was a little less nervous about my bike on the bumpy Bowness roads and had done way sketchier races on my road bike (Prairie-Roubaix race). Around the third lap there was crash involving my friends Trevor from Bici and Archie from Deadgoat. I caught a glimpse of Trevor going into the barrier out of the corner of my eye…which kind of unnerved me…but I tried not think about it and just kept hammering. With 10 laps to go, I decided to do a slight attack….not for a prime or anything…just to see if could get to the front and out of the pack of sketchy riders around me (and for a photo op). I felt really good this year with no cramps and my legs actually cooperating me with me on the back rise. When the last lap came around…it was fast. I went hard up the rise so I could have a good position on the chicane and then set myself up for the final sprint. As we came around the last corner, I could see the race leaders so I shifted and drafted another rider to set up my sprint. As soon as I close in to 200 meters, I ducked out and sprinted as hard as I could, passing a bunch of riders in the process. As I neared the finish line, I finally did a bike throw and I could count only four people who had crossed the line just a split second before me.

Result: 5th

After the race, I checked in with my teammate Archie who was OK but a little bruised and Trevor who had hit his hip pretty hard. Not too sure what happened during the race but it was unfortunate that they both had a pretty short race.

Omnium Result: ~~3rd~~ 5th

Well after a long weekend of racing I placed on the podium for the road race, crit and omnium (overall points result). Originally, I was placed 3rd overall in the Omnium at the awards ceremony but that was later changed to 5th as some results were messed up and corrected the next day. Still it felt awesome to finally get on the podium and it was a pretty awesome weekend for me, having had a completely different race experience from the year before. My parents had missed the races but I was able to get them from the airport and back in time to watch me stand on the podium for the first time.

I’m really glad I was able to do what I wanted to do stage race and really improve on last year’s results. After having so many results being just shy of the top 8 and not having acquired a single upgrade point in almost 2 years of racing, it was pretty awesome to get 3 top 8 finishes in a row.

I didn't get to watch very many of the other races as I was running around doing errands and resting. I did watch the entire Cat 1/2 crit and it was awesome. It was a really exciting race with plenty of attacks, a huge breakaway and a surprise winner. I love watching the Cat 1/2 crit as you always see a ton of tactics being used and it's also a surprise who pulls it out for the win.

Many thanks to all the people who cheered me on during the race and all the people who came up to me after my race, it is always very much appreciated. Also a big thanks to Bow Cycle, the Niklas Group and all the volunteers for helping to put on this great event.

Photos credit: Brent Topilko

http://kayphoto.smugmug.com/event/tourdebowness2010

Crit: http://www.canadianexposures.com/gallery/johnrajic/201/0

Road Race: http://www.canadianexposures.com/gallery/johnrajic/203/0

Awards: http://www.canadianexposures.com/gallery/johnrajic/204/0

Suffer Spring Summer Solstice

2010-06-20T22:56:00.000-06:00

I know it's pretty surprising but this was going to be my first ABA XC race for the year, all my other starts were either marathon races or road races. Despite not having my road rash fully healed and still having bandages on my arms...I needed to get back out and race again. I had originally planned on racing the crit in Banff the day before...but since I hadn't done a road race or big group ride since my crash, I decided against it as I stil didn't feel fully comfortable racing in a pack at high speeds especially on a notoriously sketchy course.

As I had been caught in a hail storm during the pre-ride the day before...I expected the course to be pretty muddy...but it was really nice outside and the course usually dries up pretty fast so I wasn't too worried about the course conditions. What really worried me, were the guys I was going to be racing against. All these guys had done several of the ABA XC races and all of them had shown huge gains over last year. Major threats for me were the usual culprits, Ken, Mark and Sam. I had yet to beat Ken in a race and I knew that he is riding really strong this year (and I called him out at the end of the season last year...haha). Mark is an awesome technical rider and always does well in technical dowhill courses. Sam and I have always finished really close in results last year and he looked to be riding really well this year.

Needless to say, I was a lot more nervous then I may have let on at the start of the race, although I do find myself a little more relaxed at starts then I used to be...but I was surrounded by all these fast guys...so I seeded myself right up at the front in the hopes of being able to keep up.

Don't let the smile fool you - I'm getting ready to SUFFER!

The race started and I went out hard...but tried to reel it in a bit as I knew that the first climb was relentless and a major risk on this course is going out too hard and then blowing up on the climb. I found Ken's wheel pretty quickly and kept him in my sights to keep a good pace. I gained a few spots on the initial climb where I was able to pass Sam and Sheldon. We did a descent into a pool of mud and because I couldn't remember the line (and coming out the race clean with a clean bike was pretty much done with), I decided to plow straight throught to gain a couple spots. My front wheel pretty much disappeared into the mud and so I had to put my foot down to try and get my bike out. My leg went straight down into the mud and I was in knee deep mud struggling to push my bike out. Luckily the pool of mud was before the creek crossing which was pretty deep too...so I was able to wash off a lot of the mud from my bike (and shoes). Now came the first big climb...and I was now starting to pass guys that had blown up or didn't have the legs ready for the climb. I knew I had made my way into the top 5 and could see the race leaders in front of me. I had passed both Ken and Mark who both told me to keep givin' er which really helped me to keep pushing.

After grabbing onto a wheel, I winded through the single track climb (my favorite part of the course) and then sped along the connector to the second big climb. I power up the climb and was hanging onto the wheel of another rider (which turned out to be the guy in third place). I stayed with him until the first switchback descent which is where he, despite my best efforts, gapped me almost instantly. I rode within myself as I know that crashing can pretty much kill your race if you aren't confident in taking the decents fast. I couldn't hear any riders behind me so I just kept my own pace. There was one big climb remaining where I figured I could make up lost time.

Sulpher Spring Descent

Near the end of the switchback descents, my front wheel got caught in a rut and I bailed into the grass...the exact same place where I had bailed yesterday during the pre-ride. I was a pretty soft landing but the rider in 5th gained a place on me. I got up and pushed hard to close the gap before the first climb. During the one of the power climbs, I ended up passing him as he had dropped his chain. Then it was time for the 3rd and hardest climb.

Because of the rain the day before the climb was tackier then usual which made the first part of the climb a little bit easier. I zig-zagged my way up but took a bad line tat the steepest part and ended up having to dismount and run the last little bit. The rider who had passed me had caught up but I was slowly opening the gap on the climb. I could once again see the rider in 3rd so I tried to climb in a harder gear to try and close in on him but he got away from me again on the descent.

As I went down the final descent the rider behind me once again caught up and passed me...now I was just hoping to try and hold onto my position. After the descent it was time for the long flat single track to the finish line. I popped my chain into the big ring and hammered for the finish. I checked behind me and couldn't see a rider but that didn't mean I would let up. I crossed the finish line and was pretty happy about how the race went.

Result: 5th

My best rsult in a race so far. It seems that on a fitness level, I'm really feeling much stronger in races then last year and finally starting to feel all my hours of training come through. It was also a great day for my teammates as well with Mark, Ken and I all finishing up in the top 8.

Lyndon finishing up a true mountain bike race

Photo Credits: Carthy Chan, Earl Nolan, Ken Hurd

Pigeon Lake Road Race

2010-06-06T23:04:00.000-06:00

The day started out great and was I was feeling pretty good. Despite having a rough week at work, I was trying to forget about it all and try to have fun during the race. It was a super nice day outside and the wind seemed to be pretty calm. For once it wasn't so bad waiting aroudn for the start. When we got called to the start, I moved myself as far to the front as I could. Sometimes it feels like your starting position is one of the most critical things in racing…but sometimes it seems you have to prove yourself to self-seed yourself at the front. After a few instructions we all rolled out on a neutral start. As we rolled out of the parking lot I got cut off by a lot of riders so went pretty far back in the pack just getting out onto the road.

As we rolled down past the Start/Finish we followed the lead motorcycle until he signalled the race was on. The motorcycle didn’t seem to really know the course because he decided to go straight onto a gravel road…and caused a ton of confusion in the pack with some people turning and some people going straight. After finally getting the turn and the pack sorted out….the race was on. I was still pretty far back in the pack and there wasn’t much room for movement as the pack took up the entire lane of the road. Centre rule violation was extremely strict with several riders getting DQ’d during the race so it was pretty dicey to try and gain positions along the left side of the pack and on the right side there was gravel on the shoulder which made that pretty sketch as well.

The pack was pretty sketchy to be honest. There was a lot of slowing down, braking, tempo changes and almost no attacks. On the second major turn we finally had a decent chance to shake up the pack a little. I found on the left side of the pack and moved up to the front of the group. Then 5 of us formed a paceline and tried to accelerate away from the pack. A rider pulled through to do a pull and pretty much stopped pedalling. Right away our paceline was shut down and the pack absorbed us back in. We went through the next turn and I could see a climb in the distance, nothing too selective but probably a good chance to drop a few riders. I was up front and stayed with the lead group as we paced up the hill, all in our big rings. I felt pretty strong going up the hill and stayed to my game plan to not spend too much time at the front if I could prevent it.

Going into second lap, a few riders started passing me and I was getting worried about getting dropped so I looked back to see the size of the pack. It turns out that we dropped about half the riders on the hill so the pack was now a lot smaller…and I was still in the lead pack. Despite the smaller number, it was still almost impossible to get to the front and the pace was still all over the place. I don’t think I’ve braked so much in a road race! Every chance I got I would move up a little further in the pack so I would keep myself in position at the front. We went up the hill again and we all stayed together. I thought I would be able to gain get up to the front as the finish was on an uphill, but riders were all across the road so I had to soft pedal up the hill as there was no room to move. We got to the second last turn of the course where we turned off the loop to proceed towards the finish line. Now the pack was getting faster as we were all fighting for position. I went into my drops and started looking for a way to move up. I backed off a little to let the pack thin out a bit when all of sudden I hear the sound of screeching metal and I see a bike go up in the air. I slammed on my brakes but before I know it a rider is on the ground right in front of my bike. I try to look for an exit but I was going too fast and my wheels had locked up so I ended up running into the rider. I got thrown off my bike and soon as I was sliding/rolling on pavement. As I was lying ont he ground, I looked and watched another rider hit the same rider I just hit and go flying off his bike as well.

I got up off the gorund fairly quickly and did a quick mental check of my body. Everything appeared to be working but I could also sense a little bit a road rash. I looked around to see riders, bikes and waterbottles everywhere. I looked around for my bike which was thrown about 10 meters in front of me and did a quick check to se if it was all one piece. After I looked around and found both my waterbottles. I hopped on the bike and noticed the seat was twisted. I banged it back straight, got on yelled back that I was OK and TT'd for the finish line by myself. At this point I was less concerned about finishing the race then I was to try and get back to the community hall to get first aid. I had road rash down both my arms, knees and my hands had been cut up a little. As I crossed the finish line, I noticed my shorts and my jersey were ripped up pretty badly as well.

After the race, I was glad I was able to at least finish the race but not even sure why I even bothered. I felt bad for the guys that were pretty badly injured but I needed to get back to look after myself as I had blood everywhere and needed to get it treated ASAP. After getting medical attention, I was noticeably angry about the whole incident. We were only a few kms from the finish line and I was in the lead pack. I felt great and thought I had a good chance of placing well which completely changed in a split second. This was a pretty important race for me and it seemed like everything was going so well that it took a while for me to realize there was nothing I could do and it was just unfortunate circumstance.

Looking back, I think I'm actually pretty lucky. With the exception of my computer screen cracking on my computer and my seat ripping, there was virtually no damage to my bike. I had some pretty severe road rash on my arms and sore shoulder, but that's about it as far as injuries go. To my knowledge there were 7 guys involved in the crash. 2 guys had very serious injuries and there were quite a few wrecked bikes.

Here is a very well written race report by a a member of Team Fiera

http://fieraraceteam.wordpress.com/2010/06/08/pigeon-lake-rr-road-rash/

Hopefully Simmon has a speedy recovery and isn't deterred from racing again.

After going to the clinic and diagnosed with first and second degree burns, I decided to take a week off the bike to heal and get my mind back in the right zone again. The crash is by far one of the scariest things I have been involved during my time racing, I've been fortunate to have avoided these up until now...but the saying has always been that it's a "when" not an "if" and road racing especially in the aptly named "Crash 5" category.

Next major road event for me is the Tour de Bowness Stage Race which is just over a month away.

- Kyle

Giver-8-er

2010-06-04T18:43:00.001-06:00

I remember I mentioned in a blog entry last year that I couldn’t really dislike enduro events without trying them first. For reasons unknown, I’m actually starting to see the fun in them…maybe it has something to do with being a Deadgoat. I was originally going to do the race solo but then I talked to Justin and he seemed interested in trying the race so we signed up as a 2-man relay team instead as this was going to be more of a fun race for me now as my mountain biking focus seems to be more on enduro this year.

In the week leadin up to the event while helping the team with a little bit of course maintenance and riding the course a few times…it looked like we were going to have the best Giver-8-er conditions ever. Everything was dry and the trail was mint. The next week the forecast just seemed to get worse every day. It was near the end of May and it was raining, snowing and really cold….it felt like what March should have been.

The day before the race just seemed like a recipe for disaster. There was sleet in the morning and the course was extremely muddy. We were still determined to run the race as we were already past the deadline to call it off. Our decision was to eliminate a couple sections of the course as they were going to be either extremely dangerous or bogs. As the conditions seemed to get worse, I was really not looking forward to bringing out my Faze and risk having to replace my barely used drive train. I really wanted to race…but I didn’t think it was worth it to trash my race bike for what was supposed to be a fun race for me.

I now had a few concerns about the race. The first being my partner still wanting to race in the conditions and the second being which bike I wanted to ride. After watching a rider pre-ride the course on his single-speed mountain bike…I talked with a few people on my team and decided that now would probably be a good time to build up my single-speed frame. After finishing up helping the team with the course, I went home to start putting my bike together. After mounting the cranks and wheels, I brought it over to Tim who helped me finish up the build in just over an hour. I took it for a test ride around the block and it seemed good enough to attempt to race the next day.

The next day, conditions were cold but it had stopped raining and snowing for the most part. I brought both my 1X1 and my Prophet bikes with me…just in case I had a mechanical with the single-speed. I met up with Justin and we set up in the team feed zone. Justin started the race as I wasn’t sure about riding a single-speed with a whole ton of people on the course at the same time and I didn’t want to hold people up when I had to get off and walk. We decided to switch off every lap as it was pretty cold and it would give us shorter breaks in the pit. Just enough time to refuel and clean off the bikes.

Justin finished off his first lap and now it was time for my first real ride on a single-speed mountain bike. I took off from the team pits…as fast my legs and 32 X 20 setup would let me. I got to the first hill…and I was totally surprised that I could pedal up with no problems. I continued to climb until the fairly steep rocky climb into the first section of single-track. This is where I decided to dismount and walk as there was still a lot of course and I didn’t know how my legs would hold up. The course was muddy…but not as bad as it could have been. I had to walk a few sections as I would lose traction when I had to stand up to pedal up some steep sections but overall there were only like 3 sections that were really bad.

Each subsequent lap the course was actually drying out and I was also able to pedal up more stuff as I got used to the single-speed bike. Single-speeding was pretty different for me…it tooks me a couple laps to get into it…but honestly…it really take a lot of your mind when you’re not worried about your drivetrain seizing up or ghost shifting. The course is a pretty hard one with lots of short power climbs so it was actually pretty good training for single-speeding technique.

The only thing I didn’t really like about the single-speed is it’s really hard on your back and your arms. At the end of each lap my lower back would get really tight so I had to stretch in between laps. My arms weren’t really that sore…but they were getting a good workout from all the side-to-side motion needed to torque my bike up all the climbs.

As we approached the end of the day, Justin went out for his final lap and warned me that he wasn’t sure if he’d be back in time for me to do one more lap. He had quite a bit of time…but he was getting tired but he still went out to throw down one more lap. I was also pretty tired and was concerned about needing more time than usual to finish my lap. With an hour remaining in the race, Justin came screaming into the lap zone and left me an hour to get my last lap done. I took off on my last lap and was pretty tired but determined to get in a 5th lap so I could tie with my number of laps from the previous year. Even though I was tired, I rode way more stuff then my previous laps as the ground was now really tacky with only a couple really muddy spots. I finished off my laps with some time to go and I was officially completely exhausted.

Although I didn’t do more laps then I did the year before…I’m quite happy that I got 5 laps down with no crashes, mechanicals and my first time on a single-speed bike. Justin also did awesome for his first mountain bike race and also had no major crashes or mechanicals. Perhaps I’ll bring the single-speed out for more ride and try to get a more of a feel for it…my team seems to really enjoy them.

Big thanks to the team for putting on a great event and everyone showing up and soldiering on despite the conditions. Also a big thanks to Tim and Gerry for helping me put together my single-speed bike the day before the race. It was great pulling after every lap and everyone asking me how I like the single-speed. Although I wasn’t in love with it at the start of the race…I really liked how I could just ride it and not have to worry about anything. It was also sufficiently hard…no granny gear to fall back on…so it really tested my limit as to how hard I could push myself to make it up some pretty steep climbs that I really did not want to walk.

Salty Dog 6 Hour Enduro

2010-05-16T17:32:00.002-06:00

GPS Data: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/33876534

I don’t really know what pushed me into wanting to do this race. Most of my team talked about how fun it was last year and how this was one of their favorite events of the year. It’s hard to imagine how riding a bike for 6 hours straight can be fun…but there must be something to if it sold out last year. This year the rider limit was capped at 400 and after I heard how popular it was, I was registered way back in March….which was a good decision because it completely sold out the following week.

For me this wasn’t so much a race…but a test to my training plan this year. I was never a big fan of endure races and my last one did not really go the way I had planned, but my team seems to love them and about 90% of the team signed up to do this…so it was pretty much already guaranteed to be a great time.

The race was in Salmon Arm, BC so it was probably going to be better weather then what we were getting in Calgary and my first out –of-province race. This was also going to be my first solo endure race. I managed to hook up with Mark on my team to drive up and Pat also tagged along for the ride. We left right after work so arrived just a little after 10pm in Salmon Arm where we promptly retired to our rooms for the night as we had a pretty full day planned for Saturday.

Saturday we went to pick up race packages and pre-ride the course. We met up with Jeff Nielsen and crew again then looked around Skookum Cycle which was a pretty small bike shop. We went down to the course after and met up with three other Deadgoats for the pre-ride. Gerry led us up through the first single-track climb which was smooth, tight and twisty. After that we continued on to the second section on single-track which is where we apparently missed a turn because we wound up climbing a gravel road for what seemed like forever to the first section of downhill. The first downhill was pretty technical with some North Shore style stunts littered throughout…which were thankfully marked so you didn’t go off by accident and a couple steep rock garden sections. After the first downhill we ended up back on the road we just climbed and then we climbed up to the second single-track descent section. The second descent was a little less technical with a super flowy switch back section at the bottom. After crossing the road again there was a small climb before an ultra-fast double-track section. This was pretty straight near the top with a couple switchbacks thrown in and then a couple steep descents back into the feed zone/lap section.

After finishing up the lap we found we had missed approx. 4km so we went headed out for another lap to see where we made the wrong turn. In the second section it turns out we missed a hard right turn…which we almost missed again but I was able to call back Mark and waiting for Linda to catch up so she wouldn’t miss it either. The second climb was a really nice climb with a few steep sections and then after getting to the top we did a really nice flowy single-track descent. After the descent we got spit out a double-track climb which wasn’t really steep but it was pretty long. It was really exposed so I was concerned about having the climb this the next day with the sun and potentially running out of water. We got to the top and did the descent once again where I felt a little more comfortable now that I knew what to expect.

Race day a bunch of us who were staying at the hotel woke up fairly early and went for breakfast. The sky was overcast and it looked like it might rain…which was actually a pretty sing considering how hot the day before was. After breakfast we checked out of the hotel and headed down to the race site. IT was pretty crazy with over 600 riders running around preparing for the race and getting setup. After listening to the pre-race info and announcement we headed down the road...about a 1km away from the trailhead for the mass start.

I seeded myself in the second fastest group as the first part of the course was mostly climbing and I didn’t want to get stuck behind people walking their bikes. After a few moments the race started and we headed out in staggered groups towards the gravel road climb. The first climb of the race was mostly on gravel road as the single-track would have been way too congested and this was a good way of stringing out the riders. The gravel climb went all the way up the road to about the second climbing section where we were strung out pretty good. After going through the first section I felt a little stiff and the quads were burning a little…but I figured I just needed to warm-up a little. My heart rate was pretty high…pretty much at 90% so I knew I needed to get it under control and try to pace myself.

I found Ted in the pack of riders and rode with him for a little bit of the climb. Ted stayed behind me pretty much the entire way down the single-track which was good because he pushed me a little to take the sections faster as he almost ran into me a couple times. My plan was to change water bottles every lap and stretch every other lap. Near the bottom of the descent into the feed zone, my front tire washed out during a hard turn into a slight climb and I ended up having a minor spill, I picked myself up and moved my bike to avoid getting killed by the huge line of riders bombing down the section then rejoined in a slight gap. After finishing off the first lap, I checked my water bottle which was still about ¾ full so I flew by the feed station and went out for a second lap. My legs felt way better on the second lap and now I was able to ride within myself as things started to string out. MY goal for the day was to complete at least 6 laps so I would beat my Giver-8-er record from last year.

After lap 2, I stopped for a 5 minutes to change water bottles, stretch and eat a little bit of food. It was going to be a long day and I wanted to make sure I had enough energy to keep going. The downhill was really rough so it was taking its on my body. Every lap, my triceps were killing me, my fingers were getting numb and my back was tightening up. This was my second ride on my newly upgraded Faze and tubeless wheels so I was a little concerned how they would hold up. Every lap I checked my pressure but it seems fine though it was hard to notice the benefits of having a full suspension bike on the really bumpy.

Around lap 5, Lyndon asked me how I was holding up and I told him I was starting to get a little tired. He yelled back for me to keep going and I was still doing great. We helped push each other up the climb most of the race and it was great having a teammate to ride with and push me a little harder. After lap 5 I figured I had time to go out for another lap…so I took a short break and headed out again…I wanted to get in 6 laps. During lap 6, I caught up to Tim who was on his 7th lap and said he was feeling pretty tired…we was also debating pulling the plug when he finished up the lap. I was getting pretty cross-eyed but still felt I could keep going. I managed to keep a smile on the face up to now (I was out riding my bike on awesome single-track in BC…how could I not smile?) so I figured I wasn’t tired enough yet.

I finished up my 6th lap and got back to the feed zone with Tim. I asked how much time was remaining and someone told me about 1 hour and 15 minutes. Tim said he felt he could hammer out another lap and so asked me if I’d go out for another. I was tired but I figured I had enough energy to hammer out one more so I grabbed my last water full water bottle and set out to do my 7th lap with Tim pulling me along.

The climb felt hard but surprisingly my legs did not feel like jelly as I thought they would after having biked 65km and climbing a over 2km. I lost Tim on the first single-track descent but was able to catch up to him and Lyndon on the climb. Lyndon was also completing his 7th lap so I felt pretty good being able to hold pace with them as we climbed the double-track. I did the last descent with no issues and was a little slow but managed to push out one more smile for the course marshal as I did the final technical descent back to the feed zone.

I finished my race at exactly 6 hours so didn’t have time to do another lap although I felt that I had enough energy for an 8th lap if only I had another hour but I still felt awesome about the race. I didn’t have any major crashes…and the one I did have was so minor it probably shouldn’t even count. I felt I got a little better technically and it was a true show of winter training. I never thought last year I’d be able to do a 6 hour endure…let alone hammer roughly 73km out on a mountain bike.

Result: 29/84 in my age category

This was by far one of my better mountain bike races. I felt great during the entire race and my bike worked flawlessly. The tubeless held up and really helped me during many of the technical climbs. I cleaned all the sections and even landed a drop that I took by accident. I finished up in results close to my teammates so that felt great as well. This race wasn’t really about results but rather having fun and seeing where my endurance was at. I signed up for the Bow80 this year so wanted to make sure I would have the fitness to finish it.

Velocity Stage Race: Day 2 – Stage 3 – Road Race

2010-05-02T22:50:00.001-06:00

Today the race was going to be back in Fort Saskatchewan. It started a little bit later than usual so we got to get in some extra sleep. My legs felt OK but now I was trying to steer my focus away from my how my crit went the day before. I had to remind myself that it’s only the first race of the season and races don’t always go your way.

My category was set for 3 X 24KM laps on a mostly flat road which was good for the first road race of the season. It wasn’t really the distance that worried me this time around…but rather the huge number of riders in my category, many of which had no road racing experience. As I looked around, all the teams were bunched together, discussing some sort of strategy for the race. I was the only member of my team at the race so I just chatted with a few other lonely riders and listened in on a couple of other teams strategies.

Finally after standing around for about 20 minutes, we had a neutral rollout to the start/finish line. I was at the front and was in the right gear this time so managed to have a really good spot for the start of the race. As the lead car pulled off to indicate the race was on, right out of the gate there was an attack by the ERTC team then a Juventus junior tried bridge up. Because the race had just started we decided to let them go. A few kilometers into the race, we started to reel back in the ERTC/Juventus riders one by one. There was one significant attack by the a few Juventus guys but they would only stay away for a few kilometers and slowly get reeled in…the pack pretty much decided that we weren’t going to chase down anyone just yet.

As we entered into the second lap, I was still more or less at the front. I wouls drop back a few places every once in a while by would sooner or later find myself way up at the front again.The rest of the lap pretty much flowed the same as the last lap…lots of tempo changes and I was doing more work at the front then I probably should have been doing. On the straight before the last turn, I came pretty close to causing a crash. I was sitting on a guys wheel and his tempo was all over the place. To avoid running into his back wheel I had to swerve a few times which almost caused the riders behind me to run into my back wheel. Someone yelled my number…so I pulled through to try and find a better wheel to follow.

Third lap things started to heat up a little. An ERTC guy attacked just before…or even into the feed zone but no one followed. I was still near the front and getting really worried that I was started to burn myself out and would be tired to sprint. After we went around turn one, the guys from Juventus I had spent a good amount of time pulling with said he was tired of doing all the work and was going to slow the pace down. As we went over a slight rise…I could see why…off in the distance I could see 3 Juventus riders off in the distance ahead of the lone ERTC member. They had a made a break earlier on and their teammates was blocking. I was actually quite surprised to see some sort of strategy at work in a cat 5 race. A lot of people didn’t even know about the breakaway so no was willing to come up to the front and push the pace a little harder.

We got to the second last turn where I heard the screeching of metal and saw the pack split up. There was a crash at the front of the pack so everyone was swerving to avoid running over the fallen riders. I slammed on my brakes and veered off to the right as I was about to hit another rider. My only exit was a gravel ditch on the right side of the highway. I rode in the ditch and then alongside the highway for about 50 meters or so with the main pack to my left, then I did a quick bunny hop back onto the pavement and rejoined the pack. That was the first crash I had ever seen in a road race so I’m glad I was able to react and get back in the race. I got back to my position at the front and prepared for a pack sprint. About 4 kilometers away from the start finish I could see a Juventus rider up ahead so I decided to launch a solo attack so I wouldn’t be caught in a bunch sprint. I tagged Mark on the shoulder but he didn’t get my sign so I went out ahead of the pack by myself. I looked back an a couple riders had grabbed my wheel so my attack had been shut down. As we caught up to the Juventus rider…he looked totally spent. He was soft pedaling and could not go anymore…he had blown up while in the breakaway group.

We went around the last turn and it was onto the final stretch. The pace really picked up and things were starting to get a little sketch. I was fully conscious of the center line rule so was trying to keep my pace while avoiding following any wheels. I got stuck in the middle of the pack with no escape root so I just sprinted as hard as I could…I pushed hard but it seemed like I had burned my match when I tried my attack but as we got closer to the line people started blowing up so I had gained few positions. The sprint was really sketch with so many guys in the bunch but as I crossed the finish line I was sure I had placed in the top 20…so I was pretty happy about that.

Result: 10/51

A top 10 result to start of off the season really pushed my confidence up. I’m glad I was able to place this well because I was really wondering where all my training had gone after the previous days…but it seems I’m feeling a lot stronger in my races then last year. I stayed with the pack the entire way, mostly at the front and was in the pack sprint.

Velocity Stage Race: Day 1 - Stage 2 - Criterium

2010-05-01T23:32:00.000-06:00

This was the first time I've ever done two races in a day so wasn't sure how my legs should be feeling. Thankfully the time trial was a really short one so recovery wasn't too much of an issue. Since this crit was the first one of the season I was glad it was a little shorter than the normal for our category.

The course was held at the Alberta Research Park in south Edmonton and looked like it was going to be a fairly technical course with plenty of turns. I noticed that the TT time had been posted so I rode over to take a look before I pre-rode the course. My result wasn’t as great as I would have liked it to be…but I wasn’t too hung up on it...it was my first TT ever and I had gone out as hard as I could.
Then I decided to do a few laps of the course to scout lines and such. The course was a really nice course with lots of turns and narrow sections in the first half. The second half was a long curving road right into a headwind then into a fairly long straightway to the Start/Finish line.
After a few laps on the course, I got out the trainer to spin the legs a little bit while the juniors raced. The legs were still feeling pretty good despite the hard effort I had done in the morning. After the junior race finished up I quickly changed wheels to my race set and walked over to the Start/Finish so I could start in a good place. I managed to get into the second row at the front which was pretty good so I could try to sit in for a bit and then see where I’m at.

I was fairly relaxed at the start and not too worried about how the crit would go, which was probably my biggest mistake. Really the only thing in my mind was to try to stay with the main pack and not get dropped. The race started and then it hit me...I was in my hardest gear when I switched wheel sets and forgot to check my gearing. All of a sudden I was trying to clip in with my cranks barely turning and the swarms of riders accelerating past me. In literally 5 seconds I was already near the back of the pack. I finally clipped in, shifted and accelerated to try and stay with the pack.
During the lap I managed to gain a bunch of spots and managed to conserve some energy through the strong headwinds. 4th lap in I managed to do a power sprint going into the straightway and get all the way to the front of the pack. I picked out Andrew and Mark in the pack so my goal was to try and sit in with them as Mark is a very powerful rider and Andrew is a very smart racer in the crits. As we went around the second S bend, Mark got pushed of fthe track by another rider taking the turn to wide. There was a major surge by the pack and I was trying hard to stay on a wheel. I knew that if I dropped a wheel I would be in trouble. The next lap I was already starting to redline and had trouble staying on a wheel. I let the gap open up too much and soon I was fighting off a headwind while trying to go as hard as I could. 15 minutes in I had already dropped a wheel and the main pack started getting away from me.

As I did another lap I saw another rider that had been dropped so I drafted him for a bit. Going into the next lap I called out that we could switch off trying to take pulls and try to get back to the pack. As we struggled through the wind another group caught up to us and soon we had a pace line of about 6 riders. I yelled back for everyone to take short pulls so we could try and close the distance to the main group.

Around the second last lap we heard the bell ring for final lap so I went out hard. What I had not realized is that we had just been lapped by a couple riders from Juventus and that we actually still had 2 laps to go. I went out hard the final lap and did the final spring for the finish line. Unfortunately most of us were pretty confused on whether or not we were still racing or not. There wasn’t much the organizers could do because Juventus had lapped up on the final lap at the finish line so they couldn’t really pull any riders out.

After the race…the results were pretty messed up. It was probably pretty hard to keep track of 51 riders on the course at the same time. After some discussions with the commisaires…the results were reviewed and corrected…although I still have a feeling they are not 100% correct.

I finished the crit without getting pulled but was pretty disappointed that I dropped a wheel and ended up getting lapped again. Although this time it was pretty much near the end of the race so not as bad as it could have been.

Oh well...first race of the season and there was still one race remaining.

- Kyle

Photo credit: Thomas Yip

Velocity Stage Race: Day 1 - ITT

2010-05-01T19:10:00.000-06:00

I can’t believe how fast time flies. 6 months ago I was sad after ‘cross provincials that racing was done for the season but it was finally time to see if I would come back stronger this year after training a lot more and having more focus this year.

The stages consisted of a 10km Individual Time Trial and crit on the first day and road race on the second day.

The weather forecast wasn’t looking particularly great as we headed for a weekend in Fort Saskatchewan so that was probably the only concern as we left Calgary. When we finally arrived in Edmonton to pick our race packages, I finally remember what I had forgotten…out of all things I totally forgot to pack my base layers. Seeing as it was going to be pretty chilly outside the next morning we drove from Velocity back south to United Cycle so I could buy a base layer.

When we finally arrived at our hotel in Fort Sask. we called it a night pretty soon after checking in. It was going to be a long day the next day with a race in the morning and afternoon so we had to get as much sleep as possible.

The next morning we woke up pretty early so we could get breakfast in on time and then drove to the site for the time trial. This would be my first outdoor time trial. I have done a few 20km TTs on an ergometer for a University of Calgary study I was participating in during the winter so I had a rough idea of the time I was going to shoot for. We all pulled out our trainers to warm-up which I will admit was better than my usual warm-up of riding up and down the road because we got to chat with all the people we had not seen in a while. It always amazes how cycling is so social and how we always have a great time just chatting even though we are usually in direct competition during the races.

As I finished off my warm-up and stretching I rolled over to the start line with a couple minutes to spare before my start time. When it was finally time for me to go, I was amazingly more relaxed then I’ve ever been before a race. The scene for my first time trial was pretty amazing though…I wish I had a camera. The road ahead was obscured by a thick fog so that I could barely see more then about 500m ahead and the air was cool but not freezing. The commissaire said “go” and I took off down the road determined to try and catch the rider 30 seconds in front of me. I got my bike into gear and then there were only three thoughts in my mind; cadence, controlled breathing and “where the hell do I turn?”

I got to turn one where out of nowhere a figure appeared in the fog to indicate my first turn. As I turned I did a quick peek back and could see the next person who started after me in the distance. The next section was pretty rough…it was the Prairie Roubaix all over again. It was really hard to maintain tempo with my bike bouncing all over. I could see the rider in front of me in the distance so I changed gears and tried to push a little harder. I made the next turn and sprinted out before getting back to tempo. There was a slight hill in the horizon and I could see the other rider slowing down a little. Then I got passed by the rider behind me. The rider had a TT bike so I knew I had no chance trying to catch back up to him. Then as I got a little further, Mark J., who started a minute behind me rode by me like I was standing still. I went around the last corner and went out a little harder still but was passed by yet another rider on a TT bike. I was watching my GPS for the last KM where I was going to go all out. My computer said I was only 9km in then the sign for 500m flew by me. I immediately slammed my cassette down and sprinted hard for the finish line.

Finished up my first TT ever and felt OK about it. It seemed the guys on TT bikes were just blowing by me and I was just using my regular road bike. I was glad I was able to maintain some sort of tempo and a fairly good speed throughout but TT are all about experience and knowing your thresholds. As I’ve never done a real TT before I didn’t really know my thresholds or how much a TT should hurt. All I know is my HR was pretty much maxed the entire time…and it hurt.

- Kyle

Day 6: Porcupine Rim

2010-04-09T20:50:00.001-06:00

GPS Data:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/29514640

It was now time for the last ride of our mountain bike trip, the infamous Porcupine Rim trail. I had read about this trail many times and I was honestly really nervous about riding it. All I could think about was the exposed singletrack that was mentioned in all the trail books I've read. But then I figured I was probably ready for this trail after everything else we did during this trip. This was the final test.

Today's ride got the Canadian treatment. No driving and no shuttles. We were going to ride from town, up Sands Flats road and back to the condo, which adds about 9 miles to the ride. It was going to be a tough slog up the road after 5 consecutive days of riding...but we all wanted to maximize time in the saddle.

We started the ride out from the condo and it was really nice outside. Blue sky and shining sun. We all filled our Camelbaks up to the max and carried a couple waterbottles as we knew the hard part was going to be climbing under the hot sun for 2 hours. The two toughest parts of the climb were before the Slickrock trail so they were pretty early in the ride...which was good for warming up the legs. After an hour and fifteen of moderate climbing we reached the trail head. It was now time to cross Porcupine Rim off the list must-do trails in Moab and I was starting to get pretty excited.

The trail started out with a quick jeep trail descent into the saddle but soon we were back to constant climbing. This time it was a pretty rocky climb coupled with short sections of slickrock/sandstone. It wasn't an extremely techincal climb like in Sovereign but it was still a grunt to get to the top. Just before we got to the top we encountered another cyclist who was walking his bike up the climb...he looked pretty drained...and he was not even at the halfway point.

When we reached the top of the lookout we encountered a small group of riders from Pennsylvania. Apparently they had done the Slickrock trail first and then decided to finish the ride off at Porcupine Rim so the whole group looked pretty tired. They were lying down and seemed to be facing a water shortage issue as well. We took a short break and took a few photos and headed out before the group so we wouldn't have anyone in our way on the downhill.

Overlooking Castle Valley at the lookout point

After the break there was a little bit more climbing but when we finally crested the hill we got ready for the 10km of downhill. We got to the downhill and it was AWESOME!!! The first part was really rocky jeep trail but it was super fast and required almsot no pedalling. My suspension was definetely getting a full workout going down and there were a lot of sections that could really hurt if you weren't paying a attention and looking at your line well in advance. The downhill seemed to go on forever...it was so awesome. There were a few section that were pretty sketch and we had to walk/dab but it was all rideable...depending on your confidence/skill level. I'd rather walk a section then take a ride home in a helivac.

When we got to the bottom of the first downhill section we came across the famous 4 foot rock ledge. None of us dropped it as the landing was super flat and so could potentially wreck your bike (and you) if you took it wrong so we took the chicken line down just to the right. I got Brent to take a couple photos and as we were getting ready to go again, the group that we met and the lookout had caught up to us. All the riders except for one took the chicken line but one defiant rider went for the jump. The rider landed in a bit of a nosedive and completely bottomed out the suspension on his rental Nomad, so I'm sure he wasn't super concerned about its well being...but his jump could have gone wrong in so many ways.

Next came the section I had been thinking about the entire trip. The Porcupine Rim single track. The trail started out with a quick descent down some slickrock to a canyon and then crossed over to the exposed single track section. The exposure wasn't nearly as bad as I imagined. I personally think some of the stuff on the Kokopelli trail in Fruita was much worse but there were still some really technical sections that could spell disaster if you bailed, so some parts were much safer to just either dab or get off and walk. As Brent always says...sometimes you have to think about the risk vs. reward...and some areas were way to risky.

After navigating to about halfway down we came to another canyon where there was a portage down a pretty steep area. It looked sorta rideable if you took the right line on the switchback but we chose to just dismount and carry our bikes down...which was still pretty tricky. I personally could not see a line that would not be uber technical/risky.

Halfway down the singletrack section

As we decended the final part the trail became slightly wider but was still really technical. We could see the parking lot but we were still pretty high up. The descent was not too bad and we finally made it all the way down in one piece. I had done it...I did one of the harder trails in Moab trail with no injuries and I know I had a huge grin on my face. For me it had been a great accomplishment to not only do this ride...but also do the manly version which included the big road climb. I probably rode about 95% of the trail with most of the walking being in the really technical/exposed sections of the singletrack.

After reaching the parking lot, we were all smiles but pretty tired. We had a quick breather and then shifted into our big rings and rode back to our condo on the side of the highway.

This was my last ride of the trip. I would have gone the next day but I decided that it would be best to give my knee a rest. I was on painkillers to make it through most of the rides as my knee had still been pretty achy from Tuesday so I really was riding through the pain most days.

Final thoughts:

This trip was probably one of the best trips I've ever done. It was great group to ride with and I found that all my crazy winter training had really paid off. I had orginally been pretty worried about doing 6 days of mountain biking in a row...but it actually wasn't really a factor after getting adequate food and rest after each day. The vacation almost seemed like a full-time job in the way we approached each day but it was actually really fun and very memorable. If you're a mountain biker you should absolutly go to Moab but I also suggest spending a couple a of days in Fruita as well. The riding is great in both locations and totally different. Fruita isn't really far from Moab so you could even make a quick day trip to do one of the sections and then drive back to Moab.

- Kyle

Day 5: Sovereign

2010-04-08T23:54:00.000-06:00

GPS Data: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/29434668

We finally arrived in Moab to finish off our trip. We had originally planned on staying here for the entire week…but as we’ve all been to Moab before and ridden most of the classic trails, we decided to stay in Fruita for a little longer.

Today’s ride would bring us to the Sovereign trail system. The trail was originally built by dirt bikers who opened up the trail to mountain bikers as well. It is one of the newer trails in Moab though it has been around for quite some time. The trail system is a mish mash of ATV trails, dirtbike trail and mountain bike trails so there are sections of jeep trail that connect some of the single track together.

Finally time to break out the sunscreen

We started the ride off from the campgrounds just off the highway a few miles from the trailhead as there was sections of sand that we weren’t sure if the Subie would make it through or not…and Jeff of course wanted big miles for the ride.

After a missed turn, we back tracked a little bit and found the single track then started on the first section of the ascent. Most of the first part was climbing on slickrock with a few ledge hops thrown in. While trying to spot the line for the climbs, I could already see the tire marks for the downhill portion...I was already hoping we’d get to come back this way again and bomb down the ledges. We got to the top of the first section and caught up with a few other mountain bikers who let us go on ahead. Then we got to another steep rocky section, the other guys were able to clear it but I stopped when another riders was walking up and wasn’t able to get any momentum for a line, so I quickly ran my bike down.

We then did another section of twisty single track descents and a few climbs. The single track was already way different then the stuff we were doing in Fruita. The climbs were a little more technical and a little bit steeper...or maybe that was just my legs after 4 days. After riding on the top of the mesa made up of broken slabs of rock we did a quick descent for our first lunch break.

After the break we did a descent down to the ATV intersection. We crossed over via single track and did a quick single that led up to a nice climb on a massive section of slickrock. After the slickrock section we did a nice climb then did a pretty technical creek bed/slick\rock single track. After finishing off the singletrack we once again got to a ATV trail. We rode up the road to a map where the second entrance to the trailhead is. After looking at the map we found a single-track loop close by.

The loop looked like it went around the top of a mesa...but there was a ton of climbing involved. The climb was tough with lots of dirt and pretty steep in some section. We got to the top of the mesa and decided to start the loop counter-clockwise. The trail climbed a little bit more before dropping down a sandy creek bed. There was a lot of sand in the creek bed and lots of big loose rocks so the descent wasn’t nearly as fun as it could have been. After the getting to the bottom we figured we would have to climb up to the top again but climb involved going up another sandy creek bed which given our current fitness levels was pretty tedious. After the climb up the creek we were treated more really rocky single track. This was really tough to climb as pedals and chain rings were hitting huge rocks strewn about the single track. This was a trail that wasn’t used nearly as much as the main trail and it showed.

After completing the loop we got treated to a nice technical single track descent back to the ATV roads. This time we opted to take the ATV route back as the creek bed single track would have been really tough to climb given our energy levels. After backtracking on some single track and going down the slickrock portion we got back to the main junction. Now it was a long tough climb back up to the top of the mesa. After retracing our steps back to the top it was time for the descent.

The descent was so worth it. Some pretty good speeds with some great ledge drops thrown in. All the drops had good run outs so it was possible to take all the 1-2 foot drops with ease. Even Jeff was taking everything on his singlespeed 29er. After finishing off the descent and getting back to the jeep road, I raced Jeff back to the car...it’s amazing how well a single-speed bike can keep up with a geared bike...I almost had him until we had to plow through some pretty deep sand. Needless to say...he made it all the way through while I bogged down about three quarters of the way through.

We got back to the car moderately exhausted but had a great time. It was one of the nicest days we had so far and our longest ride. We got changed and drove back to town for a well deserved dinner at the Moab Brewery.

- Kyle

Day 4: Rabbit Valley and the Western Rim

2010-04-07T23:36:00.005-06:00

Rabbit Valley Trail and the Western Rim
GPS Data: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/29343598 (Check out the trail using the Google Earth plugin)

Today was a much better day. The wind had died down, the skies were clear and the sun was out. After going for our usual coffee stop and staring at a map, Jeff decided that we wanted to do the Western Rim trail. The trail was out a little bit from Fruita so we packed the car with all our stuff as we were going to drive to Moab right after we finished up the trail.

We parked pretty close to the highway as Jeff’s Subaru did not have the clearance necessary to drive any further down the road to the trailhead. The 4X4 trail was pretty uneventful but we were glad to finally be biking in good weather. The road was pretty flat which was good because as usual we would have a long ride ahead but there were a few sections of sand…which was not so great…but it was all rideable.

Awesome day, nice breeze, boring, sandy jeep road

We got to the first marker junction which the guy at the shop had described and could not see where any of the trails led. After consulting the map several times we just rode a little bit down the trail and there was a sign pointing towards the Western Rim trail. The trail towards the rim was extremely sandy and we were looking out for the Juniper tree that marked our turn. Apparently if we missed it we would go into a sandy pit that would have us “hating life”.

After making the turn, Jeff signalled that we had found the trail and it was time to light it up. The trail was AWESOME!!! It was super fun flowy single track along the rim of a Mesa. It was also slightly downhill which made it even better. It wasn’t super technical or really exposed but it was just awesome riding along the rim with a few small rollers thrown in (from dirt bike traffic) and a few small climbs. This was by far my favourite trail so far. The view from the rim was spectacular with mesas on the horizon and an awesome view of the Colorado river down below in the valley.

Western Rim

Then we got to a part in the trail where we met up with a couple other mountain bikers. We talked for a bit aobut bikes and such then they said they were going to do the Western Rim in reverse as they had never done if that way before and the jeep road back to the trailhead was really boring. Jeff wanted to push on a little more because we only had 1.5 hours of riding time or something and he wanted to get closer to 5. We went down a couple steeps and found a single track spur off one of the jeep roads. We decided to follow the single track for another hour and then turn back.

The single-track runs along the shelf between the cliff and the bushes.

We had all noticed that the trail really didn’t have a huge amount of elevation change and then all of a sudden on the second half we were pushing our bikes up super steep hills and riding back down the other. We did this for a little while until we followed a single track section down an old creek bed to a dead end at a railroad. We couldn’t find any more trails, so we turned back and followed the single track up…but this time we wanted to skip all the hike-a-bike so we followed the jeep trail back to where we started the single track.

After we got back to the single track junction we thought it’d be more fun to go back on the rim trail instead of the jeep trail so we geared up for a slightly uphill ride back to the junction. Surprisingly the ride back was a little slower but not nearly as slow as I thought it would be. The small rollers were definitely not as fun going the other way but I still enjoyed the awesome view going back the other way.

After getting to the junction we decided to follow some more of the coffee shop guys advice and ride the number 2 trail back to the car. The trail was really fast going back but pretty rocky with a few short steep descents thrown in. We then got to a point where the trail forked into a easy and hard section…we took the hard section of course and about 100 meters in we got to a super steep hike-a-bike...it was hard just pushing the bike up the trail let alone trying to ride it. After that, it was another fast technical rolling double-track section back to the car.

When we got back to the car, we were all feeling way better. The weather had held up…we all had a really fun time and Jeff seemed to be satisfied with the time on the trail. It was now off to Moab for the rest of the week.

- Kyle

Day 3: Lunch Loop

2010-04-06T22:15:00.000-06:00

GPS Data:

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/29244969

Today, we rode the Lunch Loop in Grand Junction which none of us have ever ridden so it was pretty much flying blind with a bunch of hand drawn maps. When we woke up, it was still really windy outside and we could see dark rain clouds in the horizon. The general consensus was that the Lunch Loop trails would be a good idea as we could ride several shorter loops and if it started to rain, we could just cut the ride short…at least that was the plan.

We got to the trailhead and it was pretty brisk outside. The wind was still strong and really wasn’t gearing us up for the ride ahead. After trying to read a bunch of maps both at the trailhead and in our book we decided that we wanted to do the Holy Cross trail.

We started out by climbing up Kurt’s Lane trail where we were encountering signs for trails we had not even heard of. We then found the trailhead for the Holy Cross trail. We went up the Holy Cross trail and the judgement is still out on whether we did it the right way or the wrong way. It was extremely technical and we spent most of our time pushing and carrying our bikes. This might seem like we did it the wrong way…but I’m not really sure if it would be easier the other way as there were tons of ledges, steep technical drops and really tight sections that looked like they would have been really difficult going the other way as well.

When we reached the top of Holy Cross we decided to try and bike up to the infamous Ribbon trail. After a few more miles of climbing we got to the highway where we met up with some locals and asked for directions to the Ribbon. The locals told us that with the wind that it would pretty much be hell climbing up the road to the trailhead and that the Ribbon was more of a downhill trail…and then told us we would have much more fun on the Gunny Loop. At this point we were tired of hiking and the wind so just wanted a sweet single track downhill so we opted to do the Gunny Loop back to the car.

The Gunny loop down from the road was tons of fun. It was fairly fast single track at the top which was pretty windy but not overly technical that went into a high-speed jeep trail descent. This almost made up for the climbing and the sun started to come out a little bit although it was still really windy. There were a couple really steep descents where my butt was pretty much an inch away from my rear tire but it was probably much safer to ride down then trying to walk/slide down. As we finished off the Gunny loop we decided we would try and take the shortest way back to the car as the rain in the horizon and cold wind just weren’t conducive to enjoyable riding. We rode back up to Kurt’s lane back down to the car and called it a day.

- Kyle

Day 2: Kokopelli Kraziness

2010-04-05T22:12:00.001-06:00

GPS Data: http://connect.garmin.com/player/29125585

Today’s trip was over to the Kokopelli trailhead which is starting point for the famous Kokopelli trail ride to Moab. It seems that many of the trails in Fruita are area based with a whole bunch of loops in each area so your ride can be a short or as long as you want it to be.

Today’s ride was pretty interesting and was a huge test for my now rapidly dwindling fear of heights (I know crazy right?).

First we started off with Mary’s loop which starts out with a moderate rocky climb up onto the first ridge and then some fast jeep double-track to the first optional loop.

Horsethief’s Bench:

We rode up to the trailhead and met fellow Canadian Dave Whitten (Tara, his daughter, is on the Canadian National Track cycling team), who was having a snack with his son after just completing the Horsethief’s Bench loop. We looked down and there was an extremely rocky staircase descent onto the bench. I’m sure someone has ridden it…but to most mortals…it was much safer (even recommended) to just portage the bike down.

Rock staircase down

We started the loop in the recommended clockwise direction and right away it was fast, flowy and fairly technical. Before you knew it we were riding on the edge of the bench with a spectacular view of the Colorado river on the left (not to mention a 400 foot drop about 10 feet away). There wasn’t a huge amount of climbing on the trail but it was pretty fast and lots of fun. There were a bunch of cool sections that really stood out for me and it was a great way to start the ride. After we completed the loop, we hiked up to the top of the rocky stairs for our first break.

On Mary's Loop looking down at Horsethief's Bench

After the break we kept on Mary’s loop until we got to Steve’s Loop (Handcuffs).

Steve’s Loop:

Steve’s Loop was pretty technical but full on single track. This one ran much close to the edge of the plateau with more death of the left as we rode. But in the words of Ken, “It’s not fun, if you can’t die”…not too sure how I feel about that, but there were several instances where I would only look at the single track in front of me and try to completely ignore the sheer drop only a couple feet to the left.

Lion’s Loop:

After’s finishing Steve’s we got to our first junction in the trail. We hadn’t really ridden that far and we still had some energy to we decided to do Lion’s loop to go all the way around the Mesa. The loop started out with a steep rocky climb which seemed to keep going. After the big climb we were treated to a steep rocky descent. The wind was really starting to pick up here and there were several times I was blown a little off my line as we did the descent. As we started heading more towards the north we had the wind at our backs which made things a little easier. There was one section that we had to ride a little bit to the southwest and suddenly there was a huge crosswind. I tried to ride forward a little bit and a gust of wind blew my bike off the single track and careening into a slab of rock. Needless to say I bailed pretty hard as I was not expected to be literally blown off my bike. I picked myself up and had to wait a while with my bike in hand until the wind died down before I could move again. After we met up, Jeff said he had been blown off his bike as well. It was really crazy…and far beyond any wind I’ve ever encountered in Calgary.

Trying to not get blown away by the wind

Mack Ridge:
This was a deciding point for us. There was a huge climb looming before us or we could take the service road back to the car. We opted to do the climb as Jeff said that Mack Ridge would be an awesome way to finish off the ride. The climb was a death march…you can see on the GPS elevation chart we went from the lowest elevation to the highest point of the entire day. There were several false flats with tiny descents where you thought you were at the top but there was yet more climbing. I was to the point where I was wondering how we were going to get down again. When we finally got to the very top we could see everything…imagine looking down at 3 plateau levels of single track…and we had probably done most of it. Then it was time for the Mack Ridge descent. The descent was fairly steep with rock gardens littered throughout. There was one portage section but the rest was really tight technical single track.

At the bottom of the descent we made a group decision to skip Moore’s Fun as we were all pretty tired and running out of water. It would have been another massive climb with one of the most difficult descents in Fruita so we decided that it would be best to take the service road back to the car. When we arrived back at the car, we all ran out of water pretty much at the same time so we thanked ourselves for not going too overboard…still plenty of riding days left.

- Kyle

P.S. Brent has been recording Hero Cam video all week so I will be making some short videos to music when I get back to Calgary.

Day 1: 18 Road Trails

2010-04-04T21:59:00.003-06:00

Fruita Day 1
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/28981504

I have finally arrived in Fruita, Colorado. I had planned this trip with a couple of friends back in December so it’s been a really long wait until the day finally arrived. Of course as luck would have it…I got really sick Tuesday after my testing at the University (I’ll go into this later when I’m all finished up) so spent most of the week trying to battle a cold and the first day of the drive blowing my nose and taking cold medicine. We decided to take it easy on the drive so we drove to Helena Friday night, stayed at a hotel and then finished the drive off to Fruita the next day.
The trip was pretty much incident free. The only problem is it was super windy through Montana and Idaho which had us pretty worried about all the bikes on the roof and the road was covered in snow through one of the passes in Idaho so that was a little sketchy to say the least.

Anyways onto Day 1:

Today we drove up to 18 Road Trails and decided to do a few fun loops out of the lower parking lot trailhead.

The first loop we did was an ascent up the Prime Cuts trail and back down Chutes and Ladders. The first part of Chutes and Ladders was pretty technical with a few tricky spots but overall not too bad. The second part was slightly downhill and super flowy. We pretty much hammered out in the big ring and twisted our way through the single track at some pretty high speeds.

The second loop was up the Kessler trail and then over to the Zippedy Doo Dah. The only problem with Kessler was everyone was descending at some pretty high speeds while we were trying to climb the trail so it was a lot of stopping and waiting and watching people with huge smiles on their faces fly past us. When we finally climbed up to the Zippedy Doo Dah trail, I have to admit I was a little worried when I saw the sign and it said Double black diamond – experts only. Brent looked at me and said I’ll be fine…so I followed them through to the trail. The trail actually wasn’t really as bad as I thought it would be..but juding by some of the people we saw riding the lower trails...it's probably a good thing they put a sing thre. There were a couple really sketchy exposed areas on the trail and a few really steep descents but overall, it was all rideable…even for me. There was only one section we all walked because it was pretty eroded and the risk to reward factor was pretty high but for the most part I cleaned every section…although a little bit slower than the other guys.

After getting back to the parking lot we decided we needed to get in one more loop. After watching yet another group of people come out of the Kessler trail with huge grins on their faces…we knew which one it had to be. We decided to ascend up the Prime Cuts trail again as it was not as busy and then cut over to the Kessler trail. After getting to the top of the trail we shifted into the big ring and bombed down the Kessler trail. That was super fun…so much flow and it felt like we were in a downhill race. It wasn’t overly technical but it was more trying to control your speed so you didn’t fly off the single track through the tight turns and banks. Near the bottom it was awsome flow through banked turns with a few gulleys thrown in but we could totally see why everyone had huge smiles on their faces after riding the trail.

Overall, today was a really good day. The trails were really dry and temperature was great for moutnain biking. My legs felt fine but it was a little weird getting used to the mountain bike again. This is only my second ride on a mountain bike all year so it took some getting used to riding trails again. Really glad I took my Prophet along with me for this trip as I’m sure my back appreciates the extra travel on the suspension. Tomorrow's forecast does not look awesome so I'm not totally sure what we will b riding.

- Kyle

Own The Peleton

2010-03-31T19:40:00.001-06:00

Saturday March 27th, 2010 Road Ride GPS Data
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/28212627

How is it that random musings can turn into a long suffer ride?

I was joking a few weeks ago when I riding around with Brent that we haven't had a ride where someone was begging for food in a ditch on the side of the highway, so what happens? An e-mail sent out for a 150km group ride.

This was going to be my longest ride yet...so I prepped for worst. The next morning after running around getting ready while trying to cram food into my mouth I made my way down to the ride meetup place. As I had never done a ride this long before I decided to pack more energy food then I probably needed. But still, there were many jokes during the ride about my vest pockets becoming the group vending machine.

After meeting up with Brent and Andrew, we did a quick ride over to the meetup spot. There were 4 other riders ready to go, among them Canadian Olympian Jason Myslicki. After everyone finished getting ready, we rode out and were met up by two other riders. We now had a group of 10 which is the largest group ride I've been involved with so far. We rode out to highway 8 and quickly organized ourselves into a paceline to go against the strong headwind. The paceline worked really well and was great to get break from the wind as everyone did their time at the front. The few times I went up front, I may have gone out a little more then I should have as I was trying to do some significant pulls even though with my size they probably weren't benefiting the group. When we hit highway 22, we had a wider shoulder to work with so we morphed into a rotating double paceline. I've had never done this type of paceline before so I had disrupted the tempo a couple times trying to learn the system on the go. After a few mistakes and some advice from the guys, I think I got it down for the last few kms. As we approached Bragg Creek, I saw everyone go into their drops and this time I decided to join in on the town sign sprint. Then we stopped for our customary coffee stop.

After a quick break a few riders decided to head back to Calgary but we were soon joined by another rider from Bici. We regrouped and seven of us headed out towards Millarville. After doing a scenic climb out of Bragg we hit the 22X and then headed south on the 762. The road was awesome. There was tons of scenery, little traffic and some pretty decent climbs. Yuri from Bici was pushing the pace pretty hard the group split into a faster gorup and a slower group with a few of us hanging back to ride at a more relaxed pace to take in the views...there's no cellphone reception in Milarville so we wanted to make sure we had enough enegy to make it back home...or at least to Bragg Creek.

When we finally met made it to Millarville we met up with the faster group and had another quick stop. We met up with another rider from Bici but she was coming from another direction. Yuri also decided to go his own way as he wanted o make a loop and go back to Calgary via the 22X. Now there was just 6 of us remaining. After refueling and topping off our water bottles we set out back towards Bragg Creek. This time we opted to take a slightly different route which was some backcountry road with a few gravel sections. As we headed up the road we ran into Craig, Gerry, Ed and Gabor from my team who also managed to drag Jeff Nielsen from Terrascape along on their crazy adventure. Jeff didn't stand out nearly as much as his Terrascape kit as has their kit has the same colors as us. My team kit completely clashed with Bicisport...so I stuck out like sore thumb, but despite their feeble attempts...I did not go over to the Blue Side.

After the long uphill climb on Plumber's Road, we regrouped again before heading back out on the 762 towards Bragg Creek. As soon as we got to another big climb, Jason started turning the screws. I wanted to keep up but had to keep in mind that this was supposed to be a fun ride...not a hammer. So again we broke into two groups and I rode in a pack with Brent and Andrew. I could tell some of us were getting a little tired...

Apparently, I learned that it's bad form to take self-shots during long climbs. Especially when there could be photo evidence of roadies suffering.

After we got back to Bragg Creek, we stopped at the coffee shop quickly for bathroom breaks and refill our water bottles. Then we re-grouped and prepared a nice easy ride home with a tailwind. Once again on highway 22 we formed a rotating double paceline. I was able to keep tempo a lot better this time although there were a couple times I had trouble trying to push past Jason. As soon as we hit highway 8 we all took a turn at the front but then Jason decided he would pull us all the way back to Calgary. For me, it was incredible to be riding with an Olympian and seeing how much fitter these guys are. He didn't seem have an issue with pulling us and we had a bit of a tailwind so it's not like anyone was going out ultra-hard on the front.

We finally got back to Andrew's house and surprisingly...I felt pretty good. I was tired but not shattered like when I did my long CX ride with Craig and Thomas. It felt awesome to get this kind of long ride under my belt and not have to call home from Bragg Creek to get a ride back home. Despite my earlier musings...no one bonked...and no one had to beg me for food...so it was a pretty awesome ride. I put this ride in the epic category as well because how many times do you get to go out for a ride with an Olympic Athlete???

- Kyle

Road Riding Fun

2010-03-20T19:34:00.008-06:00

The race season is in the horizon now. I’ve been able to stick to my training plan pretty well over the last few months and I can’t wait to see where I’ll be this year. The past few months I’ve been out on more than a few rides where I know people would smile, nod and back away slowly upon hearing what I decided would be a good time on the weekend.

Until about 2 years ago, I had been a pretty dedicated mountain biker, if you asked me 3 years ago if I’d would ever own a road bike, I probably would have thrown out a few choice words…but the overall message would have been “no”. I mean what could be so fun about:

- Riding on a (mostly) smooth road with a few hills thrown in
- Wearing spandex shorts and tight jerseys
- Shaving your legs
- Not having to dodge trees, jump over logs and clean technical sections

It’s now 3 years later and I love road riding. People ask me all the time where the fun in road biking is and why do we do it but I think I finally have an understanding. It’s really easy to knock something if you don’t try it first. Road biking is not for everyone, just like mountain biking isn’t for everyone. I do understand why people tend to stick to one or the other, but personally, I just love to ride and enjoy the variety. There are not many who race multiple disciplines, but I think competing in multiple disciplines really compliments the others without things getting too stale. I’m sure one day I’ll get to the point where I may start to favour one discipline over the others but right now I just want to go until I stop having fun.

This past weekend I had another ride which I would have to throw into the epic category now. The premise was simple. Ride out from Westhills to Bragg Creek and back on the highway with our ‘cross bikes. Estimated distance 90km, all highway road and one coffee stop. Andrew, Brent and I set out early in the moderately brisk, sunny morning and headed out to the west. Soon we were joined by Ryan and Greg with Bicisport and we got settled into a nice ‘relaxing’ paceline. I took a spot behind Ryan who is a Cat 2 racer with Bicisport and stayed on his wheel as he seemed to be going at a pretty relaxed pace and I usually ride near the front to avoid getting dropped. I checked my heart rate and it turns out that while he was pretty relaxed, I was pretty much redlined trying to keep up. After a quick stop for a few people to relieve themselves, Tom from my team rode by and joined up with our group, so we went from 3 to 6 riders in the span of about an hour. We regrouped and headed south on the 22x towards Bragg Creek for our ritual coffee stop where I finally realized that I might be involved in some sort of Bicisport recruiting campaign. As we were finishing up our break, the Calgary Cycle road contingent rolled in along with a few H&R and Bicisport guys. It was great to see so many familiar faces in a small coffee shop in Bragg Creek.

As we headed back towards Calgary, there were little specks of snow but we didn’t really think much about it. When we started heading north again it started to snow a little, it was pretty light and dry at first so we figured it wasn’t too bad so we kept riding. Then we went around a slight bend and into a full on snowstorm of wet heavy snow which of course was blowing in opposite direction we were headed. All of us were pretty much covered in snow as we continued to ride and could barely see 50m in front of us. Andrew was pacing really well on his heavy cross bike and that was good encouragement for me to keep pushing onward. As we turned west to head back to Calgary the snow started to clear up a little and just as soon as we were caught in a snowstorm, the clouds cleared and it was warm and sunny out. We had just experienced all 4 seasons in the span of 4 hours.

To me it’s these experiences which make road riding so interesting. The conversations are usually pretty good and most of the time people will help you reach past your self-imposed limits. I encourage everyone who has a road bike and is tired of riding alone to join a no-drop group ride and have a great experience riding a bike with others. I found that just by participating in rides and accepting invitations to ride that I’ve met a lot of new people and picked up a lot of new skills. A year ago 100km rides seemed impossible to me…now I’m doing 90-100km rides pretty regularly and rarely feel completely shattered when I get home. Having accomplished these long rides really early in the season has given me the confidence to want to do events like the Salty Dog 6 Hour Enduro, the Giver-8-er and the Bow 80 races. A few more years and maybe I’ll want to do events like the Breck Epic, BC Bike Race and the Transrockies…but only time will tell. I’m still a little nervous about racing this year but I feel that once I’m out again on the start line and the whistle blows…I’ll feel right at home…doing what I love and enjoying it.

- Kyle

What You Missed This Afternoon

2010-02-07T20:34:00.007-07:00

Saturday February 7th, 2010 CX Ride GPS Data

Part 1
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/24100181

Part 2
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/24100174

It is now February and I’ve already managed to derail my annual training plan….but not in a negative way…I just happen to be riding way more than I thought I would be during the colder months. So anyways, fellow DG Stappy sends out an e-mail Friday to see who wants to do a 100km (metric century) ‘cross bike ride on Saturday. He says it will be moderately paced and mostly on gravel back roads. Now this may come as a surprise to some people but I’ve never done more than 80km on a ride and prior to my last ride had never done more than 40km in January/February.

For me this was like a mid-term bike test, I wanted to see if my base had in fact remained mostly intact from last year along with all the cross training I’ve been doing for the last few weeks. Not only would it test my endurance but my recovery and power output trying to keep up with someone like Stappy for whom this will probably be a roll in the park. I met up with Craig and Thomas at the coffee shop and after drinking our coffees and chatting a bit about the planned route we set out for another long distance adventure on a moderately cold Saturday morning.

The ride started out much like our last ride. We did the same single-track sections up into the Tuscany area (including the 12 mile coulee trail). The single track was in really good condition although the creek crossings were really icy but I somehow managed to make it up without bailing this time…on my ‘cross bike. When we got to the top we proceeded north to ride on some gravel back roads. The sky was clear and the sun was out, so it made for a really nice ride loaded with views. It was pretty cool for me because we could ride side-by-side and chat which was a great opportunity for me to take in some tips and hear about some unique race experiences.

After hooking up onto a main highway we rode towards Cochrane then did a really cool descent into the Cochrane area. After the second descent, Craig led us down into a park where we did a really neat little single track into town. In town we stopped for a coffee shop for a bit of a break. 65km in and I still felt pretty good though I was beginning to get a little tired. It seemed that there was a bit of a change of plan. Craig wanted to make a loop out of the ride so instead of riding back to Calgary on the 2A we were going to do some more gravel roads to the west of Calgary and go back by the Springbank Airport.

I still had a quite a bit of energy and was glad we were over the halfway mark so we set out on the 22 on the way back to Calgary. Craig didn’t want ride on the 22 for too long because the shoulder is pretty narrow so we were going to do some more gravel road and go around. Suddenly we were riding to the west…away from Calgary. Now I was beginning to worry about what I got myself into as Thomas asked if we had to do the “big hill” and Craig laughed a little.

About 85km in I was having trouble staying with Thomas and Craig. Thomas made an awesome recovery after the big hill and was sticking to Craig’s wheel really well. I started falling back and just rode within myself as I knew there was still one big climb coming up and I was starting to get really tired. After the climb we went towards the COP switchback descent which is usually really fun but my hands were getting numb from braking with freezing levers.

When I got back to my car and checked my bike computer it looked like we had done about 108km. Awesome. I had just completed my longest ride ever…in February. Even though I started fading during the last 20km, it was pretty good indicator where I was for fitness levels and endurance. With the exception of the very last climb, I was sticking with the guys on the climbs though I fell back on most of the descents mainly due to my confidence levels with handling on the snow and ice sections. It was a pretty hilly ride so it seems all my cross-training has really helped me become a better cyclist. It was a really good group to be riding with although I do feel a little guilty about not being able to do any pulls for any significant amount of time…though I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before I can.

P.S. My Garmin went kinda wonky when we stopped for coffee so the ride data is split into two parts as I had to reset it. Probably due to the firmware update I did a few weeks ago.

Getting out of Bed is the Hardest Part

2010-01-24T22:03:00.005-07:00

Saturday January 23, 2010 MTB Ride GPS Data
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/23054589

The other day I received an e-mail from a teammate about doing a Saturday ride with the hardcore MTBers (or the Calgary Fast Cats as Jeff Nielsen calls them). I had heard of these rides before and read the tales of some of the victims. I was really surprised to get an e-mail about going for a ride around the city. I wasn't sure how I would do on one of these rides, having only recently returned to riding again, but I thought it might be fun to give it a go and see where my fitness is at going into the season. What's the worst that can happen right?

I was up much earlier than normal as I had to make an early morning trip to the airport. I got home around 8:30 and decided to take a quick power nap. I woke up an hour later and looked outside. It was windy, blowing snow and about -8C outside (-17C with windchill). I decided to rest a little bit longer trying to decide to go out for a ride or not. I remembered Cyrus telling me that in training the hardest part is just getting out the door.

After much debate with myself, I finally made the decision to get ready and meet up for the ride. I figured the worse that can happen is I can bail out early and at least say I gave it a try. I got dressed, pulled out my mountain bike and loaded up my car for the drive down to the coffee shop to meet with the group. I arrived at the shop and there was a group of about 6 other riders. Among them were fellow Deadgoats Erik, Ken, Craig and Gerry along with Dallas and Shawn, everyone one of them, an accomplished enduro rider.

First order of the day was the 12 Mile Coulee trail up in Tuscany. It was pretty windy but when we got to riding it didn't seem bad at all, the snow was fairly light and we got some good cover from the houses. After a short ride we got to the first section of single-track. As I went around the first turn, my front wheel hit a patch of powder and I did my first endo of the year....probably a good thing to get these things out of the way early. We got to the bottom of the trail, rode up and bombed back down again. There were a few runners but the craziest perhaps was a lone runner in only a sweater and bermuda shorts...I think he wins the hardcore award.

After we finished the trail we rode over to Bowmont Park We got up to the first trail head and it was pretty icy on the first uphill forcing a pretty difficult walk up the hill for most of us. After getting to the top we decided to skip the more technical trails as they seemed pretty treacherous. We then decided to bike down to Edworthy and bike up some single track to make our way to the resevoir. It was really awesome riding with all these guys and discovering all these trails I had never ridden before.

After climbing out of Edworthy we took a short break and then proceeded to the reservoir. We were able to ride some pretty good single-track through a good half of the reservoir. We then stopped for lunch in Glenmore Landing for about an hour. When we were ready to ride again...the wind was pretty strong and it was near whiteout conditions. We were all gettting pretty tired and just wanted to get back home now before the sun went down. We decided to ride all pathway/road and do the most direct route back to Bowness.

The wind was blowing snow right in our faces now and it was starting to get pretty cold. My legs were getting a little tired and it was getting more difficult to hold pace with the group. This was getting to be my longest ever January ride and on top of that the coldest condition I had ever been out riding in.

When I finally got back to my car, I felt really good to have gone out and done this ride. I stayed with most of the group till the end and my legs still felt pretty good. It was really cool riding with a really awesome group of riders and I'm always in awe at what the guys on single-speed bikes can do. It sure beat riding on the trainer on a Saturday and helped me work a little on my MTB technique. All in all the hardest part for me was getting out of bed.

Dallas' Ride Report and video
http://dalrock.blogspot.com/2010/01/winter-in-tuscany.html
Yes...that is me doing the first bail of the day.

Enjoying The Ride

2009-12-22T11:16:00.008-07:00

I've been sitting on a post I'd written about 3 weeks ago about training. I'd been tweaking it a little since I wrote it and was waiting for a good time to post it. Then I read this article and then considered that I'm not quite ready to really give advice on training. One reason could be that it's advice from a beginner racer and another would be that I want to beat Ken in at least one race next season, so I don't want him to know ALL my secrets.

On the subject of training I came across these videos:

Typical Pre-Ride Conversation

Typical Training Racer Discussion

and this article:

The Knitted Bike (lol)

Training in particular seems like a very touchy and personal subject for most people. Everyone has their own training regime and some people even want to impose that regime on others. What some people fail to realize is that everyone is different and therefore what may work well for them, may not work well for others. Also I've seem some people go a little overboard with their training and seem to forget why they are training in the first place. It's OK to be serious about it...but it shouldn't take over your life. Training for racing is hard work and very demanding but it's good to take a break every once in a while and just enjoy riding your bike. Right after 'cross season finished up, I just went on nice slow and steady rides...no pressure, no heart rate monitor and no plan. Just going on those rides reminded me why I love riding my bike. During the holidays and partly because I need to give myself a break to let my back get better...I have not touched a bike in a few weeks...being off the bike has made me so much more anxious to want to start next season.

I tend to read of a lot of books, forums and articles on training and equipment. I also talk to a lot of different people who train in different disciplines. There isn't a single book I'd recommend everyone go out and buy as the Holy Grail of training because I don't believe there is one. To find an effective training strategy, I think you need to use a combination of all resources at hand. You also have to be willing to give everything suggested an honest try and be prepared to make adjustments to it. I found that after every race it was much easier to focus my training and make adjustments because it's right after a race that you reflect on what you need to focus on during training on to become a better cyclist.

Another subject is the use of heart rate monitors , powers meters and CompuTrainers. Although these devices are ultra cool (I'll still be getting a power meter one day of these days), they aren't totally necessary to becoming a better cyclist. Just like having a full carbon frame loaded with Dura-Ace/Super Record isn't going to instantly vault you into the Cat 1/2 ranks. They are all tools and you still have to work hard to get your desired results.

Just like many other cyclists, I find myself wondering how to keep my base during the winter. Also like many cyclist, I worry that I'll lose fitness over the winter and start back at square 1 next season. One thing I know for sure is that continuing to train at the same levels to make up for the lack of riding by pushing myself into exhaustion will only result in injury and burnout. During the next few weeks away from work, I'm planning on just relaxing and enjoying myself. It's been a long year with many life changes and I think it's a good time to take a break, reflect on the year past and then go into the New Year refreshed and excited to start another season of racing.

As promised, here are some of the resources I refer to constantly:

Resources:

The Cyclist’s Training Bible by: Joe Friel
Cyclocross: Training and Technique by Simon Burney
Endurance Sports Nutrition by Suzanne Girard Eberle
The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain and Joe Friel

Online links:

http://www.cyclingtipsblog.com/

http://www.bikeforums.net/forum.php

http://forums.roadbikereview.com/

http://blog.bikeridr.com/ (A shameless plug, I know...but I find a lot of the stuff posted very useful)

...And all the links on the side bar.

I hope everyone has a good holiday and looking forward to seeing everyone back out at the races next year.

A Season in Review

2009-12-04T14:13:00.001-07:00

It is now December and I have decided to take a bit of a break from the bike. Partially to avoid burnout and partially to help my body recover from the beating I gave it for 9 months straight this year.

When I look back, I would have to say that this season was a huge success. I’m really glad I decided to get into racing and I do not regret the experience at all. What I’m really happy about is that I was able to finish the season with no major accidents or injuries.

To sum it up by the numbers, my overall season would look like this:

~4800 kms
~200 riding hours
19 races
4 top ten finishes
3 racing disciplines
0 DNFs

I would say that is a good start for my first season of racing. But I don’t think a lot of that would have been possible without the support of my team and my friends. Always great to have people cheering you on from the sidelines, it totally makes you forget about how much your legs hurt. The cycling community has also been incredible and really changed a lot of the perceptions I had with bike racers. I’m already looking forward to racing again next year.

There were also a lot of resources that I used during the racing season that I wished I had discovered before. I’ll post them up here for anyone that is looking at getting into racing or improving their overall bike fitness. There were so many things to learn that I had not even thought about before, like proper athletic nutrition and racing tactics.

This season I’ve also met some truly amazing people and witnessed some amazing things. There are also a good number of cyclists who maintain blogs as well and I do like reading through them every now and again. Reading about some of the adventures that some of the riders have been on are really a good inspiration to just get out there and ride your bike.

Brian Kullman Memorial Provincial

2009-11-11T20:42:00.000-07:00

Goal for the race: Finish the race
Secondary goal: Don't get double lapped

This was the last ABA race for the whole season. After this it would be a long break until the season starts again next year in April. The weather was pretty exceptional for November so it was an awesome way to end the season.

Most people have already heard my complaints about the provincial race format so I will not go over them yet again. So anyways, because I'm under 30, I would be racing in my first Elite race and also my first 60 minute 'cross race. Several people managed to talk me into doing this race because of the excellent training and experience it would give me.

The race was held at the Montgomery Juinior High School and the course was once again designed by 'cross course master, Keith Bayly. The course itself was really good for the space we were given. It had several steep climbs, a long stair run-up, a crit-like pavement section, some technical sections and a really steep dirt climb that became a run-up for many later on.

I was told through the organizers that they were not going to pull lapped riders from the race so I decided it would be a good chance to see if I can race for a full 60 minutes as opposed to my usual 40 minutes.

After getting to the site and watching a bit of the Master A/B race and cheering on my friends and teammates, I did my usual warmups and got ready for my last race of the season. After the call ups had been done for the top riders, I settled in at the very back with another rider who normally races in Sport with me.

Just before the start of the race, they announced that they were pulling lapped riders which was strange because I had heard otherwise but I figured now I was just going to go out and try and see how many laps I could do before getting pulled.

The race started and it was really fast, much faster then any Sport start. I was in last right at the start of the race and the gap was getting bigger with every second. I caught up to another other rider and we were pretty much in a race against each other by the end of the first lap.

We kept racing pretty much wheel to wheel for 5 laps when the race leader Aaron finally managed to catch up to us and lap us just before the Start/Finish. The other rider stopped riding right away and went to the Start/Finish to DNF his race. I rode by and said I was lapped but then they told us we could keep going if we wanted to and they weren't going to pull us (got so confused). I decided that I didn't want to call it a day so I got back on my bike and kept riding. Now my goal was to not get lapped again. I went out for another lap and was thought that would be my day but then they asked me if I wanted to DNF when I passed the Start/Finish. I thought to myself...no way I'm going to DNF...I haven't DNF'd a single race this year...so I got back to it to finish off the race.

I rode on my own for the rest of the race...getting passed by only a few more riders but they were pretty much just lapping me at this point, so I slowed down and got out of the way so they could keep going hard. Every lap, my team was cheering for me even though they all knew I was out of it. It was great that I had so much support from my friends and teammates.

As I was on the second last lap I just managed to make it to the Start/Finish before Schooler could lap me again so I had just managed to not get double-lapped. I finished off the lap with Dallas and was pretty glad I was able to finish off the race. I think I had a petty good race...it was totally out of my league but I kept going and never gave up. Who knows what will happen next season...but if I can do the race and manage to go 6,7 or a whole race without getting lapped...that would be a great improvement and show me if I've been able to progress in my abilities over the year.

Final result: 9/12 (Down 1 lap)

I found out later there was a crash and two guys DNF'd so I was able to move up a little bit more. I did 9 laps which is the most I've ever done in a 'cross race and kept riding through the pain even though I didn't have to. My dismounts seemed smooth and I was really starting to flow through the course. I have at least 3 more years of racing Elite for the Provincials/Nationals so I might as well get used to it.

Also our team once again dominated the podium. Craig and Devin respectively took Gold and Silver in Master A, while Cindy took Gold in Women B. It's great that so many people on our team had a very successful racing season with lots of representation on the podium. Hopefully next season, I'll be able to see what the view is like from there.

All Photos: Brent Topilko

Beans N' Barley

2009-11-01T19:26:00.000-07:00

Goal for the race: Finish in the top 10

I can't believe it's almost all done for the season. This was the last ABA Cup race and then it's Provincials next week.

Today was a local race, so my parents decided to come out an watch. For some reason I always feel more pressure then usual to do my best because I want them to be proud of what I'm able to accomplish. My last race they got to watch me suffer as I ran up a muddy hill and slid down the other side just barely missing getting lapped in the process so I really wanted to do well today.

The race was at Shagannapi Park which is a really good venue for cross. I did a practice here at the beginning of the 'cross season and I did a Midweek Mayhem race so I knew what kind of terrain to expect. We got a later start then usual which I like because I don't have to get up super early to get my breakfast down in time before pre-race meal cut-off. The weather looks like it was going to be brisk but sunny which is great to race in and the course would probably fairly dry despite the weeks weather.

The course was not overly technical but had quite a bit of off-camber, 2 run-ups, barriers and plenty of steep climbs. All in all..today's race was going to be super painful but super fun as there were lots of people out and Terrascape had 2 members providing color commentary. After doing my warm-up lap and stretching I got to start in time and lined up right at the front this time.

For some reason the Calgary races always have these weird non-countdown surprise starts so I was ready this time for the random start. The starter yelled "Go" and I sprinted hard to stay up in front. I fell a few places going into the first climb as it was pretty tight so we had to file up before going into the technical off-camber section. On the dowhill I lost a few more places as guys were bombing down at full tilt. Then came the first run-up...it seems some people were struggling into this one as I was able to shoulder and run as hard as I could. A few more twists and turns and we got to the 2 steep climbs. I powered my way up each climb and passed a whole bunch of guys.

I dismounted a little early for my first barrier set but got my bike shouldered properly right after and transitioned into the second run-up without losing too much steam. First lap down and I checked to see the damage. I could still see the race leaders and to my surprise I was right up there with Brent. I stayed on his wheel for a bit but then decided to go for a pass. Brent and I rode together pretty much the rest of the race.

I finished off the second lap and I still felt pretty strong. Everytime I went by my parents my mom kept yelling at me to ride harder (I don't think she realizes how much it hurts). Everytime I would get to the first run-up, Tim was there shouting "Get that guy, Kyle, c'mon run harder!". Third lap in, I wasn't sure how many laps I had to do and if my legs would be able to hold on. I think this was my fastest race yet. 4th lap in, Brent put his hand on my back and gave me a little push and told me I was doing awesome and to keep going hard. We had two more laps and I was getting really tired. Each run up hurt more and more.

My last lap I was trying to catch a guy from Pedalhead. I pushed so hard and finally managed to pass him on one of the climbs. I went hard to gap him but after the descent on the second run-up, I couldn't clip in my left pedal so I had to slow down going into the final climb to find my pedal as I needed to power sprint the last climb and go for the finish line. I caught up to him but I wasn't able to pass as the section into the finish line was pretty technical. I finished 1 second behind him.

Result: 6/34

By far my best race this season and it couldn't have come at a better time. It was unbelievable to finish that high up along with Brent who always finishes well in every 'cross race. It wasn't a podium...but for once it was in my sights. I was so glad my parents got to watch me in this race and see all the work I put in all season finally pay off. Also Brent's encouraging push gave me the confidence to keep going hard and push through all the pain in my legs. It was awesome finishing next to him in the race.

It was ironic that a series of firsts took place at one of the last races of the season:

- My first ABA points

- My first series ranking

- My first single digit finish

- My first cash prize

It turned out to be a really good day for the team as well with Craig and Devin placing 4th and 6th respectively in the Elite category. Also for one of my teammates it was his first 'cross race and he managed to stay in to the end without getting lapped. I also wanted to thank everyone for all the cheering and support, it was very much appreciated.

All Photos: Bill Quinney

Pedalhead Roadworks Super Prestige

2009-10-29T17:37:00.001-06:00

*I can't find any photos of this race for some reason

Goal for the race: Finish in the top ten

After the race in Devon, I talked to Brent who wasn't able to come up and he told me to "&*@! that Italian up!" (lol) in the next race. I was prepared to deliver the hurt to Andrew....even if he did manage to beat me...I would ensure that he would be wrecked fighting for his placing.

The course was a pretty simple loop. Not really technical, a pretty big climb, a long sand pit and some pretty high barriers. I was getting worried now...the course looked like it was going to be really fast and favor power over technical skill. The ground was only slightly damp in the forest but for the most part pretty dry. The whole course width was also like 12 feet wide which is rare for a 'cross race so it looked like a go-kart track.

After walking the course, we got changed and rode a few pre-laps. The climbs were pretty decent. Not overly steep but fairly long for a 'cross course. What goes up must come down and there was a long downhill where you could probably easily hit 50km/h through the hardpack and leaves. Then came the sand pit...usually I just ride around them and test to see how deep and firm the sand is. The sand looked like a pretty long run with 2 short steep hills as you came out of it. Then it was a long hard pack straight to the start/finish line.

As usual, I was a little late for the call up and started in 3rd row. There were more guys out today and a few mountain bikes. Once again...this course was made for 'cross bikes. Another proper start and we were off. The pace started out fast going into the first climb and was single file going into the first descent. I sprinted up the next climb to pass the mountain bikers as they are usually harder to get around on the barriers. I gained a few places on the barriers but lost some as some riders were rocketing down the first downhill.

Then it was the big long climb...I grinded up to the top and was glad I put on my mud tires. Grip was not an issue today but I was worried if my legs could pace the climb another 4-5 times. I was able to get my positions back on the climb but was taking the downhill a little slower then most...I didn't know what was beneath all the leaves so I though it best to follow other riders and play it safe the first couple laps. Then came the sand pit...I was able to see ahead and everyone was riding it! I had to make a decision on the spot...if I wanted to stay in the race I'd have to attempt to ride through the sand. I sped up, stayed to where everyone was riding and pedaled through. I almost made it all the way but ended up in deep sand trying not to run into another rider.

Second lap I was still feeling really strong. I caught up to Andrew who told me that his legs just weren't firing today....so much for putting the screws to him today. On the downhills lines were being made in the leaves for me to follow. It was time to start taking numbers. I would target a rider, bridge and then pass. After each pass I would see another rider to bridge up to. I got to the sand and made it all the way through and didn't feel totally drained.

Each lap I was passing more riders. Some were tired from going out hard at the start but many seemed to be struggling on the climbs. The barriers werepretty high so that was catching some riders wheels slowing them down a bit. Even though my legs hurt I just kept on the gas. I wanted a top 10 finish today. Around the 3rd lap I passed my "nemesis"...I thought for sure he'd try and get me on the sand again but he was spinning the climbs.

When the final lap came I could see I was catching up to the second chase group. I kept going hard but I was passed by a rider on the downhill. I tried to stay with him during the climb but he was really pouring it on. I took the downhill faster then ever...going into full tuck and off the brakes. I blasted through the sand and sprinted for the start/finish.

Result: 10/30

Finally...I got my top 10 finish. I thought I was in the top 8 during my final lap...and I probably was but I let a couple riders get away from me. At the start of the race I was actually worried I was going to be lapped during this race so it was great to have a top third result. I feel I raced one of my strongest races and did everything right this race. I felt confident in myself during the race and just went hard the whole time. It was a great way to finish off another racing weekend. Only 2 more races remaining.

Devon Dairy Queen Double Dipper

2009-10-28T19:14:00.000-06:00

Goal for the race: Finish in the top 10

After waking up fairly early and enjoying a fine continental breakfast at the Super 8 Motel (LOL!) we drove out to Devon for the first race. It was fairly brisk outside, but it was supposed to warm up to +5 or something, still better then the snowstorm in Calgary. For 'cross I much prefer the cooler weather...I don't reach for the water bottle that isn't on my bike.

After talking to a couple United Cycle guys they were showing us two of the new features "never before seen in a 'cross race:. The first was the Heemer Humps (dedicated to Elite 'crosser Tim Heemskerk) and the second the was The Clam (or Agitator). Unfortunately after the commisaire walked the course the Heemer Humps were removed for safety reasons so we just got to do the Agitator. The barriers were a little shorter then usual and the sand pit was super short...so that's considered rideable. The climb was a little muddy but the guys said it was a run-up during the afternoon yesterday...so were lucky as the climb was only a little tacky when we started. After doing a couple laps, it looked like this course was going to favor technical skill over power and mountain bikes would be at a disadvantage in our race.

This time we got a real countdown so we had a good sprint start. I started in second row but was not able to move up during the sprint so I was near the back of the pack. When we got to the hill I was able to ride up no problem but then a rider got stuck almost at the peek so I had to dismount to run around him. The top of the climb was extremely rutted so it was hard trying to find a line to put your bike back into for the descent. After the descent, came a few hairpins and then a fast turn into the sand pit. A couple guy were having to dismount to make it through the sand so I gained about 4 positions on myfirstshot through. Then it was on to the Agitator...this was so trippy. The video I posted below will show what it is...but pretty much it's a giant corkscrew which winds into the centre, hairpins and winds back out. Going through, it was hard to tell if riders were in front or behind you, as you were almost brushing shoulders going opposite ways...very cool.

The next lap, I rode pretty much by myself. Third lap I caught up to Andrew who had a huge gap on me. I passed him on the climb but he managed to bridge up and rode on my wheel for the next 2 laps. I didn't really mind as he was pushing me to keep going strong and we managed to catch a few more riders. All of a sudden I was leading the third chase group. On the last lap I just managed to gap Andrew on the climb as I cut in front of him trying to make the final push up the steepest part and forced him to dismount. I managed to a pass a couple more riders and figured I was sitting somewhere in the top 10. I went out as hard as I could...sprinting out of every corner to gap the riders behind me but I was losing time on the technical sections as I was having some traction issues on the wet grass. Andrew also managed to pass the other riders and was sticking on my wheel as we navigated the technical section.

When I got to the final stretch, I had a slight gap on Andrew so I switched into my big ring and started hammering for the finish. I looked behind and Andrew was closing the gap. I pedaled as hard as my legs would let me, but he was able to catch up and suddenly we were side-by-side in a sprint battle for the finish. I looked down and noticed he was gaining on me...why was the finish line so far? As I got to the finish line, Andrew managed to make a final push to gain a half-wheel on me just as we crossed the line. Wow...what an awesome way to finish a race. Andrew pushed me so hard for the finish that I almost puked when it was all over.

Result: 11/23

I missed 10th place by half a wheel and had been sitting in 10th for most of the last lap. It was a great battle in the end and it was great learning experience on what to do next time. Andrew raced really well and he made me push hard throughout the race (even if he did suck wheel for the last quarter of the race...hahaha). It was awesome to be able to finish with him as he is a much stronger 'cross rider then I am.

Below is a video by the Hardcore team of the Elite Men's race.
Note: Andre Sutton broke his chain at the start of the race...fixed it, started the race half a lap behind and finished 9/19...it was amazing to watch him get back in to the race after he was faced with the possibility of having to DNF.

CX Racing Weekend Part 3

2009-10-27T12:48:00.000-06:00

It's still October? I can't believe this will be my third set of races in the same month.

Andrew kinda twisted my arm into going up to Devon and Edmonton on the weekend to race another series of double-headers. These would be my 6th and 7th cross races.

I really haven't trained as hard as I thought I would because of time constraints lately but managed to get in the last Midweek Mayhem race and a few session on the turbo trainer.

Taking a look at the weather reports, it looked like it was going to rain a little going into the weekend which meant in would probably be a little muddy in Devon. Learning from my experience at the Oval race, I decided to run a set of mud tires for the weekend and set the tire pressure down to just under minimum recommended pressure.

The first race was going to be the Dairy Queen Double Dipper in Devon. I read the technical guide and really wanted to do this race because they had "2 new obstacles never before seen in a 'cross race" and that of course piqued my interest.

The second race was the Pedalhead Roadworks Super Prestige in Edmonton and promised to be a really fast course no matter what the weather conditions.

Andrew and I booked a hotel in Leduc and drove up right after work on Friday night for yet another weekend of CX fun (or pain).

Remington Cross For Kids

2009-10-20T20:56:00.000-06:00

Goal for Race: Finish in the top half

Double-header races are funny. After every 'cross race, I feel totally spent, can barely feel my legs and my back is killing me. But then, for some reason, I always thinks it's going to be awesome to race again the next day. Next day comes around, my legs still hurt, I run a few laps...and I'm ready to go again. I must love pain.

Despite the title, today's race was definetely not a race for kids....although all the money they made from our suffering was. I woke up and checked the weather and it looked like they were expected sleet during the morning. It was sort of half-raining on my way to the course this morning...which could be a really good thing...or a really bad thing. The weather certainly always makes 'cross a more interesting sport.

As I said before the course was changed the day before the race because COP had decided to start putting snow on the hill early so we were moved the west side of the bobsled track. Keith B. had very little room to work with but somehow designed an absolute masterpiece of a course...probably even better then the original course. It had leg burning climbs, technical descents, flowy hairpins, stair run-up and ultra-long sand pit.

We all lined up for the start, which was on paved uphill climb, and had another surprise start. 30 seconds...15 seconds (5 seconds passed)....GO!!! I think some people were caught off guard...some way to anxious but it was a sprint to be the first to the top of the hill.

The first lap went pretty fast but you could tell who had not fully recovered from yeterday's race. The climb was a killer and in 'cross you never have time to fully recover. As I rolled around to the second climb and I sprinted and caught about 5 riders. Then the sand pit came...which was rideable except for the sharp right-hand turn in the middle. The strategy here was to go as fast as possible into the sand, dismount and shoulder while your bike was still plowing through.

Then run for a the other half of the pit. This also turned out to a place where I pass many riders who had a hard time running and even those foolish enough to try and ride the whole section.

Second lap went well and was starting to wonder how many tims I could do the hill. My legs were also starting to burn while trying to run through the sand pit. I finished off the second lap, checked the counter to see how many laps were left, saw 4 and thought to myself "Are you serious??? I can't even do one more".

Going into fourth lap I had caught a group of four riders spinning up the hill and could see my teammate up ahead. One of my teammates yelled at me to attack and I dug deep and went hard to not only pass the group but bridge up to my teammate, Craig. As Craig and I are matched in 'cross ability my new plan was to stick to his wheel as long as possible and work as a team. Craig was taking awesome lines and it made it much easier having someone to race with. Craig is better technically then I am so he would gap me on the technical sections and I would catch up on the sand pit. On the climb we were always side-by-side. We stayed together for the remainder of the laps.

On the final lap we pushed hard. We caught more riders that just couldn't go anymore and I stayed as close as I could to Craig's wheel. I thought that if I could stay with him into the sand...I might be able to edge him out on te run. Craig went hard on the hills and gapped me so I was a little behind going into the sand. I went in full-bore into the sand pit, swung my right leg over and then my left shoe got stuck in the pedals as I tried to unclip. I ended up falling over into the sand and lost Craig while I fumbled around to shoulder my bike. I ran as hard as I could for the end but he was already on his way to the climb. I sprinted hard when I got to the climb but couldn't catch him...he beat by 7 seconds (which is the same time I beat him by the day before).

Result: 12/32

What a great race. One of my best results so far. I had a super clean race and only had the one mishap in the sand. I felt really good about my results and felt I had done almost everything well. Craig told me after the race then even if I caught him on the sand he wouldn't have let me beat him on the hill, he was saving his energy in the last lap for a sprint climb during the race in case I passed him in the sand section.

Keith and the rest of the Midweek Mayhem crew did an awesome job on the course and Midweek Mayhem held an awesome event.

I stayed the whole day and got to witness a scene that could only happen in 'cross. Keith and Jeff Neilson were in a tight battle for last place. After trying to see who could make the other puke first on the climb, they decided to spar in the sand pits with their bikes. Keith won the fight and left Jeff to suffer alone up the hill. Another lap later, Keith decided that he had enough of his own sufferfest...and needed a push up the hill. 'Cross is freakin' awesome!

Deadgoat Blow Street Super Cross

2009-10-19T21:02:00.000-06:00

Goal for the race: Finish in the top half

Today’s race looked like it was going to be a good time: High of +15C, most of the snow gone and an awesome looking course.

I got to the site to help setup a little later the everyone else due to the fact I arrived home at 10pm the night before...by the time I arrived most of the course had already been done.

After setup finished, I got changed, did a couple warm-up laps and lined up for the race. The field was another great turnout, 33 in all. The race started with a long pavement straight away which put us into a single file peloton right away. The next part was pretty twisty so the straight was a battle for position going into the technical section. The first tight section we already had a couple crashes as we were all going pretty fast on some pretty sketchy terrain. My goal for the race was to try and stick to my teammates, Ken’s, wheel. Being that he is a stronger rider then I am, he could help me push a higher pace that I normally would have. Going into second lap , I still had him in my sights but was falling back a few position. I was on the wheel of a rider who was riding kinda sketchy so at the next straight I decided to go for a pass so I could get him before the upcoming left hand turn…all of a sudden…he makes a sharp right turn right into my front wheel which needless to say, takes me out, hard.

As I recovered from the crash about 4-5 riders that I was leading passed me. Determined I got back on my bikes and went out to try and get my position back. It took me about 2 laps but I was able to catch up to the rider that took me out and gap him on the straight away. As I passed him going into 4rd lap the rider apologized for taking me out…and although it’s part of racing and stuff happens, it was really a classy thing to do, so I told him thanks and that it was no problem. I had lost Ken’s wheel but I managed to battle back for my position. Later on in the lap I took a turn too hot in the mud, slipped out and crashed again. I picked up my bike and kept riding but noticed my handle bar was bent and my brake levers were caked in mud…but I was going to have to deal with this…there’s no time to stop in ‘cross and who needs brakes anyways?

As the race went on I found myself riding with my teammate Craig for the most part. Craig is an awesome mountain biker and this was his first ‘cross race so it was great that we were able to stay together. We both worked hard and bridged up to a group of riders who had smoked me at the Oval ‘cross race so I wanted to try and stay with them for a bit. Every time I would pass by Tim, he would yell “Attack Kyle!” and as I tried to attack, the group of guys in front would just hammer to try and gap me.

On the last lap I finally managed to pass a couple riders and then I was suddenly right behind my nemesis. My nemesis for the race was the rider who beat me in the Oval race by deciding to ride through the sand on his last lap and beating me by a few seconds to the finish. On the last stretch I was constantly trying to cut the hairpins sharp to try and beat him but he kept blocking me at every attempt. He got away from me in the last 100 meters but I kept going hard anyways. As I eyed the finish line, another rider was right behind me…I sprinted hard for the finish line and just managed to beat him…by 3 inches.

Result: 16/33

What a finish, just barely achieved my goal. That was one of the closest finishes I’ve had and probably one of the most exciting. After we crossed the finish line, there were handshakes all around…it was an awesome battle at the end. Although I took a couple bails, the race was still stupid amounts of fun. I only finished about a minute back from Ken so I felt pretty good about that. A teammate came up and said he was really impressed that even after my crashes; I got up and battled for my position…so that put me in a really good mood.

CX Racing Weekend Part 2

2009-10-16T13:27:00.000-06:00

Well, after leaving the city for few weeks to get away from the premature winter, I was surprised to see that I would get to race in some awesome weather.

When I got back home from the airport I had about 10 hours to eat, get all my stuff ready, check my bike over, sleep, eat and get down to the race site to help set up.

The first race was the Deadgoat Blow Street Super Cross race so it was probably going to be a pretty big turnout from my team as always and the course looked like it was going to be tons of fun. Awesome seeing most of the team again and cheering them on.

The second race was at COP and was hosted by Midweek Mayhem who are the group who put on the Tuesday night crit and ‘cross series. The course had apparently been setup at the minute last due to COP opening for skiing and snowboarding a little earlier than usual which of course is where the previous course was going to be setup.

All in all it looked like it was going to be an awesome way to finish off my vacation from work even though I hadn’t touched a bike in just over a week. Wonder what the conditions are going to be like...

Oval Cyclocross Race

2009-10-07T17:17:00.000-06:00

Goal: Don’t get lapped
Secondary goal: Finish in the top half

“So you had some much on Saturday night at the Dark Knight ‘Cross you just can’t wait to race again.”
The technical guide makes it seem like such a great idea. Same race again...in less than 24 hours...why not?

Well just as the guide said it was the same course...but totally different conditions. Even though the course should have been engrained in our minds after having raced it yesterday...the conditions “modified” it to be almost a totally different race.

A race start decision had been made to cut off much of the off-camber steep sections as many people were forced to walk/drag their bikes through much of it because of the mud. It was going to be a few hundred meters shorter...but I’m sure the laps took almost the same amount of time to run as they were slower than the day before.

The race started and right away after the barriers I could see how the race was going to go. I decided to shoulder my bike and run up the hill as it was extremely muddy on the descent and I wasn’t sure if I’d have any traction. On the off-camber top section I made a decision that pretty much cost me the race. I decided to dismount and run the whole top section as I saw guy sliding out and thought it’d be faster. I was getting passed on my run and I kept slipping anyways so that idea turned out to be a bust.

The next few laps I was still shouldering on the run up and trying not to slip and fall while carrying my bike on the descent but I decided to ride the top off-camber section to make up some time. It was about this time that it started to become more and more difficult to clip into my pedals because my cleats and my pedals were clogged with mud and grass. By the last lap I was losing time (and places) from having to slow down to bang my shoes on my pedals just to be able to clip in to pedals up the climbs. The last lap I had to run a climb because I couldn’t get my pedals unclogged and ride the off-camber section with my shoes sliding all over the pedals.

My last lap was pretty much déjà-vu from the night before. There were two of us side-by-side going to the running sand section. I was running as hard as I could when I heard a sound to my right. One of the riders decided to ride the sand section. He was going super hard and was beating me through the section. I secretly hoped he would tire out and be forced to dismount but he kept going. There was no way I could catch up because he didn’t have to remount. After the race I went up to the rider and told him that was awesome that he rode that...he said he only rode it that one time because he figured he had enough energy to do it only once.

Result: 23/30 (did not get lapped)

Not close to what I wanted but I know what I did wrong in that race right from the get go. Really this race came down to 2 things...tire pressure and tire choice. Had I run the right pressure I probably would have been able to ride the steep section and probably would have been able to descend. I would have also been able to go a lot faster on the off-camber section because I wouldn’t be trying to control the sliding. I’m still building up my collection of ‘cross tires but I’m sure a set of mud tires might have made a difference.

Oh well...it still felt like a real cross race...fun and muddy.

- Kyle

The Dark Knight Is Upon Us

2009-10-06T17:23:00.000-06:00

Goal for the race: Have Fun!
Secondary Goal: Finish in the top third

My equipment was packed, my bike tuned up and my legs fresh. This race was going to be epic.

I got to the race site quite early so I would have time to change and do a few warm-up laps. After finally getting all my layers on and doing a few warm-up laps, my initial impressions were that it was going to favour power over technical skills. The course seems to be divided into two parts, the first part consisting of many short, steep off-camber climbs and the second part being flat with plenty of hairpin turns and 2 sand sections.

I decided to race category C for this race and it turned out to be the largest group. Even before the race started there were plenty of my teammates out. I must have counted about 9 of us which was great to see. We were told that the group was going to consist of 65 racers...this was going to be chaos. Awesome.

After meeting up and talking to some of my teammates I lined up and got ready to put this race into the books. I looked behind and there was a huge crowd of bikes, plenty of spectators and lots of smiles. When the whistle finally went, I went out hard. I wanted to get in the top tier of racers so I wouldn’t get stuck behind big bottlenecks. This paid off as the as I went came upon the first descent there were already 2 riders down. After I cleared them, I could hear more riders crashing behind me. The pace was pretty fast and I could already see the top riders pulling away. During the first lap I decided on the fly to see if it was possible to ride the sand section. I made it about a quarter of the way before it was too hard to steer and I had to dismount and run the rest of the section.

Second lap was a little more spread out so I could start grabbing onto wheels and picking off people. Even though I tried to remain focused on the race I could feel the excitement in the air and could tell the crowd was enjoying the show. I was also starting to see that people on mountain bikes had a little bit of an advantage as they had lower gearing for the climbs and were able to ride the sand parts when I had to dismount and run.

My second last lap I was taking a steep descent and was braking with only my rear brake for whatever reason. I was going pretty fast and went to make the hairpin turn when my back wheel slid out and I somehow manage to turn a near crash into an awesome drift into the hairpin. A rider cam eup to me during the lap and said "Dude that was amazing, how did you do that?" and I said "that's a cycling tip I like to call luck, you can have that one".

During the my last lap I went out a little bit harder to finish up the race. I remember someone calling out "on your left" during the second half of the lap and went out even harder to try and gap the person behind me. I did a quick check and the rider was on a mountain bike which means I had to develop a good gap so that they wouldn't be able to beat me on the sand section. The sand section came u and I dismounted and started running. The rider behind me was suddenly side-by-side riding though the sand. I started going into a full out sprint and was able to beat her to the end of the section. I went out hard into the final 100 meters and finished off just a split second ahead of the other rider.

Results: 26/65??? (The results are so messed up...but that's why they pulled the race out of the ABA schedule).

The race definitely lived up to all the hype. It was so much fun. Probably the most fun I’ve had in a race. The course had a lot of variety and the weather was great for racing (although maybe not so great for spectators). During the race, I truly felt like a professional ‘cross racer, from the loud music, to the constant clanging of cowbells to the camera flashes in the dark, I felt like a world class athlete. A bunch of my friends came out to watch the race and that made it a memorable event for me. I can’t wait to do the race next year and I hope anyone who is reading this, who enjoys biking, comes out and gives it a try as well.

- Kyle

All photos: Bill Quinney

CX Weekend Part 1

2009-10-06T16:48:00.000-06:00

Well,

I’m currently in Beautiful British Columbia taking a much needed break from work and training, so I finally have some time to post about my races this past weekend.

Some of you may know I have been waiting a whole year for this event. For half a whole season I’ve had to deal with all the guys on the team telling me how much fun this race was last year and it was annoying me...because I was gong to do the race last year but something more important came up.

I remember constantly checking the registration during the weeks leading up to this race as I wanted my spot secured. There was a field limit of 60 people per category and the amount of buzz generated about the event meant it would probably fill up super fast. When registration was finally available, my friend Brent phoned me and I got my spot right away.

So why the big fuss over this race in particular?

Well, it’s ‘cross so it’s already guaranteed fun but this one is at night with loud music, crowds and lots of cowbell. I’ve watched so many euro ‘cross races and it looked like we were going to have one of our own. The race was also removed from the ABA schedule which meant that it wouldn’t count for anything and was to be a fun event. The Oval race the next day would be the ABA race so that one was a little more important and it was only for the licensed racers.

The week leading up to the race was a constant visit to the Weather Network website as they were predicting cold weather and 5-10cm of snow for the day for the race. This changed pretty much every day and finally it settled on just being cold with a maybe a little bit of rain and maybe a bit of snow.

The next day, some of us would be racing the same course but during the day and probably worse conditions.

Campus Cross Madness

2009-09-21T23:12:00.000-06:00

Goal for the race: Don't get lapped

Finally, the kickoff to the ABA Cyclocross series.

This race appeared out of nowhere as the Midweek Mayhem series opener was moved because of a conflict with the Bow 80 race. I wasn't doing the Bow 80 (which turned out to be a good decision) so I went to this to get a real race in before the Dark Knight race.

The Friday before the race I was at a season wind-up party with the rest of the team and it seemed I was the only one not doing the Bow 80 (which turned out to be a bust as 3/4 of the field DNF'd due to weather...but congrats to those that did finish...you guys are crazy!).

The race took place at the Red Deer College campus and I was glad to get out and race in much nicer weather conditions. I went down with a friend from Bicisport whom I've been practicing and racing with the past few months so that made the drive seem much shorter.

The course was really interesting. It had pretty much everything jammed into one race which made it a lot of fun. There was a sweeping turn on a baseball diamond, 2 runs through a volleyball court, off-camber barrier set, steep run-up, sketchy descent, some single track through the woods, a few hairpin turns and a fast gravel road section. Not much elevation on the course so there were a few power sections.

The amount of running worried me as I still had a huge bruise on my right-shoulder (the shoulder where I put my bike during running sections) so I wasn't sure how I'd be able to cope with the pain. A teammate said to me that my legs will probably hurt so much during the race that I'd forget about my shoulder.

The race started kinda abrutly with no countdown or anything so that was a little odd and that caught me off guard. I ended up in the back pretty quickly and was conserving my energy as you don't know how laps you need to do until 2 laps in. My dismounts were going pretty smoothly and I barely noticed any pain in my shoulder. I was bracing the downtube with my arm to take some pressure off so that might of helped. The off-camber uphill barriers were what really messed me up, I kept catching them with my front tire or barely made it over.

During the first lap and second there was carnage on the steep downhill section. So many crashes as guys were taking it way too fast and not being able to make the sharp left hand turn at the bottom. I gained about 3 positions after the first crash as I somehow manuvered around the fallen riders. Canti's don't stop bikes...they just slow them down!

As the race progressed I was playing cat and mouse with a few guys the entire race. I would catch up on the running sections but they would just hammer the straight-aways. The last few laps the wind was just brutal. I had to go onto my drops and try to just power through even though my legs were killing me. The running through the sand almost became the best part of the course.

Near the end of the race the thing that was really hurting was my back. Super rough single-track on a rigid aluminum bike...not good. My back took a lot of punishment during the race and I couldn't wait to finish it off, if only to stretch out my back a little.

Result: 16/28 (did not get lapped)

Not bad for my first race. I was racing in the Sport category which includes both Cat 4/5 Road categories and Novice/Sport mountain bike categories so I felt that I did fairly well racing against guys who had a few season under their belts. I felt I did everything pretty good and didn't have any crashes or bails. I just need to develop more power through the straights, gauge my energy reserves a little better and get faster at remounting. I also didn't trip on any barriers or on the run-ups like I thought I would. I really enjoyed the course and now anxiously awaiting the Dark Knight 'cross race.

- Kyle

COP Fall XC Race

2009-09-18T20:52:00.000-06:00

Goal for the race: Have fun!

This race had been circulating the Alberta biking clubs to see if there was an interest in reviving a weeknight XC racing series. I decided to attend this event purely to show some support for the idea so that we might have a training race series next year. I had no intention of going out super hard as I had a real race coming up.

This was going to be my last mountain bike race of the season so I decided I would just take it easy and have fun (although technically I should always be racing for fun). At first we were told we would be racing the CCC course which is a really easy 3 km course...which would have been 30 minutes of racing at $20. Closer to the date it was announced that we would be doing the World Cup XC Course. My category was set to do 3 laps of the roughly 5 km course.

I arrived at the site pretty early and after registering for the race, I went to bust off a quick pre-ride lap. The first half of the course was the Giver-8-er and the second half was the CCC course. The one part that worried me was the single track dowhill that had been turned in a stream from the earlier thundershower.

We all lined up for the mass start which was going to be a LeMan's start (running about 80m to your bike). The whistle blew and I went out into a light run...which turned out to be a bad idea mainly because when I got to the first climb I ended up soft pedaling behind a bunch of people who were dismountng to walk up. There was nowhere to pass on the tight single-track so that was about the point where I would no longer be able to contest the top 3.

There was an area of the course that I had ridden at least 10 times that had a skinny bridge to a sharp left turn. I called out to the rider behind me there was a bridge and I was going pretty fast. I went to make the turn into the single track and my wheel slipped off the bridge and got stuck in a rut catapulting me off my bike. I crashed pretty hard and ended up smashing my right shoulder into a root (later on I found out I had just missed breaking my collarbone). I picked up my bike and checked to see if anything broken and kept going.

The single-track down the stream was super slick, really muddy and took a toll on my drivetrain. On the hills my small gear was locking up my chain, forcing me to either run up steep hills or hammer out the climbs in my middle gear during the rest of the race.

The next 2 laps were fairly straight forward. No more crashes or close calls and pretty much jsut raced my race. It was a really fun course, except for the 200m down a stream of mud each lap.

Result: 5/8

When I finished the race which took me about an hour with the top time being 45min I washed off with my water bottle and went inside for a BBQ. At the BBQ it was announced that COP will really try to bring in a XC series next year based on the turnout. Hopefully this makes a return and more people in Calgary will be able to participate in a fun local race with no pressure. The only issues we could think of was that $20 a race is way too much to charge every week so that will have to come down if they want a good number of people to come out and race.

I'm looking forward to see what transpires and hopefully more people will come out and see what racing is all about and help revive the XC MTB scene in Calgary.

- Kyle

Cyclocross Rhymes with Pain

2009-09-12T17:50:00.000-06:00

Since I won't be having any major races for a little while I thought I'd do a write up on my first cyclocross race experience.

So, what is Cyclocross?

The short answer: It's a portion of road biking, with a side of mountain biking, a sprinkle of steeplechase and a dash of running served with a nice tall glass of pain. Sounds like chaos? Well, quite frankly...it is...but it's insanely fun.

I have honestly been waiting all season to do cyclocross. This is the reason I wanted to race this season. It's probably the most pain you'll ever experience in 30 - 45 minutes...but at the end you can't help but smile.

The kickoff race was in Laycock park and Keith B. did an awesome job of throwing together a great course that did not disappoint....although it would be awesome to emerge covered head to toe in mud...it's not Europe and I'm sure we all want to be able to use the park next year.

My first race went pretty good. I didn't get lapped and I could see the race leaders for the most part. Not sure where I finished...but really...I was having to0 much fun to care.

The turnout as you can see below was incredible.

Jumping the barrier...this sport is ridiculous

Really...this is fun....though the picture suggests otherwise

If you've never been in a bike race but you want to try...I highly suggest you give 'cross a try. The community is awesome, the atmosphere is positive and we are all out here just having a blast. You don't even need to own a 'cross bike...a mountain bike will do, no one will judge you...I swear!

Don't own a bike? Come out anyways and watch some awesome bike racing, have some entertaining conversation and enjoy the last days of summer/fall.

Bike racing ain't over yet so come out and see what it's all about. Never before has pain been so much fun!

- Kyle

Speed Theory Stage Race - Day 2: Road Race

2009-08-26T21:39:00.001-06:00

Goal for the race: Finish in the top half
Secondary Goal: Don't get dropped

"Stay out of the wind"

Those were last words I heard from Cyrus before we went to the staging area. Those five short words were the most important words one could give as advice and it echoed in my head throughout the race. We could feel it in the staging area...today's race was going to be an open road battle against the wind.

The race was going to be two 35km laps on the northeast portion of the new ring road. The only major elevation changes were the turnaround at 16th ave and the turnaround at Metis Trail.

We lined up and a pace car led us out. As we got settled into the pack it seems more like a Sunday afternoon ride then a race. We stayed at a pretty neutral pace with no attacks and no breakaways for the first lap because of the strong wind. I did a few shorts pulls at the front and could see why we were all staying together. The wind was brutal. Near the end of the first lap, one rider attempted an attack but was shutdown in a matter of seconds. Going off by yourself into the wind was tactical suicide.

After we completed the first lap and went into a second a group of riders attacked into the second lap. I saw the attack and tried to jump on a wheel. My legs just weren't ready...I tried to hang on but my legs would not push any more. The whole pack surged past me and I got dropped. I tried to close in on a wheel but the strong wind was resisting my efforts.

As I saw the pack pull away, I looked back to see who else got dropped. I kept pushing and then I heard the words I thought I would never hear in a Cat 5 race....

"Guys, let's work together and catch back on"

5 of us then grouped together, formed an echelon paceline and rotated turns at the front. Everyone pushed hard and soon we grabbed a couple other riders who got dropped. There was a section of the road that was extremely bumpy and was pretty much just a pavement patch job...so water bottles were getting bumped out of the cages and some riders were getting a few inches of air. We were really close to catching up when all of a sudden my bike hit a hidden bump in the road...my right hand was knocked from my handlebar and my front wheel was going crazy...I knew I was going to crash...

I managed to get my right hand back on my hood and correct my wheel. For a split second I thought it was all over...the adrenaline gave me that extra boost to help me push the last few hundred meters to catch back onto the pack. After I caught back on I thanked all the guys for making the effort to catch back on and then moved my way up the peloton.

We rolled as a pack down the last 16km stretch. As I wasriding beside one of the guys who had helped me get back to the pack, I said things looked way to calm and something was going to happen. During the last 10km it finally started to feel like a race and not a fast pace group ride. The were constant attacks and with every surge I responded right away to shut them down. Every small gap I jumped on a wheel and bridged.

I then starting watching my GPS very closely. I was waiting for the last 2km. As we approached the last kms things started to get chaotic...the attacks were becoming more aggressive...the leaders was weaving all over the road to try and shake the pack. I followed every move and at one point a rider rubbed his wheel on mine...I remembered how to deal with this from my road clinic and was able to get him off my wheel.

We approched the gate indicating the last km and now sleepers in the pack were all coming out in full force. I jumped a wheel and just went as hard as I could. I was pushing harder then I thought I could and it felt like my legs were just going cease up. I crossed the finish line and could only see about 9 or 10 riders in front of me.

Result: 11/32

It's hard to believe the it was probably less then a second difference between the guy in first place and me. When I started racing this season I never thought I'd be racing road as well so I'm glad to have done well in my second road race of the year.

On a side not: This was the first time since high school social class that Zane, Cyrus and I were all together in the same place...crazy!

Congrats to all my friends for their hard work and great results. And a big thanks to everyone who cheered me on and came out to watch the races....it makes a huge difference.

Also props to Speed Theory for putting on this awesome event. I can't wait until next year's races.

Now onto the next chapter of my season: Cyclocross

Speed Theory Stage Race - Day 1: Crit Redemption

2009-08-23T08:39:00.001-06:00

Goal for the race: Finish the race without getting lapped.

Well, I skipped the time trial for a couple reasons:

- 40km is a long way , especially if you've never done a TT, and this was the longest one of the year

- I wanted to save my legs to do well in the criterium

I got to the site just in time to see Cyrus fly past us in the ITT and grab second place.

Then after catching up and chatting with him then a few other riders I went to get ready and do a few warmup laps around the course.

This course was pretty interesting for a crit. Gradual climb, 3 hairpins, long straightaway. I had never done a race with a hairpin before...but I had pretty practicing a couple days earlier doing them so I wouldn't be as nervous taking them in the pack. The crit was also 40min + 3 laps which will be the longest crit I've ever done.

I lined up and went right to the front this time. We did a pace lap and then we were off.

Everything was going a lot more slowly then I expected...no one made a move at all until 3rd lap when I (stupidly) decided to attack and push the pace a little. All of a sudden I had a 30 foot lead on the pack going up a hill into a huge headwind....such a bad idea. Things were starting to heat up now.

This time I was determined to not let the break get away from me. As soon as I saw people moving up...I jumped on a wheel and moved up with them. Then 2 riders decided to make a break and the pack splintered into 4 main groups. 2 riders up front, 8 guys in the chase group and I was in the 2nd chase group of 5 and I think there was a group of 10 behind us.

We stayed together a good portion of the race eventually catching a rider that fell off the first chase group riding by himself and then we sorta managed to work together. We rotated our pulls but sometimes people would go off the front and have to slow down to join back up. We could pretty much see the entire race anywhere on the course. We saw the first chase pack catch the break so we were now the chase pack. We had them in our sights the whole time but just couldn't pull it together to bridge up.

When it was finally the last lap we picked up the pace a little but still couldn't catch up with the main pack. I can't believe I lasted as long as I did in this crit. I surveyed the field as we did the last climb and it looked like we were back about 300 meters on the main pack. I was really happy even before the race ended. I did my final sprint as per custom to make everyone suffer for their placing.

Result: 12/30

I quite proud of my result. My last crit was pretty discouraging, so this was redemption. I think I can finally stop beating myself up over the Bow crit.

Speed Theory Jason Lapierre Memorial Stage Race

2009-08-22T21:47:00.000-06:00

This is a race that a lot of people were waiting for.

2 day-3 event stage race, new pavement, no cars and a chance for an interesting series of races using the new ring road overpasses. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity not to be missed.

The 3 events were:

40 km individual time trial (ITT)
Criterium (Crit)
Road Race (RR)

For me there was a little more to it. Cyrus told me he was considering coming down for the race. As soon as he confirmed he was coming down...I signed up for 2 of the races (crit and road race). It's been over a year since I last saw him and I was stoked to finally watch him race.

The week leading up was pretty crappy...but it looked like summer was finally going to arrive in Calgary, just in time for the race.

Crit Racing

2009-08-12T23:07:00.000-06:00

Normally I don't post about the Midweek Mayhem crit races because:

a) They are training races
b) They don't really count for anything
c) They are almost social get togethers

A friend sent me something, which I have attached at the bottom of the post, and it inspired me to post this up.

When I did my first crit race back in May, I remember starting in the B group as there wasn't a C group yet, and getting dropped after the first two laps. I was then lapped 3-4 times by the main pack while I made several attempts to rejoin and hang on. While it was a little discouraging...I knew this was going to happen my very first race.

The next 2 weeks I decided to race with the C group which is the novice category and generally ride a little slower as everyone in the group is still mostly new to crit racing. I was really learning how to pace myself and stay at the higher intensity for longer periods of time. It was also much less discouraging because I didn't have to ride alone and it's easier to learn when you have a group to learn with. I was able to test my sprint ability as well as do attacks and pulls.

After my race in Edmonton, Keith, had said to me that I should moving up into the B group. The following week I raced my last race with C (Keith called me out before the race but I was feeling pretty tired from mountain bike racing on the weekend).

The following week I started racing in B and got dropped after 3 laps. I went back to the start and joined up with the C group to finish off the race. The week after I started again with B and got dropped afer 5 laps. I managed to form a paceline with 2 other dropped riders and we kept ourselves from getting lapped by the main pack by alternating pulls.
After the race I got some really good advice from another B racer on how to stay with the pack and how to race smarter.
The following week I managed to stay with the B group the whole race and managed one attack into the last lap. I finished somewhere in the middle but I finished. The next week I had to skip as my racing bike was in the shop so I rode up on my cross bike and marshalled the B group.

This past Tuesday I finished in 5th place in the B and got my first points. Although these are training races...for me this showed some progress in my training. Don't get me wrong...crits are still hurt...and I still suffer...but I find I'm able to cope with the intensity a lot longer then when I started. Some people hate crits...but I love them....I love the intensity, the speed and the fact that you can always learn something new. I consider the crits a integral part of my training and so far this season I have only missed one. Now things to try and do would be contesting primes, attacking, counter-attacking, pulling off the front and staging a breakaway.

It seems I am learning the meaning of Greg Lemond's famous cycling quote:

“It doesn't get easier; you just get faster”

I checked my computer and I was with the group averaging 41km/h per lap...when I first started I never thought I'd be there 3 months later keeping up at that pace.

Anyways, I thought I throw this in here just to remind me of how important it is to not give up.

Quote:

"As my friend was passing the elephants, he suddenly stopped, confused by the fact that these huge creatures were being held by only a small rope tied to their front leg. No chains, no cages. It was obvious that the elephants could, at anytime, break away from the ropes they were tied to but for some reason, they did not.

My friend saw a trainer nearby and asked why these beautiful, magnificent animals just stood there and made no attempt to get away."Well," he said, "when they are very young and much smaller we use the same size rope to tie them and, at that age, it's enough to hold them. As they grow up, they are conditioned to believe they cannot break away. They believe the rope can still hold them, so they never try to break free." My friend was amazed. These animals could at any time break free from their bonds but because they believed they couldn't, they were stuck right where they were.

Like the elephants, how many of us go through life hanging onto a belief that we cannot do something, simply because we failed at it once before? So make an attempt to grow further....

Why shouldn't we try it again?
Your attempt may fail, but never fail to make an attempt & CHOOSE not to accept the false boundaries and limitations created by the past..."

This seems like good words of advice for my upcoming crit.

Tour De Bowness Stage 3: Road Race

2009-08-05T20:44:00.000-06:00

Goal for the race: Finish the race

This was a tough race to get ready for there was only a 14 hour or so break in between the crit and the road race. I had done 2 practice runs of my laps on the course so I knew I would have the energy to finish following the criterium. There had been a thunderstorm and 20 degreee drop in temperature during the night so I had trouble sleeping and had to wake up in the middle of the night to close my window. I woke up really early as I had a 9am start time and needed enough time to eat my race day breakfast and have time to digest.

We arrived at the race course and the course looked surprinsigly dry so it looked liked the race was good to go despite the chance of a thundershower. It was pretty brisk outside which is good for racing...not so good for spectators. My parents had also come out to watch me race which is the first time they have ever seen me ride my bike for an extended period of time.

After doing a warm-up going up and down the flat section of the course. We were ready to get get going. We all lined and up and were led out by a lead motorcycle and pace car. It was a neutral start for 1km so we could all get settled into the pack. After the first km the pace car pulled over and the race started. I managed to stay with the pack for the first lap. During the climb on the way to the start/finsih area I could see a gap developing so as soon as we reached the top of the climb I decided to bridge the gap and not let it get away from me this time. I caught up with the break group and moved my way to the middle of the pack as to not get dropped again.

During the 3rd lap I got gapped once again during the climb. While I think I could have powered up and stayed with the group I was concerned about having the do it another 6 times and suffering more each time a that pace. After the climb I managed to form a pack with 2 other dropped riders and we continued on together for the next 5 laps rotating pulls.

About lap 7 we managed to catch 2 other dropped riders and went through the 8th lap as a group of 5. We also finally got passed by the cat 4 riders who started 5 minutes after us. We could not see the main pack anywhere so we must have been over 2km back. During the last lap 2 of the riders of my group got dropped on the first climb. As this was the final lap we decided not to wait for them. We got to the last climb and dropped another rider. I decided to use everything I had during the climb to sprint for the finish. I was hammering so hard and just trying to finish off the race I forgot to check to see if anyone was behind me.

Just as I was about the reach the finish line...one of the riders I thought I had dropped on the hill had been in my draft all along and pulled out at the last second from behind me to beat me by a foot at the finish line. This was the closest finished I've ever had. As we coasted down the straight we gave each other the fist pound...it was such an awesome way to finish off the race.

Finally I had finished off my first stage race and my first ever road race. It was tough but I learned a lot during the course of the three days. I couldn't think of a better way to spend the long weekend. After every race...I always find out where I need to focus my training and I also find out just how hard I can push myself.

Result: 21/42

Not bad for my first road race. I'm so glad I was able to form a pack with a bunch of other riders. That made all the difference in the world and allowed us to get a chance to finish the race. I actually really liked this course and I can't wait to do it again next year.

I also got a place on the Omnium finishing 21/27 as I got points from my hill climb placing. There were probably about 50 participants in my category so I finished up in the top half.

A big thanks to my parents for coming out to watch and taking pictures.

Also congrats to my teammates Mark, Craig and Stuart for their awesome performances in the Tour. Congrats to Mark on his 3rd place in Cat 4 overall and Craig on his 2nd place in Cat 3 overall. It feels awesome to be on a team that always manages to end up with riders on the podium at every event.

Le Tour De Bowness Stage 2 - Criterium Delirium

2009-08-02T21:24:00.000-06:00

Goal for the race: Finish with the group

Well today was the criterium race (crit for short). I went into this one feeling pretty confident becasue of my hill climb results. I hadn't done a crit for a couple weeks because my bike was in the shop so I wasn't too sure what the speeds would be in this one and if my legs could keep up.

The race started 40 minutes late because a bunch of cars had to be towed off the course so I tried to take advantage of the extra time and run a few more laps trying to see what lines I should tak and just get a little more warmed up.

The race started with a neutral lap around the course so everyone could get settled in (and clipped in) and I was able to settle in somewhere in the top half of the pack. After we did a lap the pace went up considerably but I was able to hang in the top third. After a few laps I decided to go for an attack to get into a better position. The key to crits is always positioning...and being in the front is better then being in the back...if you have the energy to hold on. I got to about the fourth wheel from the leader and tried to sit in but the pace was just killer. On the climb the pace didn't let up and I found myself drifting towards the back.

About 10 minutes in I noticed a bit of a gap developing on the power climb. Everyone was sprinting up the hill and I wasnt sure if I'd be able to sprint the hill at the pace and do it another 15 times. About 15 minutes in I riding with a pack of three other guys. After a few laps I ended up dropping all of them. No one was willing to work with me and form a pace line so we could rotate pulls and have a chance of catching up so I went off on my own....the only thought in my mind was to finish the race without getting lapped.

About the 30 minute mark I heard the lead motorcycle gaining on me and I knew that the paceline was right behind me. I got lapped right after the Start/Finish line. There was still 4 more laps to go but I knew I was going to get pulled fromt the race. I kept going hard anyways...and got a cramp in my stomach while trying to keep going.

As I approached the finish line...I was asked to pull out of the race. This is done so that lapped riders don't absorb themselves back into the main pack and contest the sprint.

I watched from the sidelines as my category finished up the race.

Today I was pretty disappointed. I was starting to do good in my training crits so I thought I had a chance at staying with the group during my first race. The pace was just a little too fast for me and it was much hotter outside then I was used to racing in.

A lot of people watching had very supportive words for me after my race and I was really grateful for that. People came up to me after my race and said they saw me working hard the whole way through which meant a lot to me.

Thanks to Kevin for doing an awesome job taking picture and to Shereen for coming out to watch me race. Also thanks to all my teammates and friends for all the support.

Race Result: 21/33

Le Tour De Bowness Stage 1 - Hill Climb Time Trial

2009-08-01T23:54:00.000-06:00

Goal for the race: Finish in under 5 minutes

Today's course was the hill climb which was a race to the top of COP via the road beside the bobsled track. The course was 1.25km with an 100m altitude gain.

I got to the course fairly early and went for a one hour spin on the Bowness Road and the Bow River pathways. They opened up the course for pre-riding but once is enough for me so I didn't pre-ride it. I had already done the hill a a few times on groups rides so I was fairly familiar with the course.

After talking to a bunch of people and generally just killing time it was go time.
I got in line, got my bike weighed. and lined up with my heat.
The 2 guys in my heat looked over at me and asked "Are you any good at hill climbing?" and I responded "I don't really know...I guess we'll find out...".

My start was really good...I was leading my heat up into the first hill. I settled into my rhythm pretty early but one of the guys grabbed another gear and was pushing the pace pretty fast. The other guy grabbed onto my wheel and just drafted me up most of the hill. My plan was to not chase anyone during the race and just do my thing. It's too easy on this course to go out too hard and then blow up halfway up.

I could already feel my legs burning by the first switchback but I kept pushing anyways...I had only had to suffer for 5 minutes. During the race I was so focused on keeping my pace that I lost count of what switchback I was on. All of a sudden I was approching turn 7 and my plan was to start driving at turn 6. I stood up and just hammered the final stretch to try and get close to the guy in front.

At the top I was greeted by Ken (Good luck on the TR!) and his wife (Good luck on the 70.3!) who were taking pictures of the race and I told him I think I did prettty good...but I should have gone a little harder near the end. Seeing as this was my first TT ever...I'm pretty happy with my performance. I was told it's very hard to gauge your energy levels and thresholds on TTs unless you do them fairly often so I'm just glad I made it all the way to the top.

Result:
11/42
Time: 4:33min

While it felt awesome to get the race out of the way, knowing I did it and placed fairly high is an awesome feeling. I wish I had gone a little harder though. I can't wait to beat my personal record next year...hahaha.
This road racing thing is becoming quite fun.

Le Tour De Bowness

2009-07-31T01:11:00.000-06:00

Well after doing the Midweek Mayhem crits every Tuesday night, I thought I should check this event out. Everyone I talked to said it was a lot of fun so I decided to see what it was all abotu. The event is a 3 day stage race that made up of a hill climb time trial, criterium and road race.

At first I was only going to do the criterium but I thought...if I'm going to suffer, I may as well make a weekend out of it. It seems I'm starting to become a roadie!

I decided not to do any races in July and train up for this event. This will be my first road race event and will be one of the few races my friend and family will be able to come out and watch.

The hill climb will be a time trial to the top of COP.

The criterium course will be a pretty technical 1km course around Bow Cycle.

The road race will be a 5.3km circuit race through the roads of the Bearspaw Golf Club.

I'm really looking forward to the criterium. While these races are always really sketchy, I love the rush of going 40-50km/h on a bike. I also find these races so exciting to watch...so much going on in every race and it's almost as if the racers are putting on a show for the spectators.

The road race course seems really fun. While it has a big hill in it...it's pretty technical and has something for everyone. To me it seems like a longer, slightly slower criterium course. I have pre-ridden my laps for the course a couple times and I personally like the format...though I'm sure some people disagree.

Suffer Springs Summer Solstice

2009-07-01T22:29:00.000-06:00

Goal for the race: Finish the race in under an hour
Seconday goal: Don't crash or bail

You really have to love a race that starts with the word "suffer"....at least they get you to sign a waiver that pretty much says if anything happens, it's your own fault.

This race was held on the Sulpher Springs trail in Bragg Creek. In all my time mountain biking, I have never once hiked or biked this trails. My first time ever on the trail was during the pre-ride with the 'Goats in which we also did a run on the new Pneuma trail. Saturday during the course setup was the first time I had ridden the entire trail.

I wasn't as nervous than in previous races so when the whistle blew we all went out pretty hard. My plan for the race was to pick off people during the climbs. I got myself into good steady pace but could already feel my quads starting to burn a little on the first climb. I continued picking a few guys off but overall I was by myself. I could see my teammate, Ken, up ahead and was trying to pick up my pace so that I could ride with him as he seemed to going pretty good.

I kept him within eyesight until the second big hill. I tried to crank in a harder gear then usual but when I tried to shift into an easier gear, my chain popped off. All I could think about was "not this $#*! again". Luckily it didn't get stuck so after dismounted and doing a revolution on the pedals the chain came back on. I ran a little bit up the hill to a flat section where I started up again. The descent was really sketchy with loose gravel everywhere so I was riding the brakes pretty hard down the steep switchbacks. One really long climb still remained but as I approached it I could not see a single rider on it. There was one section that was extremely loose so I had to dismount and run a little as I couldn't any traction but for the most part I rode it all the way to the top.

The second major descent was a lot more technical and faster but all around tons of fun. I was finally getting used to my new bike and started taking straight lines down. I was also letting go of my brakes a little more then usual and just trusting my bike to carry me through the descents.

The last part of the race was a flat and grassy single track to the finish so I put my bike into the big ring, stood up and just hammered all the way to the end.

I finished the race with no bails, cuts or bruises and a fully working bike so I had met my secondary goal. I also checked my computer and I had finished the race in 55 minutes so I had completed both of my goals for the race. I was really happy...I didn't care about my results. I had gone out, raced my race and had a lot of fun in the process.

Result: 10/25

Good job to all my teammates that competed in the race. We had 4 people on the podium that day which was awesome.

Edmonton Canada Cup XC

2009-06-16T23:12:00.000-06:00

Goal: Finish in the top third

This race was kind of a last minute one for me. I wanted to do it but after checking the technical guide I wasn't sure if I'd be able to make it up on time for sign-on. Because it was part of the national circuit everyone had to sign on the day before which meant we had to get to Edmonton before 7pm in order to register and have time to pre-ride the course.

There were 2 major factors precluding making this race:

1. My new frame (Norco Faze 1) has just arrived on Tuesday and the bike shop had scheduled it to be done on Friday...which could be anytime Friday.

2. I had some overtime still to be used up but my co-worker was supposed to be away the whole day on a training course so I couldn't take the day off which wouldn't have left me enough time.

After a few phonecalls to Bow and talking with my co-worker I was able to get my bike done Thursday night and leave work at noon on Friday. The next day I left work early and after a few unexpected slowdowns on the Deerfoot and the highway near Crossfield we were finally on our way to Edmonton.

After picking up our race plates and asking around a bit we finally got some decent directions to the park where the race was being held to do a pre-ride. The new bike felt really good although this was technically my first ride on it so I was still having trouble picking lines as I wasn't used to a full-suspension race bike.

Race Day:

My legs felt pretty good today and I was confident that I was able to ride the course with only a few sections that worried me...namely a sand trap and a super sketchy gravel switchback descent.

The whistle went off and I knew I could power up the first ascent. The problem with climbing in MTB races is not always your own technical ability...but sometimes the people who are in front of you. There were a lot of novices...69...which is the largest group we've had all year. During the first climb there guys already dismounting and running up...not good. I could also notice my rear derailleur was being quite stubborn upshifting and it was ghost shifting during the climbs. I knew right away my cables had stretched after the pre-ride yesterday. The first descent I had bailed on during the pre-ride I managed to clean (and somehow steer around two other guys who had bailed).

After finishing up the first part I cranked through the straight away..passing a couple guys before entering the flowy single track section. The sand pit came and the path was blocked so I had to dismount and run through. Next section was the rooty technical power climbs...now my derailleur was giving me a ton of problems...my chain was all over place making all the power climbs guesswork. During one straight section of the race I tried to pass couple guys on the outside of the straightaway and my handlebar caught on a stake that was a bit too high...first crash...not good.
The final part of each lap was a pretty long shale pathway back the lap area so I used this opportunity to crank and adjust my rear shifting cable.

Second lap went better in the shifting department. I ran this lap a little faster and a little cleaner. At the top of the first climb I saw one of my teammates with his bike upside down...I did a quick check and he said he flatted out but he was OK. I managed to pass a few guys on this lap and tried to plow through the sand trap but my chain ended up falling off again so I was once again being passed by the guys I had just passed trying to get my chain back on. I continued on and couldn't believe my luck. I had another bail on a descent when my front tire slipped out unexpectedly. I just wanted to put all these things behind me now.

Third lap went pretty good again. I managed to close a gap with another rider so I grabbed his wheel and followed his lines through the technical sections. On the straight I managed to overtake him and cruise through the flowy single track section.
On the rooty technical I thought I had finally seen a good line to take...I tried to power up the climb this time and this time my chain came off and got stuck in between my cranks and my frame. I spent a good 2-3 minutes trying to yank the chain out and at one point I didn't think I was going to be able to get it out without breaking the chain all the while about 5-6 riders I had passed managed to pass me again. I finally managed to get it free and had to run a good portion of the section because I was afraid of having the chain snap during the power climbs and there wasn't really a flat part to get started again.

After finally getting going again...I managed to pass just a couple riders and sprinted for the finish line. There was another rider I had met at the Bacon Race who had finished a couple spots behind me so as I rode past him I yelled to him to just giver with me...I wanted a close finish.

I passed the finish line and was sure that I had come close to the bottom. I had so many problems during the race and three crashes. It was one of my worst races. I had lost a lot of confidence in my technical ability and my technical climbing. I knew there might be issues riding a new bike for the first time during a race...but I didn't think it would be this bad. I was pretty disappointed because I knew I had lost 6-8 places while I was trying to pull my chain free and get it back on my gears again. I wasn't that tired after the race so I had enough to keep my placing if so many mechanicals problems hadn't arose.

Result: 28/69

Better then I had expected. A lot better. If I didn't have all those problems during the race I'm sure I could have placed 20th or better...but that's mountain biking for you. Every race is a test of your training and a little bit of luck.
I really have to work on my starting sprint and my technical skills. Probably just have to spend more time with my new bike and get used to the lines I can take now.
At least one of my teammates took third which was awesome to see...this is his second year racing and that was his first podium. My other teammate managed to take 11th despite having to fix a flat during the race.

Giver-8-er Enduro

2009-06-01T22:12:00.000-06:00

Goal for this race: Finish at least 5 laps

This was my very first enduro event. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about biking for so long but I can't really say I don't like Enduros without first giving them a chance.

For the race I decided to look for a partner so that we could switch off every couple laps or so. This way we could each have a break and get something to eat. Someone e-mailed me that they were looking to rde with a two man team so I rode the event with Peter.

My partner was going to be a little late so we decided I would start off and ride the first 2 laps and by the time I was finished my second lap he would be ready to go.

The first lap didn't go so well for me...there were so many riders in front and behind you so it was really hard to focus with people bearing down on you on the tight single track. I had a couple minor slip-ups and one bail when my front tire slipped out on a decent. I had pre-ridden the course 5 times prior so I wasn't sure why I was making so many mistakes on the course.

I remember coming up on a part that was a really steep and sketchy gravel descent. I knew before the race that I would probably just tripod my way down as it wasn't worth the risk of injury to try and bike down. A rider asked if he could pas and I said sure...but he hadn't pre-ridden the course and shot down the hill at full blast...needless to say...the dust cloud a the bottom cleared and he had bailed pretty hard. I checked to make sure he was OK and continued on.

My second lap was a lot better...I grabbed the wheel of a teammate and just followed her the entire course. She paced the lap really well so I had an easier time just following her lines. When I got to the timing chute, my partner was ready and waiting. Perfect timing.

My partner ran the laps pretty fast and we were doing the laps pretty good.
I was ready to start my third lap and felt pretty confident as my second lap went well.
During my third lap I was taking a new section of single track much faster then usual and accidently took the wrong line...my front tire caught on something and ejected me from my bike. I remember getting up to see my bike in the creek...after I fished it out the cables were stretched and twisted. I untangled it and figured it was OK. I kept riding and then on a uphill I tried to shift and my derailleur went right into my spokes...not good...my derailleur was bent.
I bent in back into place and then continued on for a bit...then I found out I couldn't shift my front derailleur either. I could barely pedal the bike and forgot my chain pins back at the team pits so I couldn't single speed my bike. I ended up having to walk my bike back to the start/finish area and burn the lap as I had cut the course to get back.

I felt horrible...I've crashed before but never that bad...how was I going to finish the race?
I felt bad that we would end up last because I took a lap too hot. I checked with the organizers and it turned out that we could change bikes...so I figured I would be able to drive home...get my other bike and be ready to race by the time my partner finished 2 laps. I drove like a madman home, loaded my other bike and drove back to COP. By the time I had finished getting ready...my partner rolled in and I took off.
Another problem arose right away...I don't have a bottle cage on my Prophet and I didn't think of grabbing my CamelBak. So I had to run the lap without any water at all. This was brutal, it was super hot outside and all I could think about was water each lap.

I finished my 3rd lap problem free came into the pit and my partner had just eaten so he checked to see if I was good to run another lap. I had the energy to, so I drank a whole bottle of water, half a bottle of Gatorade and took off for another lap. 4th lap I ran fine as well...must have been the full-suspension setup.

My partner ran another lap and then I ran the last one of the day....making it 5 laps. I had met my goal...although I think I would have been able to do more had I not crashed. I figure that my crash ended up costing us 2 or 3 laps. In total we did 10 laps. In retrospect I'm glad it was my bike that got smashedup and not me...or else I wouldn't have been able to help finish the race at all. We didn't come in last but I personally feel we probably could have done more laps which would have moved us up a bunch of spots.

Result: 16/18

Well there's always next year. I did end up getting a new frame and wheelset after this race...which is essentially a new bike. I didn't want to buy anymore bikes this year...but I'm really starting to enjoy racing...so I think I should have a proper racing bike that doesn't mess up my back.

Bacon Buffet of Pain and Suffering

2009-05-17T19:15:00.000-06:00

Goal for this race: Finish in the top half
Secondary goal: Ride the Houfallizer climb on each lap

After looking at the ABA schedule I thought for my first year I would do a race every other week. This one just happened to fall 2 weeks after Lethbridge...but to be honest...I probably would have done it either way. I was really looking forward to this race. Everyone I talked to said it was one of the best courses and it was a lot of fun. Also you get handed strips of bacon during the race...that is just awesome.

I was going to go the night before and get a hotel...but then I talked to a teammate and thought it might be better to just carpool early Saturday morning. Darcy came along to drive back home and we went up with another DG, Tori, as well. We got there in pretty good time to do a pre-ride thanks to a shortcut from Tori and this time I felt really good after doing a pre-race lap.
There was a really steep grassy hill climb (Houfallizer) back into the feed zone which I heard tales about but I really wanted to see if I could climb it everytime. The course itself was like a lot like Fish Creek Park...very twisty and rooty single-track. Not many places to pass and not a ton of elevation gain.

My bike of choice this time was my Vertex. I had just recently replaced all the shifting cables and more importantly installed hydraulic disc brakes so I figured it was good to race this time.

After hearing final call for the start line I ran up th hill just in time to get my name called and get into the pack. This time I was much more relaxed and I felt pretty good. The whistle went off and everyone sprinted hard out of the gate. Midway through the first lap I started to settle into my own pace...which I held for the rest of the race...I was picking guys off during the power climbs and catching up on the hill climbs and straight away sprints.

On teh second lap, there was a log technical that was pretty high up and on a descent that I worried about during the pre-ride...I had ridden it on my first lap so thought I could do it again. I didn't have my weight far enough back and ended up going over the handlebars. First crash of the day. I picked up my bike, got back on and just started riding without checking myself...my knee was killing me but I figured I would ride through it and maybe forget about it. Then near the end of the lap when I was about to climb the big hill...my chain came off...forcing me to get off and get it back on again.

When I was on my way to completing my second lap someone yelled that if I ate 5 strips of bacon I would have 10 minutes taken off my total time...no one was in front of me and no one was behind me...so I figured I had 3o seconds to eat 5 strips of bacon. I grabbed a handful and just shoved all the bacon into my mouth , grabbed a new bottle of water from Darcy and rode off to complete my second lap. Trying to chew bacon, swallow and drink water to get it down meanwhile pinning your heart is not a good idea....in fact that was downright stupid. After I managed to force the bacon down my throat I continued on, just wanting to finish the race.

My third lap I rode cleanly. No dabs, bails and I managed to clean the log technical section. No mechnical issues and I managed to climb the steep hill for a third time. As always I use up everything I have on the final sprint for the finish.

Result: 11/29

I never did claim the 10 minute deduction from my time for being the only person that day to consume 5 pieces of bacon at one time...it would have put me in 4th place...but I'd rather see what I can do on my own.

I really enjoyed this race. The atmosphere was awesome. I felt way more relaxed and my teammates mentioned I looked a lot stronger on this race than in Lethbridge. I met a bunch of other riders and had a fun time all around. This is what mountain biking is all about...I love the community. I've noticed that mountain bikers are by far the coolest atheletes to hang around, it's like a big family. I didn't know if I could hold on for 3 laps a the start of the race but I managed to finish and still feel good.

After hearing stories the next week about the TransStonies challenge, I felt that I probably should have stayed for that 6 hour Enduro the next day but still not sure what my endurance limits are. Next race....Deadgoat Giver-8-er.

Midweek Mayhem

2009-05-11T22:20:00.000-06:00

Well this week after getting fitted on my bikes I decided to attend a road racing clinic so that I could possibly do some road races next year. I don't really have a racing road bike right now...I have a modified cyclocross bike...so wasn't sure if I'd be able to keep up on the road races.

The road racing clinic was pretty interesting and I learned a lot from it. The information provided was group riding tips, strategies and techniques. I met some really cool people and after the clinic I was really looking forward to participating in the Tuesday night crits.
All of a sudden road racing didn't seem so intimidating anymore.

It was supposed to be a 2 day event with the next day being a lead up into the first crit race of the season...unfortunately it got cancelled because of heavy rain and construction on the course.

I still highly suggest that anyone with a road bike or 'cross bike with skinnies comes out the clinics. It really does help ease you into the discipline and take away a lot of the intimidation.

Lethbridge Coulee Cruiser

2009-05-03T21:19:00.000-06:00

This was it. My first ever ABA racing event.
Goal for this race: Finish the race.

I couldn't believe how much I stressed out the week before this race.
First issue was that my ABA Racing license had not arrived even though I had applied for it 4 weeks prior to this race. Because of this I could not pre-register for the race. I phoned up the organizer and they said it should be OK and that they'll put my name on a list in case it doesn't show up.
Second issue was driving to Lethbridge and back by myself for the first time. I knew is was going to be a long drive by myself and wasn't sure how I'd stay awake on the way back.

I packed everything the night before and triple checked to make sure I had all my essentials. I had shifting issues with my Vertex during the group mountain bike ride and didn't have time to fix it, so I decided to bring my Prophet with me for this race.

After getting to the venue I talked to the ABA rep and my license was there waiting for me. I paid my fee, got my plate and went over to where my team was setting up.

This is where I mae my first mistake. I met up with another DG and she wanted to watch the hill climb event...so I decided to go along and cheer on my teammates who were climbing it. I learned it is not a good idea to climb a 2km hill with a heavy trail bike without really warming up first. After the hill climb finished up, the MTB course was finally open for a pre-ride.
During the pre-ride my quads were already killing me...and they were considering 3 laps for my category.

After talking to ABA it looked like a lot of the Novices felt that 2 laps was enough for the first race of the season (and for a bunch of us...the first race ever). I didn't even think I could do 1 more lap, let alone 2. It was at this point the thought of dropping out the race crossed my mind...if only for a split second. Then I remembered Cyrus telling me that placing is secondary and the experience comes first...so I decided to just go out and give it my best. Racing is supposed to be hard...if it was easy, everyone would do it.

When we all lined up at the start, I was a nervous wreck. Although this was technically not my first mountain bike race, it sure felt like it. I looked around and I was one of the few people with a camelbak because my Prophet doesn't have space for a water bottle cage. I also had one of the heaviest bikes of the group, 5.5 inches of travel with no lockouts and these huge 2.25 all-mountain tires.

The whistle went and everyone just took off. I was getting passed like mad on the starting hilll climb and even on the downhill portions of the race. By the midway point of the first lap I was already sucking air bad...I could barely breathe properly.

The second lap came around and my team cheered for me while I grinded up the hill (slowly). I thought for sure I would nothing left for this lap...all I could think of was to just to keep pedalling. A few more riders passed me on the last half of the course and at this point I thought for sure, I was in last place. As I did the final descent it looked like someone in my category had taken the descent too fast and bailed into the bush. As I rode by I asked to make sure he was OK...I got the thumbs up so I kept going. Sweet...I'm not last anymore. I cranked out to the finish and was actually really happy I had just completed my first race. My goal for the day had been met.

After watching the experts and elites race I decided to call it a day and head back to Calgary.
To make it back...I had to drink my first ever full can of energy drink. Because I don't drink energy drinks at all...I was pretty wired the entire drive home. The road to Lethbridge is really boring...just so you know.

Final results: 12/21

I couldn't believe it when I saw the result. I guess I hadn't done as bad as I thought. I figure I could have done a little better if I had my Vertex and prepared myself better for the race....but this is what racing is all about...learning how to get better at it.

Things I learned:

1. Don't race the Prophet
2. Don't wear a Camelbak
3. Pre-riding the course is really important
4. Check to make sure you bring food and recovery/sport drinks to the race (I went the entire day on a bagel, orange juice and an oatmeal bar I found in my car...seriously...I had my first real meal when I got back to Calgary)
5. Stretch properly before and after the race
6. Get fitted on my bikes
7. Just giver

Prologue

2008-12-01T20:54:00.000-07:00

Well I decided to start a blog to record the events of my first year in bike racing.

I tend to write a lot but I think it's important for me to be able to look back a year from now and see if I've managed to improve my cycling ability, fitness and confidence level. I think documenting my races and experiences is part of training because you then have a way to reflect on what you've accomplished and what you can change.

I'll give a short run down of how it all happened...in case you ever wanted to try your hand at racing.

Where this started:

Last year after I purchased my cyclocross bike, I took it with me to Penticton where I went on a short road ride with Cyrus literally hours before he was to be married. During the ride he gave me a ton of tips, encouragement and made me hammer 2 giant hills (one of them super steep...even for cars). It was during this ride that he told me that I should try racing.

Upon returning to Calgry, my Garmin Edge had arrived...this is when I decided to start training semi-seriously. I didn't really have a training plan...I just did whatever...sometimes I just did random programs in the Garmin and rode on random days. Usually when I rode...I just wanted to go faster.

In September, partly due to my change in employment, I finally decided to join a gym. I told the trainers what my goal for the next year was and they said I should try the Crossfit program. Crossfit worked really well for as it worked on my strength, agility and endurance. Every day it was something different and they were extremely high intensity workouts. I started doing Yoga regularly to improve my flexibility and core strength.

In October, I came across the Dark Knight cyclocross race that allowed citizen racers and I was considering just trying it out for kicks but I ended going away to Vegas for a wedding. I vowed that I would do this race for sure in 2009.

In December I decided to look into joining a bike club. I talked to Cyrus and the first club he mentioned was the Deadgoats. I e-mailed them and started talking to a couple of the main guys (Pat and Tim) on the phone and then had a meeting with Tim in person. They had a spot open and let me on the team. For me, this was really exciting news...I had just completed one of my personal goals for the year.

As the winter months passed...I upped my gym frequency and got out for a few rides despite the poor weather. I could feel improvements...possibly because I had never truly "worked out" in my entire life. I was starting to get better at Crossfit and started looking forward to going to the gym. As soon as the weather was even remotely nice I would go out on my mountain bike and just ride around on the pathways.

In April, I went on my first mountain bike ride was with a few guys from the team in April in which we rode from Edworthy, all the way around Nose Hill Park and back. I could barely keep up with them and my legs felt like jelly at the end of the ride. At this point I started to wonder what I had just signed myself up for...it surely was a far cry from that casual road ride in Pentiction.