Denise Ramsden

Team Functions

2012-02-09T09:04:00.000-08:00

Last weekend we wrapped up our team presentation in Minneapolis with a massive group trainer ride, meeting some enthusiastic Optum employees and an impressive official presentation at the Guthrie theatre. Here's a few pictures from that.

Team picture @ Optum headquarters

Full team presentation at the Guthrie

And what drew most people's attention....

the post presentation dessert spread!

After indulging in some of that dessert it was time to head to the desert to get training. I spent the past week in Palm Springs with Jamie getting in some good miles. Got in one group ride, which I was formulating a blog post about but I might save that for a later date now... and played a bit of tennis as "cross-training".

Now the team is hanging out in the Oxnard/Ventura area for 10 days. The guys are stationed in Oxnard and us girls have 2 beach front houses in Ventura. Yesterday we got out for a good endurance ride up around Ojai, just to get used to the new Orbea bikes. I was fortunate enough to get to take mine back to Palm Springs...so that I had a bike to ride, but some of the girls were heading out on the road on them for the first time. We spent the evening relaxing (aka staring at the ocean waiting for the internet to choose to work on our respective computers) and then tucking in to a delicious dinner courtesy of Jade and Janel. Tonight Annie and I have to figure out something to throw together. Maybe with maple syrup to emphasis the Canadiana.

Time to head out to ride now. We're going to have the Kurt Kinetic film crew following us around today so that should make for some good entertainment. Our route took us on some awesome roads yesterday so I'm sure today should offer more of the same. After watching surfers all morning, we've got a ocean "icebath" planned post ride.

Semi-Official

2012-01-28T19:28:00.000-08:00

The cat's out of the bag, and Optum Cycling presented by Kelly Benefits has been announced - sort of. The website is up and running - anyone interested can go check that out at www.optumprocycling.com and see who all is on the men's and women's team for 2012. I think a few Canadian websites picked up the website release, but I say semi-official because we're just in the process of a team presentation weekend here in Minneapolis, Minnesota home of both Optum and the team base.

After a few sunny days, and some rain, in San Diego with Jamie and my mom it came time to head back to some snow. But it's all been very worth it so far!

Everyone flew sometime yesterday and spent some time recuperating from the travel. I know I for one was about comatose by four o'clock. We managed to rouse ourselves enough rifle through our new Thule suitcases to try on some great new swag from some amazing team sponsors. We'd already got set up with some Kinetic trainers back home - helped get through the snowy Canadian Christmas - and had our Mavic shoes ready to go. There was lots of trying on of knee warmers, chamois, tshirts, checking out some new sweet 5 blade razors and on and on....

Here's the kit.

Post unwrapping we headed out for a team dinner and then hit the sack.

Back up early to head to Optum headquarters to check out the facilities and get in some trainer time on the new bikes!

Here's a picture of the set up I stole from Leah Kirchmann's twitter.

I've honestly never seen so many trainers in one place. There was a spin class going on with a large group (which we get to do tomorrow) and the facility is really impressive. It was also pretty awesome to get on the new bikes and get used to them. I'm looking forward even more to getting them out on the road. After that we had a little yoga session with some bosu ball thrown in. Some cyclists have fantastic balance and can do tree pose on a bosu no problem....sooome it was more entertaining. After a little downtime we just had some presentations from a few of the sponsors - Hed, Kinetic and Mavic. Each had some interesting ideas to share and there were lots of thoughts bouncing around.

Up and at 'em tomorrow for some pictures, yoga, spin class, and a few more meetings! Final team presentation is Monday evening and then its back to (hopefully) sunny California!

News

2012-01-16T09:17:00.000-08:00

The blog's looking a little barer now, because - well I can't quite say yet. But news will be coming henceforth in the next few weeks.

At this point just putting in the last few hours on snow, and packing up to head south. We're starting the drive down to San Diego, CA on Wednesday so lots of organizing to get done before leaving Canada for a few months. This is the first time I've ever done this for an extended period - going to be an interesting border crossing! Hopefully they're relaxed in Montana.

We're starting off with a week in Escondido courtesy of my generous Aunt and Uncle - or my cousin's new baby not letting them travel south enough to use all their time share weeks :). So my mom is coming down to enjoy that as well. Then a few days in Minnesota - yay, back to winter. Then Palm springs for a few weeks, then team camp in Oxnard, CA, back to Palm Springs, down to South America and thennnnn we shall see.

I've been told it's a tough life.

I should get cracking on the packing. I'm going to make an effort to increase my organization levels; however futile that may be!

Off-season over

2011-11-24T16:46:00.000-08:00

The off-season is officially over, and it's probably time to revive the blog if I want to have any readers left.

I've slacked off quite a bit since I last blogged. I said at that time that the off-season had started but that ended up being false. A few days later I found out that Clara had decided the season had been long enough and given up her spot for Pan Ams. I had been named an alternate earlier and as it worked out that turned into a chance to go to Pan Am Games.

I had a week and a bit to get things sorted, get back into training, write an exam and then head down to Guadalajara, Mexico. This was my first international multi-games experience and I have to say it was quite a cool experience. On the Canadian side it was all run by the Canadian Olympic Committee so it was pretty smooth sailing and a professional environment. It was inspiring to see all the other athletes and hear their stories. For cycling the Pan Am Games are nothing but a chance to experience the multi games environment, but for other sports they are important Olympics qualifiers. It was pretty cool to see everyone coming back just having won medals or qualified Olympic spots in their respective sports. On the racing side things went so-so. I was struggling with some injuries from worlds and just the effects of a long season. I put together a halfway decent ride in the TT, going through the halfway mark in third. Then things came apart a bit, legs wise and injury wise and I lost enough time to drop to 7th. It was still close timewise, but not quite enough. Laura Brown grabbed a bronze for Canada which was awesome!! With almost a week between the TT and road race I had some time to go on some crazy Mexican rides, hang out with the US secret service and get some weird tan lines. The road race was more than the results showed but we got a bit worked over by the south americans. Primarily, them refusing to work with us, or generally work at all. Happens sometimes but we were all excited to have hit the true off-season.

Been pretty relaxed and low key with a few fun events thrown in.

1. Hallowe'en

2. Cross Nats

3. Deadmau5

And finally New York for my birthday. Yes I'm officially over the hill - 21.

But anyway we covered every single inch of Manhattan. Cyclists are notoriously not good walkers. As in will not walk at all if possible. But this is not complaining about walking at a cycling level. We literally covered all the way from the top of Central Park down to the tip of the financial district to the East Village to the West Village in three days.

Highlights were:

- Central Park

- 9/11 visitor's centre

- Empire State Building

- Rockefeller Centre at night

- Times Square

- War Horse on Broadway

- 5th Ave

- Dylan's Candy Store

Things to do next time:

- go on a tour of the UN

- find a way to brave the lineup for the Statue of Liberty

- have more money so that shopping (the primary activity of NYC it seems) is more feasible

I'll try and come up with some interesting things to blog about as the season gets going again - so that there is a reason to read....

Living the Dream

2011-09-15T13:33:00.000-07:00

The title says it all. Just living the dream in Belgium right now.

Ok we may tend to say that slightly sarcastically. As in, this is the dream .... except there are moments where ahhhh things are a little lacking in dream like quality.

But then all you can do is laugh.

Just the European adventure.

Like when:

You're trying to take the bus home (after an entertaining Moroccan meal trying to figure out what you're ordering) and the bus driver just decides he's not going to actually take you into your town, but just leave you at the top of the hill. So you walk home and get to witness a girl try to run a guy over on the sidewalk and him key her car in retaliation. Yah we were pretty entertained.

You're trying to get to a kermesse (Belgian training races they take pretty seriously) but you have to cross one of the inlets from the ocean, and of course the bridge is up. And of course in Belgium they don't really car how long the line of cars waiting is nor do they really provide a place for said cars to wait, nor do they notify you how long you are going to have to wait. Also turns out most truck drivers in Belgium are from Russia and don't speak English. (We made it to the start with 1 min to spare after getting yelled at in Flemish a lot for random things).

You try to go out for dinner but every damn restaurant in the whole country seems to have spontaneously decided to go on holiday.

You're at Stage 1 of Holland Ladies tour and it starts on a miniature draw bridge with 155 girls and there's only a 1km neutral before we all turn onto a dyke...and by the time we turn the field has already shattered in front of us and that's pretty much it for the day.

You witness probably upwards of 50 crashes in one 120km stage of HLT, including two from yourself, because it's pouring rain, and there's a lot of paint and railway tracks and cobbles that don't stick so well to bike tires when wet.

You're trying to drive home from the last day of said HLT without a GPS and it takes you three times around the block to get headed in the right direction. Which turns out wasn't the right direction, so you change directions and then end up in Germany when you really wanted to go to Belgium. So you change directions and make it back to Belgium. And it only takes like 2 hours to see 3 countries. (Funny because it's usually the GPS's fault...).

You once again try to go out to dinner after the proprietors of a particular restaurant (if you ever happen to be in Aarschot, BEL go to Cala Luna for pizzza...if you can get in) return from their two week vacation. Except of course they just decide they don't quite feel like having you in their restaurant. So tell you it will be until 8. So you leave for a bit and come back at 730. And they say it will be until 9. And you later drive by at 830 and there are most definitely open tables. Customer service does not exist here. Really, they're more pissed off they aren't still on holiday.

You're in the house wearing a down vest and toque along with everyone else because the house insists on being at least 5 degrees colder than the out of doors.

But really, while it's a little boring at times...it is entertaining. Or you have to laugh at the very least.

Got another 4 days left kicking it in Tielt-Winge, Belgium and then its off to the bustling metropolis of Copenhagen, Denmark for World Champs.

I'm looking forward to seeing Denmark after enjoying Sweden so much. And of course the racing!!!

The Story of the Eatmore

2011-08-27T03:26:00.000-07:00

I've been back in Belgium now for a few days. We're still battling the jet lag as Leah and I just managed to drag ourselves out of bed at 11 and 11:30 respectively. The guys have gone off to the Wallonie region of Belgium to find some hills to prep for Tour de l'Avenir, so that left a pretty quiet house. And therefore conducive to 12+ hours of sleep.

The first day the guys were taking it easy so we joined them on a ride to Leuven that involved a brief coffee stop. The centre square there was just packed with people. The people of Tielt-Winge seem to hide so it's nice to actually see other people once and a while. We also enjoyed the Belgian version of the cappuccino; coffee with whipped cream on top. And of course the mandatory cookie. Yesterday the typical Belgian weather hit and we were stuck waiting it out for a bit of clearing. And proceeded to ride through quite a bit of mud and flooded out roads (aka very small farm paths). We're doing our first "race", a kermesse near Ghent, tomorrow so might have to adhere to a bit more of a normal schedule and drink another cup of coffee.

Backtracking, I had a good few lasts days in Canmore. I battled a bit of a cold earlier in the week. That lovely jetlag again, combined with a 26 hour day and exam after that doesn't make the body happy. Last weekend though things came around and I got in a few good training days in very good weather.

Sunday I headed out for a ride, but made an important pit stop at Harvest first for "lunch" and managed to snag their last cinnamon bun of the day. If you're ever in Canmore on a Sunday I highly recommend these. Although maybe not before intervals....

Life got even better with a quick dip in the quarry to cool off after a very hot ride.

Not too shabby eh?

Monday, as my last day in Canada, was time for a long exploration ride. I meant to try and ride from the Banff National Park entrance up to the BC border, but got a little distracted at the turnoff to BC along the 1A and went to Lake Louise instead. Still a very nice ride.

I was distracted because I was looking at the gas station at the turnoff and contemplating the fact that I had forgotten money and was going to have to do a good job of rationing my three bottles and the two Eatmore's in my pocket.

Which got me thinking about why I still always get Eatmore's whenever I hit up a gas station for ride food. Which also probably relates to why I do any sort of sport at all.

My parents, and it seemed most parents in Yellowknife, enjoyed all sorts of outdoors activities. And having a kid was definitely not going to slow them down. Or not too much. I spent my fair share of time in a back pack being hiked around. But I think by the time I was 3 it was time for me to start carrying my own weight. Especially on skis. There's a pretty good picture of me somewhere with my yellow rain boots on, and red wooden skis strapped on to them (hand-me down's from the Dunbars I believe). Anyways, I wasn't always so self-motivated to go out and exercise for hours at a time. But my mom particularly, still wanted to get out and ski for ridiculous amounts of time (that's probably my four year old self coming out). And so she'd bring along Eatmore chocolate bars. And every so often, when my whining got intolerable and I was threatening to curl up in the bushes at the side of the trail, she'd break off a little bit and give it to me and she could probably buy another couple kms of "happy" Denise.

The consistency is a little different in +25 vs. -30.

And Eatmore's still remain my chocolate bar of choice. I think that's something like very well ingrained Pavlovian Conditioning. Except I'm in charge of the Eatmore pieces now and I'm a lot more generous to myself!

Along the 1A - a section of prescribed burn from 1993.

Time to head out and ride now. The sun has finally reappeared so we've gotta make the most of this opportunity. And it's already 1 in the afternoon, sooooo probably time to get the day rolling!

Nutella Update

2011-08-14T19:35:00.001-07:00

I just realized that I failed to provide the results from the Nutella experiment.

Its important stuff you know.

I'll turn it over to lex to deliver the results but I have to say first I guessed right!

I wanted to make a sandwich to take with me to the airport the day after we did this testing. And we were leaving early so I had to make it the night before. And I wanted Nutella/banana. But the results hadn't been tallied yet. Conundrum right?

Well i figured the one I liked best seemed to be the darkest. And I knew the swedish Nutella had the most cocoa. Plus I just really liked Sweden. So I went for that one. And turns out I was right!

Since it was lex's experiment and she did a very thorough write up I'll turn you over to her blog. And yes that's me being tested in the picture
Lex's uber- good blog

Canmore has been lots of fun so far. Yesterday we watched the trans Rockies come in to town to finish. Went over to the last technical part they had to tackle. Saw a few weary tumbles, but lots of happy people. Best was a group of six guys all on the same team coming down screaming at each other to get outta the way, man up and let go of that thing your right hand is grabbing etc etc etc. Looked like they had had fun. Then we headed down to main street to see the finish. Saw a couple finish on a tandem. Wish I had of seen them come down from the Nordic centre.

All I could think was that there would likely be all out war if I ended up on the back of a tandem mountain biking. I think there have been enough jokes made over the season about the fact that if we were to stage a tandem road race, Jamie and i would lose because we'd be back on the start line arguing about who got to go on the front. Can't imagine on a mountain bike!

Today Mom and I were up early to head out to lake Louise. We did the plain of six glaciers hike and stopped up there at the tea house for lunch. Hiked back down and then I hopped on my bike and rode the two and a half hours back to Canmore. Very pretty riding. Although I'm still contemplating how fast bears run, and how high a new max wattage I would hit if one popped out at me.

On the way down

Special bridges for wildlife to cross

A lake I rode by

Hoping the rain holds off and it's just as nice tomorrow!

Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Something Kinda Cool

2011-08-12T20:24:00.000-07:00

So the 2012 Olympics are about one year away right now. The athletes have been getting into gear for a while now. For us in cycling we kicked off some of the final build up with a training camp down in Oxnard, CA back in February. And starting in June UCI points have become increasingly important for the 12-month period Olympic qualification period for every country.

It also means its time for the organization to make sure that everything is under control. A few weeks a go they had the Mountain Bike test event. It was essentially a practice race to make sure that everything was good with the course, as well make sure everything was running smoothly with the officials and volunteers. Catherine Pendrel, of Canada, took home the top honours in the women’s race. Not a bad way to get things going! I think I also read that triathlon had their test event last week as well.

And now it’s road cycling’s turn to test out the course out in Surrey. For the Olympics the men will actually start and finish at Buckingham Palace while the girls just will stay out on the loop in Surrey, doing repeats of Box Hill. The test event is just being run on the loop.

Pretty cool stuff.

What’s even cooler?

Well, this is Jamie (for those of you who don’t know).

(since he doesn’t blog - and I feel the need to - I get creative authority).

AKA The Boyfriend

(aww)

And yes he is cool.

But what is even cooler is that as he’s over doing the U23 Pre- Worlds project with the National Team, he got picked to go to London to race the test event.

Pretty awesome opportunity if you ask me. Regardless of who is racing there next year, I think its going to be pretty cool to know the course in advance and be able to watch having known you raced there. Plus the fact that some pretty big names are lining up for the test event. Mark Cavendish. Yah – he did OK at the Tour. Tom Boonen. Sylvain Chavanel. Matt Goss. Stuart O'Grady. Plus a whole host of other big names not everyone gets to race everyday.

Maybe I just spent too much time growing up watching every sport every Olympics. But I think its a unique thing to get to be a part of. And as an observer from the outside, it makes it even easier to see that. Because sometimes its easily overlooked.

See CCA press release below.

CANADIAN CYCLING ASSOCIATION

2011.08.12

FIVE ROAD CYCLISTS TO RACE FOR CANADA AT THE LONDON-SURREY RACE, THE 2012 OLYMPIC TEST EVENT

London Prepares for 2012 Olympic Games

(Ottawa, ON – August 12, 2011) On Sunday, five Canadian road cyclists will be racing on the 2012 Olympic Games course as the organising committee for the London Olympic Games hosts its test event for road cycling on the London-Surrey course.

With less than one year to go before the start of the Olympic Games, Dominique Rollin (Boucherville, QC/Française-des-Jeux), Christian Meier (Sussex, NB/UnitedHealthcare), 2011 Criterium Canadian Champion David Veilleux (Cap Rouge, QC/Team EuropCar), Stuart Wight (Riverview, NB) and Jamie Riggs (Manotick, ON/Louis Garneau-Club Chaussures-Norton Rose) will be fighting for the top honours and for the gold medal in this UCI 1.2 race.

Riders from 28 countries will take on this modified course, a shorter version. Teams from across the world will be gathering valuable data in this race, which also serves as Games preparations for the race organizers, volunteers and support staff.

Anyway, that’s enough bragging for now. As for me I’m back in Canada for a few weeks, before heading back to Belgium. Just resting up in the not too shabby Canmore, helping my mom pick appliances and paint colours and flooring, and generally enjoying Canada and western Canada at that!

Like I said – not too shabby!

How to start the day off right?

2011-08-08T02:03:00.000-07:00

Nutella taste testing of course!!

You may or may not know, but Nutella is not the same all over the world. The cacao %, milk % and other factors all change. In fact our North American stuff is pretty crap. I always wondered why I only ate it over here...

One of my teammates, Lex, has been working hard on this all trip. She collected Nutella in Germany, Belgium and Sweden (actually all of Scandinavia has the same Nutella). Her dad came to watch the race in Germany and brought Swiss Nutella with him. Our mechanic's wife just flew over from the States and she kindly brought a jar of the North American stuff with her. That brought the sample number to 5.

The candidates

Lex has set up a very sophisticated system. Numbered spoons (gotta keep the experiment blind), rankings based on taste, colour and smell.

Lex preparing the samples behind closed doors.

Yes, as bike racers we don't do too much other than eat, ride, eat, eat and sleep. So food and everything related inevitably entertains us.

I haven't gone yet, but I'll let you know how the results pan out at the end of the day. And where you should be sourcing/importing your Nutella from!!

What's up in Europe?

2011-08-05T04:24:00.000-07:00

We've been busy over on this side of the ocean for the past week and a bit. Well not really with too much productive. But somehow time still slips away.

First check out my iamspecialized.com blog for a general update.

Ok, so Sweden was really, really awesome. Glad I got the opportunity to check it out. Definitely different area from the BeNeLux situation over here.

The racing went so-so... I said in my Specialized blog I had some stomach problems in the last few laps of the World Cup. But kind of glazed over some of the details. It really was not pretty. Got bad with 3 to go. I managed to work my way through the next 2 laps with some deep breathing and then just sucking it up for the hard parts but the last time up the main climb, my stomach had had quite enough of my silly determination to stick to that front group. No one really wants to know but for your and my own sake I'll just say I'm down a pair of racing shorts.

Swedish people showed again how generous they are. Jamie went to the grocery store to try and find some Imodium or something of the like (there was a little mix up with our soigneur/management about what supplies we had...) so I could maybe uncurl myself a little bit. A man in the grocery store helped him translate what the limited amount of medication there was, was for. Lacking anything helpful he then found a nurse in the grocery store that recommended sour milk and blueberry soup. Buttermilk was purchased but the blueberry soup wasn't to be found. Jamie came back to the hotel and fed me some buttermilk (not as bad as I remember it being when my mom would pour it on my cereal for April Fool's Day!) and some crackers. A little while later there was a knock on the door and a blueberry probiotic drink mix appeared. Turns out the guy had driven out to his ex-wife's house, who was a nurse, got some blueberry stuff and brought it to the hotel we were staying at. Crazy!

Me looking super well with my blueberry drink.

I think it generally did the trick too. I was feeling a little shaky the next morning but we had "playing tourist" on tap and I'd been hyping up Gothenburg and the ferris wheel for a week, so I managed to pull it together. Although, I did crash pretty hard that night, despite the fact that we were staying in the luxurious Formule 1 (that's an oxymoron).

The Wheel of Gothenburg!

2 for 1 shrimp box

We took advantage of the rental bikes. Only 10 SEK (about 1 euro or 1.40 CAD) for a membership, and that's all as long as you switch bikes every 1/2 hour.

We went on a boat tour as well through the moats and onto the ocean. There was one bridge we had to pass under (the cheese grater) where we literally had to sit on the floor. All we could think was this would never happen at home!

Tuesday we had a little more time to play tourist, which included a visit to the Universeum (for Lex, Jamie and I - apparently the three science nerds), a very very good coffee and a bit more exploring. Then it was back out to the airport to catch our Ryan Air flight home.

Since then we've just been hanging out in Tielt-Winge, Belgium. Training, eating, eating, eating, and sleeping. We have our last race tomorrow, a UCI 1.2 in Belgium, which apparently has 200 girls on the start list. Should be a good end to the trip.

Then two days to get things organized, with maybe a trip into the big city of Leuven, and then back to Canada.

I've decided to tack on a flight to Calgary to my Brussels- Montreal leg to spend a little bit of time in Canmore. Should be a nice Canadian break, and fun to explore on the bike.

Only have about a week there and then it's back here to Belgium for the pre-Worlds block. At this point I think we have a few local kermesse's on tap and then Holland Ladies tour at the beginning of September. I think there's six of us racing with the National team, 2 with Tibco and 2 doing another TT UCI race. After that the team will be selected for World Championships in Copenhagen at the end of September.

Thuringen - Germany!

2011-07-25T23:31:00.000-07:00

Alright, the progressive rectroactive updates had to be canned due to a poor internet situation in Germany.

Germany?

Right, so the detail I've brushed over was flying over to Belgium on the 12th of July for a month long project with the Juvederm-Specialized girls.

We packed up on July 12th and flew to Brussel to set up camp at the Team Canada base in Tielt-Winge, Belgium. A few days here meant a little bit of extra time to spin out the legs, do some TTT practice and wait for misplaced/lost luggage. Lex's bike box travelled around Europe to various airports for two days, while a box of our supplies (Eload and new team clothes (!)) was "permanently" lost in Toronto. The helpful airline company could only say well you know thousands of bags are lost each year. Great. Malcolm (our manager) managed to do some good sleuthing, and the box was located somewhere in the Toronto airport I believe...although it may also have been Montreal or Frankfurt.

Once everything was retrieved and ready to go, it was time for a drive across the width of Germany. About eight hours later we arrived in the little town of Altenburg Germany, in the region of Thuringen for the UCI race Thuringen Rundfahrt der Frauen. This was a 7 day 2.1 (the highest level of stage race) race. The field wasn't too big at about 95 starters, but it was about as stacked as it can be in the female cycling world. There were a few names missing but for the most part it was like a World Cup field.

Stage 1 was a very technical TTT. Everyone but HTC opted to ride road bikes in the end (advantage of Di2!) and they took home the win and first yellow jersey. It was a new adventure for us, but considering that went quite well!

Stage 2:

122km road race. Wasn't exceptionally aggressive, but there were definitely tough parts, and it took a bit to get used to the European peloton a bit. Came down to a bunch sprint, that HTC's Ina Teutenberg won. I was in in the front group in 18th.

Stage 3:

105km. Lots more climbing. Lots of rain. Hard day. Missed the split up over a major QOM. Well kind of made the good split, but I guess I was running on too little oxygen to keep my head working straight and failed to jump across to the front group with some other girls.

Stage 4:

144km. Made up for yesterday by actually being aggressive and getting in the moves. Bridged up myself to a break that stuck...for 100km, right to the finish. It was a tough finale, and I only had enough sprint left for 6th place at the end. Regardless for me, I was pretty happy with that given the field and was rewarded with being one of the random drug tests for the day. Yay!

Stage 5:

Only 95km. I say that only with a high degree of sarcasm. I think I burned as many kJ in the race as the 120k days. Makes them go by a little faster. Plus the great Hankaburg (after German cross star Hanka Kupfernagel) caused some carnage. Another tough day not in the right move.

Stage 6:

19km. ITT. Legs still weren't so happy today and bike was a little angry too, but it was a fun technical course with cobbles, some technical descents, and lots of twisty turns.

Stage 7:

100km. Circuit loop in Altenburg the town where we were staying. Some stellar cross wind sections, plus a 3 sec gap between 1st and 2nd in GC, plus a cobbled section in town through the sprint made for another tough day of racing. My legs had finally decided to be happy again, and I managed to keep myself in the front group. GC switched back to Emma Johannsen from Amber Neben to make for an interesting day all round!

Pretty German flowers.

Germany was a beautiful country, full of friendly cycling fans. We had really nice accommodations and good food. Although no matter what the racer sportif meals to get exhausting eventually.

mmm white food group

Solution? Nutella & Go in bed!

After the 7th stage we had the pleasure of partaking in an 8th stage - the 8 hour drive back to Belgium. Whoo. Got through that ok too.

We've had two days back at the base in Belgium now and then we're off to Sweden on Thursday.

Looking forward to that leg of the trip for sure. #1 It's two World Cups. Always fun, ridiculously hard racing. #2 I've never been to Sweden before!!

Stage Two: 3 R's

2011-07-15T10:29:00.000-07:00

It's been so long since I actually blogged that I'm having to break this down into stages. Being in between stage races at the moment, it's something I'm comfortable with.

After Nationals it was time for a little break. An executive decision was made not to race the crit. Not too many tears over that one. Went down to watch, and looked like a fun course but enough crashes in the men's race... You have to cringe a bit sitting beside Svein Tuft getting his chin stitched back up on the side of the course the afternoon after winning the road champs.

Then commenced cramming "summer" into one week. Actually not really even a full week. Started off camping at Rock Point Provincial Park down on Lake Erie. Neither Jamie or I had been camping in a while, so it was good fun. Along with this came a little bit of poor planning.

We were super excited to make pancakes. And Jamie even managed to get the stove up and running. Buuutttt we were lacking on the flipper front.

Thankfully the coffee can had a metal lid (and thankfully Jamie's mom had put in a can opener) and it worked pretty well - all about improvisation right?

Since we didn't want to get life to get too rough with all the camping (so hard in a provincial campgroup) we headed up to Niagara-on-the-Lake to do a little wine tasting, visit Hillary (a friend of mine who works on a winery/farm there, and then go for a sail on Lake Ontario on Hillary's family yacht (30ft, I consider it a yacht...).

Some wine and a variety of charcuterie (some pig's head pate, some tongue of some sort...)

Petting the little lambs at Southbrook farms/winery.

The next day we decided it just wasn't quite beach weather again, wimped out of camping another night and headed into Hamilton to climb back onto the bikes and consume some delicious Cafe Domestique coffee (I committed a sacrilege [possibly on purpose] and got a Chai Tea).

Part of the reason for wimping out was that we wanted to get to Wonderland - and the drive was a little less daunting from Mississauga. So I left my Grandpa's car (that had been shepherding ALL, let me emphasize ALL, my stuff) at my other Grandparents and we continued on to Wonderland. Now the packing was no problem with the bikes on the roof. But wait, we can't leave our bikes on the roof rack at Wonderland?

Commence the puzzle (the back is full too).

It was worth it though. Behemoth still goes straight down enough to get your stomach firmly lodged in your throat and Top Gun still makes me freak completely out.

Then we had to get back to Ottawa in time for Canada Day festivities. I'd never actually been in the Capital for them, so was looking forward to it. We rode our bikes down to a friend of mine's to avoid the swarms of people.

And there were swarms. Far too many people for me. We tried to get towards Parliament Hill but made zero headway. Settled with seeing the Prince and Princess on a big screen and retreated to a patio for several hours, watching people collapse from heat exhaustion and refusing to listen to the waitresses hints for us to hurry up and move on.

Canada Day in Ottawa proved to be just a little too much with the heat, number of people and walking for this athlete. We retreated for an afternoon nap and then were offered a primo fireworks viewing spot in Sandy Hill. The fireworks were massive, and we were glad to be out of the melee once we heard the orchestra of sirens go off as soon as they ended.

The week of sort of rest was topped off with a trip to the cottage. Where I learned I completely fail at wakeboarding. But still have my tubing skills.

The next stage is Toona/Belgium.

Stage One: Slackin'

2011-07-14T05:33:00.000-07:00

I've been majorly slacking on my blog posting of late.

But I promise I haven't been slacking off too much.

Last time I touched base it was the eve of Road Nationals.

So what went down?

We managed to escape the rain for the TT. I had a decent ride, not perfect, but solid. It felt a bit odd, mostly because I had done the course several times and it just didn't quite seem like nationals.

I came in with the 7th fastest time overall (4-7 were pretty tight) which I was decently happy with considering the tighter time gaps from years past and some new fast girls. That also put me on top of the U23 podium.

Then we were on to the road race.

Everything felt a little off kilter for that too - 6pm start is NOT normal! But there were strawberry farmers to appease.

I didn't go in feeling totally fantastic. Likely something to do with the TT efforts from the day before and the weird timing, but through the race the legs felt decent.

Overall, we had an awesome team race. Moriah was off the front for most of the race, solo for the majority of the break, so we had it easy for most of it. Well I don't think the climb was ever easy - but no stress on our part. It almost didn't look like the break was going to come back, but in the end we caught Moriah just before the final time up the climb. Lex rocketed up the last climb to finish in 2nd overall, and I had a decent last effort to roll in 4th and top U23 again.

Time for a break!

Nationals Starts Tomorrow

2011-06-22T15:47:00.000-07:00

Craaaazzzyy! That time of year already!

I'll save the writing for after.

But check here for a little build- up.

Whoops

2011-06-06T19:32:00.000-07:00

I could have written a blog about getting coffee shops mixed up and almost ending up, up Mt Lemmon on a recovery day.

But I can't remember which was which anymore.

I was going to write a blog about how precisely to get out of Colombia.

But it's so complicated that I can't quite remember how many times I got patted down and had my bags searched anymore.

I didn't risk snapping any photos of that process,

but this is how you pack a car to go up a mountain in Colombia

- maybe that gives you an idea

I could have written a blog about motorpacing in Quebec City and double flatting and riding on the back of a scooter, before getting waved down and forced into a car by concerned citizens.

But I'd probably start laughing too hard to write it.

ohhhh boy

trying to recoop.

I could have written a blog about how cool it is to race a major UCI race in your own country. And to end up off the front, riding through the start/finish straight with the announcer doing a fantastic job of amping up the crowd.

But we were too busy racing in Hudson, QC the next day and going 1-6 Juvederm-Specialized-Mazda, to have time to blog.

I also could have written a blog about a fantastic text book weekend of team racing in Killington Vermont, that ended slightly less than fantastically. (Vero still got 2nd though and the sprinter's jersey!!!)

But I think it's probably better to leave that one alone.

Plus those things all happened a little too long ago.

Maybe I should have written a blog about procrastination.

So I'll quickly recap on Liberty Classic weekend, before I have a "but" to use.

Long drive.

Cool city.

Fun race.

Super fans up Manyunk.

Lex and her Specialized Amira - powered by eLoad float up "the wall" in Manyunk super fast the first time. Gets away. HTC and Colavita just don't quite know what they have on their hands. Lex gets up to a minute fifty. Gets all the QOM points at Manyunk, Strawberry and Lemon Hill before getting caught before the fourth and final time up Manyunk...when Colavita and HTC start to panic at the 1:50 and decide they better get their stuff together because Lex means business. The pace was a little higher the last time and the group splintered a bit (managed to pull myself into the front selection) but it all came back together on the fall down the wall. In for a bit of a mess of a sprint finish. Got Jo up there, but coming back from a broken collarbone earlier in the season makes sprinting a little challenging and nerve wracking. Especially, when it gets so squirrelly.

And then long drive back apres le course.

Meaning it's now time for bed.

The Canucks have been thoroughly dispatched anyway.

Where am I??

2011-05-02T07:30:00.000-07:00

"Hanging at the hotel, motel Holiday Inn" in Tuck-son Arizona (maybe I did hit my head yesterday...).

Ok, so I do know the specific answer to that question. But for some reason it's on the slower days, like today, that it hits sometimes how surreal all the hopping from place to place is. Friends at school were teasing me saying "oh yah just heading down to new mexico for a few days, then hitting of colombia for like a weekend. then off to the east coast of the continent. pretty normal right?" And it's true. It's not normal!!

I got back from California (for the second time in three weeks) after Redlands and went straight into exams. That didn't mean no bike racing or travel though. Did one local racing weekend, heading down to Washington one weekend, wrote three finals, packed up my excessive amount of stuff - actually I was convinced to make an attempt at downsizing that amount to fit "this lifestyle", although I'm not so sure it worked out to well (as I filled up a storage locker in Vancouver, filled up my car with stuff to be taken to Summerland, sent some stuff out East, sent some North to Yellowknife, took some stuff with me South...)- and moved out.

Maybe I should have clued in that "my situation" was a little complicated when it took and hour and pretty much the entire staff of the Returning Office, along with a lot of paperwork, a few faxes to YK and a lot of envelopes to figure out how I could vote...

I'm still not entirely convinced my little hand written piece of paper will ever be counted, but I tried.

Anyway, then last week I hopped on a plane, went YVR-LAX-TUC, met up with my team, drove out to the middle of the desert, New Mexico - AKA Silver City, wrote an exam, mailed it back to a different country, raced around the desert, up and down some mountains for five days, drove back to Tucson. Where I now get to hang out for a day before going TUC-DFW-MIA-MDE down to Colombia for five days, before circling back up to Canada, but the Eastern side this time.

Whew, ok deep breathe.

Tour of the Gila wrapped up yesterday and the last two days of racing were good ones for the team.

The crit course was rolling for a crit - they love the hills here- but it was a pretty fun course.

Canada in 3/4 jerseys - Me, Heather and Clara

After sitting on our heels a bit on Thursday it was time to actually get out and race on Saturday. so in the crit it was time to be aggressive. And we were. We kind of knew that it wasn't likely anything was going to get away. But hell why not try? So we did. And nothing stuck. But we got to actually race our bikes, and made some good money in primes. Too bad US$ ain't worth much anymore.

One attack attempt.

Kept the jersey though and managed to make it to podium and avoid further scolding.

Me, Mara, Clara and Heather

The Gila Monster day was also an awesome one for the team. Diadora-Pasta drove the race right from the neutral over the first few rollers and QOM shattering the field. But they weren't getting rid of Clara, so they sat up and we just rolled through the flat-ish middle part of the stage. A break went - with Lex in it- and went from a two minute advantage, to over eight minutes as we slowed and slowed and slowed in the pack. Then the inevitable slow riding sketchiness = people in front of me going down = me going down. Got back on with the help of the girls, with just a little skin and blood loss, just in time for the ramp up to the final climb to start. Oh yay! Manage to hang through the final 20 miles or so of up and down in a pretty good group. The break never got caught though and Lex rode those last 20 miles solo to roll in for 2nd, move up to 9th on GC and get the U26 jersey. AWESOME.

Lex on the podium!!

I ended up 15th on GC and 2nd in the U26 classification. Good week's work for the team.

Rolling in to the finish - you can see a little crash evidence.

Kept the Young Rider in the Women's Prestige Series though

- bit of a struggle to get that jersey over my head up there.

Becaauusee -

I love Tegaderm and ice.

Alright, time to get this day rolling, build up the bike, find some bike parts, go get some good coffee at Le Buzz, and then try and fit everything into my two bike boxes (I decided I still had to much of that aformentioned stuff and had to send a bag back with the team car to Quebec via Joe Martin b/c otherwise America Airlines was going to leave me destitute paying for two bike boxes aaand a suitcase).

From Colombia next!

From 7000ft

2011-04-30T10:36:00.000-07:00

Just lying here in the beautiful Rodeway Inn in Silver City, NM in the "assumed position" (on bed, legs up, laptop open) killing time until the Tour of Gila crit this afternoon.

I can definitely say it was probably a good thing to come here before heading down to Colombia for Pan Ams, because I'm finally at the point where I can go up the stairs without sounding like I'm 400lbs and have done no exercise in decades. Still struggling a little to eat without running out of breathe though.

Anyway, backing up - we all managed to get down here safely and sort of timely. Two of the girls were flying overnight to Tucson and after sleeping on bike boxes in Ft. Lauderdale for the night missed their 7 am connection out. Luckily there ended up being a few more flights and it didn't turn into a complete gong show. Out of LAX, Moriah and I almost caused an even more major problem however. I got there with just enough time to get over to the United terminal from the AC one, and Moriah had been hanging out for a few hours. Nearing boarding time, Moriah decided it was time for one last bathroom/Starbucks hit and headed off. All of a sudden all the people at the gate are on the plane and they're saying final call - small plane effect. I drag all our stuff over to the boarding line up and try and explain that we're here - but missing a person. They call a couple times and then tell me well you've got three minutes or the next flight is at 6pm (it's 11am at this point). Finally, "ok you've got one minute are you getting on the plane or not?" "Well I've got her stuff" "Ok you're staying here" Important point: We've got a 4 hour drive to make from Tucson to Silver City after the flight and everyone else was getting in between 10am and noon. Finally, at that point Moriah's heard her name and comes running through and the nice lady at boarding manages to convince the not-so-nice lady to let us on the plane. Oops.

But we all made it up to the bustling metropolis of Silver City. Maybe more like the settlement. You end up past the city limits signs and there isn't even cell service - forget any hopes of 3G.

Tuesday night I cranked out my last exam -physiology and fed-exed it back up north. And faced the Mogollon Road Race Wednesday. Bit of a weird day all round. Moriah just about missed the start...well in fact she did but got back on... in a last minute portapotty trip. Then suuuuuppper slow preettty much alll day. I think everyone was feeling the effects of the altitude - or the trying to mitigate the effects of altitude with excessive drinking - and there were several en mass pee stops. not so usual in the girls peloton as it's a little more complicated process...

Hit the final 10k climb and things seriously ramped up. I made the front split of 7 on the first section, it came back together a bit, made the front split of 6 again. Held it for a short period, feeling like it was going to be hard but ok. And then it was not ok, and I started a serious fall backwards. Verrrry long last 2 miles. Got passed by about 14 girls I think to roll in 21st. Even the last 500m felt like eternity. These days happen though. Can't say 10k climbs at altitude are especially my forte.

Thursday's road race didn't pan out perfectly either. A few splits on the early QOM's but things pretty much came back together. One fun, fast descent that splintered the pack too - few people off the road and one master had apparently launched himself off the side before we came through. The ambulance was there and a bunch of people in the ditch when I went by. Maybe time for a little more breaking. Anyway, kind of mangled the end of the race. Little worried about how my legs felt from the day before, got way too caught up thinking and just didn't ride nearly aggressively enough.

Yesterday, was TT day and the chance to make all that back up. After flipping back and forth between riding the disc or just deep dish rear (due to wind gusts hitting 50mph) I decided I'd better just suck it up and go full bore. It was a pretty fun TT course. About a 4 mil climb heading out and the some good rollers to the turn around. It was a bit of a longer TT for us girls at 27k but managed to find a good rhythm and roll through. Apparently there were a few points where they were gritting their teeth in the car while I was descending and getting blown so hard my bike was almost at a 45 degree angle. Had a good death grip on the aerobars though and managed to keep it together. The cacti at the side of the road were good motivation for that. The finish was crazy fast with the downhill combined with a wicked tail wind. Spun out the 55x11. Although spun out might be a relative word for me as I am not a spinner by any means.

Gained enough time to move into the U26 jersey and with 11th in the TT moved up to 14th in GC. And managed to miss podium. Which resulted in quite a few apologies. And a good scolding. Whoooops.

Time for to start getting prepped up for the crit this after. Wind doesn't seem toooo crazy - fingers crossed - and should be a fun rolling course. Gotta try and hang on to the jersey so I can actually make it to podium....

Aprilis

2011-04-21T22:56:00.000-07:00

- the Latin precursor of April meaning to open. Just contemplating how glad I am I dropped my Biological terms in ancient languages course and got to learn about the forests of the world instead - buuut April's meaning is very fitting from a cycling standpoint. The season is definitely open and well underway.

Took a little bit of time after Redlands to get my feet back under me and crank out a few thousand words and take care of some end of year festivities. Then got right into the thick of it - quite literally - with Barry's Roubaix two Sundays ago. The Hell of the North - western Canadian version- fell on a pretty perfect day, with pouring rain turing the dirt/gravel half of the course into one big mud puddle. It was my team mate Moriah's first race back in action this year, and what a way to do it!! We were trying to figure out at the end as we stripped off, only to find more and more layers of mud, how cross racers actually manage to do this every weekend. I was seriously having to take my glasses off after the dirt part each lap to squirt water on them so I could see again. Also, had a bit of a plastic bag malfunction (great for keeping feet dry but always tape around the ankles!) and spent several laps riding around with a balloon of water around my ankle before I should figure out a way to keep following the attacks and also release the water. Ended up being quite a good workout for the day; the home team local ride worked me over a bit in our break of three, deservedly and Jasmin Glaesser took 1st, I was 2nd and Jess Hannah 3rd

Muuuuudddy.

After taking care of one genetics final MoJo and I headed down to Walla Walla WA - home of the onions, and as it turns out a whole lot of windmills - for the two day Tour of Walla Walla. We got our new Specialized Transitions on Thursday pm and were racing on them Saturday am. Exciting stuff! I ended up just over 3 secs back in 2nd behind Annie Ewart (who had a stellar ride!) after the TT, so had to figure out how to grab that time back. Didn't quite get enough in the crit, only getting one 2sec intermediate time bonus that brought me within 1.11sec of the jersey.

The road race was a bit of an eventful day. Local Ride lit it up pretty early and I ended up off the front with Jasmin about 1k into the race. Theeeen I skillfully dropped my chain on a hair pin bit about 10k in. Had to get off my bike to get it back on as I had about zero momentum. By the time that was all said and done and I was getting back on the already dwindled pack had come by, and was now in hot pursuit of the single person break away. Left a fun bit of chasing back on through a beautiful head wind false flat section for me. Got back on, and the rest of the race tried to get away...but had enough trouble just getting off the front of the group. Managed to get the time bonus I needed at the finish though to take the overall GC.

Having never been to Walla Walla before, it was a pretty stellar place - plus we also had awesome host housing. Always a little crazy to think about how welcoming people are to us, just letting us have the run of the house.

Managed to make it back to Canada in time to crank out a stats final.

And now up on the docket is:

~ a trip down to New Mexico for Tour of Gila - gotta try and defend the Prestige Series white jersey

~ one more final exam

~ trip continuation down to Medellin, Colombia for Pan Am Champs - should be interesting as usual, but cool. I've yet to be to Colombia/real South America

~ one final trip for a little while over to the East coast for a little time exploring the corn fields of Manotick, plus the N. American UCI races in the build up to Nationals at the end of June in Burlington

Hopefully I'll have some interesting stories from Gila and Pan Ams.

Actually Pan Ams is guaranteed to have some, and last year at Gila people were getting blown off their bikes. Hmmmm....

: )

2011-04-05T16:44:00.000-07:00

Che-check on the first race of the season. Redlands = done.

And I was right! The excitement was yet to come. The crit didn't seem to create quite the eye-crossed pain it has in the past. Maybe riding at the front actually has some benefit. Only took a while to figure that out.

I'm mid final essay writing here, so we're going to stick to key points.

Crit

- Joanie finished 5th!

- after ending up in the barriers and doing a nice flip over her bike half way through

- i won a $90 prime (I really don't think anyone was sprinting for it)

- also somehow rode through a massive crash, with everyone around me going down, power of the mind "No! I'm not coming off my bike"

- and riding at the front did pay off; split in the field at the finish (I've been caught on the other end of the 1 second rule before) and Vero and I moved up to 13th and 12th respectively in GC

Sunset Road Race

- the neutral was madness as usual

- the top of the first climb being QOM points and time bonus didn't help; as usual

- i made the front split of ten then; not so usual

- that ten rolled around for about 5 laps with a minute gap...and then somehow got caught by a fairy massive group (but it had my team mates Vero and Lex in it, so good to see them!)

- made a split of 7 again...and got caught again

Yup that's me at the back...

- split on the final lap and stuck to the finish

- had Lex with me this time and she helped ride it to the line to get us up on GC (it didn't matter for anyone else in the group)

- despite being told over and over to be first wheel into the last corner I was 4th wheel. oops.

-but managed to sprint to 3rd

- first NRC podium for me

- finished 8th in GC

- and got the Best Young Rider's Jersey (U26) for the Women's Prestige Series (Redlands is the first race of four)

- team was 4th in overall GC!

Pretty happy with that start

Now if it weren't for school....

On that note, better go ride so I get that essay finished.

Good thing for all the new clothes. Man, BC's cold!

PS.

Shout out to the Canadian girls:

Joelle was 6th at the Flanders WC on Sunday!

Erinne took 2nd overall at Redlands

Leah K. was 12th at GP Dottignies on Monday.

Half Way

2011-04-02T07:31:00.000-07:00

So we're half way through the first race of the season (for me), Redlands, but I'd say the excitement is just about to get started.

The race kicked off on Thursday with a 3.1mil prologue that climbs most of the way. Having been fighting a cold last week I was a bit unsure how I was going to be feeling but thankfully the legs came out to play. Nothing earth shattering...which given the previous situation I wasn't really expecting, but came out with the 18th fastest time out of 113 girls just a little over a minute slower than the winner Amber Neben. And a little faster than last year. For the team there were three of us within 7 seconds of each other and all in a tightly packed group, so lots of room for climbing the GC.

Thankfully rolling off at 10:49 meant I got to avoid the worst of the heat for the day. The poor guys didn't start until around 12:30, when the temperatures were starting to hit over 90F. I still haven't quite got my conversions figured out, but it was ridiculously hot!!

I think I finally might bring aero bars next year.

The prologue heat was just prep for Friday's stage, Beaumont Road Race. Again we didn't get too killed by the heat until the last lap of three but there was still enough salt lines on everyone's clothing and face to show that the heat was taking it's toll. That and the way the race shattered over the last QOM. I made it over the top in the front group of 10 or so, and then people started re-grouping down the run in towards the finish. About 4km out Lea Davison (pro mtber for Specialized) rolled off the front and with everyone looking around, I decided to attack and bridge up to her. I got up to her, she took one more pull ...and then as she said after...she was maybe one matchstick too short. I got the gap up to about 16 seconds, but Colavita and HTC were definitely going for a sprint finish, and I got brought back with about 450m to go. Ohhhhh well. Vero was there for the sprint though, grabbing 9th, so all worked out decently.

We also got our new kits just in time for yesterday's race. So exciting! I'll have to try and find pictures.

We're heading out for a morning spin shortly and then we've got the ever exciting Crit. Crit's usually end up being the most spectator friendly and intensive racing and the Redlands' one definitely does NOT disappoint. The first year I did this race as a Junior I think I spent most of the race cross eye-ed from sprinting out of corner after corner after corner. There's 9 corners in 1 mil and an excessively long start/finish false flat straight. Should be an action packed 60 minutes. And I'm sure the guys - with 209 starters - will be even crazier! Always a good atmosphere in downtown Redlands for it. And then Sunday we get to hit the infamous Sunset circuit. Where things really go down. Someone was commenting the other day that it's all that really matters. If you can't hang on Sunset (aka your climbing legs aren't there that day) the time just balloons. I think it says something that you get a GC placing if you do 3 out of 9 laps. That is NOT normal for a road race.

Alright time to go have a snack and go spin the legs.

Game Face

2011-03-29T10:47:00.000-07:00

Currently sitting in my favourite little airport - YVR about to start the journey down to Redlands. This will be my 4th trip to Cali since the start of January - I remember back in high school when I wanted to go to California so badly to surf...and I still haven't learned to surf!!

But important point is this will be the first time this year I get to RACE!!!

I was down two weeks ago for our team training camp, but while the rest of the girls got to stay down for the San Dimas Stage Race - which they rocked! - I had to head back for school. Check Lex as the winner of the U25 jersey.

But back to training camp. I'd never been to the San Diego area before, and was pretty excited to explore a new area of California. Got up Palomar for the first time, which was an awesome climb and an even more fun descent! All round we had a great time getting used to our new bikes, getting Speedplay lessons from our manager for the week Scott Moninger, and hanging out at Trader Joes and Starbucks. Only one little misadventure, which turned into even more of an adventure being that we were on a army base (think K9 unit, fire truck, ambulance, two police cars...and a whole lot of camo). But I'll defer you to Jenny's blog for better details on that.

And now - after chipping away at enough end of term school stuff that I can sneak away again - it's time for the first race of the season (besides the BC Spring Series) REDLANDS!

This will be my third time doing it, and it always seems to be a good kick start to the season. It starts off Thursday with a pretty serious uphill prologue (that just keeps gooiiiing) through all the pretty orange trees. Friday is fun road course with a good loop through a park and an opportunity for a whole lot of wind. Saturday is the crit. The first year I did Redlands as a Junior I think I spent half of the race on the verge of blacking out. I don't know what it is about it - the 9 corners in 1 mile or the false flat drag of a finishing straight - but I find this one of the hardest crits around. Going to try and make it feel a little easier this year. Race finishes off with the renowned Sunset Loop. Ok, I said the crit is hard, but really Sunset is much harder. It's a up up up up down repeat sort of circuit race, but so much fun! In the most sadistic way possible. The fact that it's only March always adds to the pain and suffering.

Oops, so I might be missing an International Forestry quiz in class tonight. But my prof just so accommodatingly sent it to me... so better get on that before I fly!

I'll post back with more race fun soon.

Double Header

2011-02-25T13:43:00.000-08:00

I've been slacking on the blogging front a little bit lately so there's been a little bit of a build up of goings-on...

You might notice a little bit of a change on blog appearance and sponsor list. As one of the links I posted a few weeks ago showed, I'm racing for a new Canadian UCI team this year: Juvederm Specialized!!

Check out the latest press-release here.

I'm excited to get the season started with the team. We should have a good season ahead of us, back by a solid group of sponsors and support, starting in California at the end of March. We've got a team launch at Specialized Canada in Montreal next weekend, which should be a fun kick-off. Can't explain how much I'm looking forward to picking up and getting out on my new Specialized Amira (Especially after I managed to send my bike flying off the car roof this week in South Carolina...although with surprisingly little damage sustained).

I'm currently sitting in Charlotte International Airport on an epic journey of flight connections back to Vancouver feeling a wee bit exhausted after a training camp double header.

Started out two weeks ago in Oxnard, CA for a women's national team camp. We're sitting about 18 months out from the 2012 games now, so they'd decided to pull together the pool of girls who could potentially going to start the ball rolling. The mountain bikers were down there getting some training in as well so the 7 of us got to join in on a bit of riding with them and share some IST staff. It was a fun 5 days filled with great warm weather riding -I've never ridden this part of CA before, splashing in ice bath AKA Pacific ocean - of course only the NWT-er and Manitoba-er were crazy enough to go in, team bonding - burritos and Bachelor on Valentine's, and information purveyance from sports psych to media to sprint tactics to Olympic selection. 2012's a bit of a long shot but it's still exciting to see a dream edge a bit closer to reality.

The girls with Gord Fraser in Cali

Then I did a little jaunt across the continent to the cycling training camp mecca of South Carolina. Split my time between the cluster of Ontario guys that had congregated and National Development Team Women's Endurance camp that was also going on. We had crazy good weather - 24 and sunny - which is not usual for SC in February. One afternoon of studying molecular genetics on the dock and my arm tan lines were almost history! Got in most of the usual SC highlights, getting up Caesar's Head, Whitewater Falls, into Cashiers/Highlands before tackling the pain of Sassfrass yesterday. One time I really am going to pack a 27. Topped off the trip this morning with a stop at Waffle House on the way to the airport. Southern America at its best...

Top of Sassfrass!

Time to hop onto another plane to Phoenix. I'm still struggling to comprehend how it can take 4 and a half hours to go from Charlotte to Phoenix. Especially when there is still another 4 and half hours to go from Phoenix to Vancouver. Africa is probably closer! Ah well time to buckle down and get some school work done.

Riiight, I'm in school.

Trains, Planes and Automobiles

2011-02-03T07:49:00.001-08:00

It's that time of year again!

Some how it's February already and it's time to start racking up the frequent flyer and driver miles (it's a pain in the ass to take a bike on the train...so maybe that's "train"-ing time).

I think it's a pretty common sentiment that holidays are such a crazy time that you usually feel like you're in need of a holiday from the holidays.

Luckily for us cyclists, good training locations are pretty much the same as good holiday locations. Good excuse for a little "self-made" training camp!!

Headed down to Palm Springs for a little warm weather....

Vacation.

Oh wait, I really do mean training camp...

Put in some good hours with Mr. Riggs and Leah "drill sergeant" Guloien (both blogging slacker extraordinaires!!).

It's incredible how much easier it is to get the hours in when you know you're going to wake up to perfect, sunny, warm, weather.

Adventured into some "interesting" desert areas, got in on the weekend warrior hammer fest to the fish hatchery, saw some cool windmills, saw some cool rocks, some cool trees (Joshua Tree National Park) and got in way over our heads distance/daylight wise, got a little non-cycling wear tanning time in, did a little homework, ripped some TRX, and got into the grey hairs 6pm dinner scene.

Going back to Vancouver to the wonderful grey skies and rain was a liiiittle bit of a downer, but it's back to California in only a week!!

Next up is a Nat. team pre-Olympic year training camp in Oxnard, CA (can you say beach house?) followed up by another week in the mountains of South Carolina. Should be a solid block of training, before getting a little more school in and then kicking off the real start to the season with team presentation, team camp and then Redlands!

Update from CA when things are a little more interesting.

Athlete Advance

2011-01-10T15:23:00.000-08:00

This past Saturday, the CSC (Canadian Sport Centre) out here on the west coast put on a pretty awesome day long conference, called Athlete Advance (apparently they'd decided they had a fundamental issue with the concept of retreat, so put a more positive spin on it!). Just heading into the meat of training and competition season, it was good to take a day out to step back and look at some of the other aspects of sport.

Also, between the endless construction pre-Games, heavy security blanket during the Games, and not being in town post-Games, I had yet to see the Athletes' Village, where the conference was held. One of the main facilities from the village has been turned into a community centre, where we were, with all the CSC testing labs, along with a bunch of public courts and a gym - just one good example of the positive community impact the Olympics can have.

Ryan Walters ('86 Stanley Cup winner, former Canucks coach, and current women's national team coach) opened the day with his public speaking piece "feeding the hungry spirit". After than everyone headed off to a series of seminars we'd each selected.

I started off with nutrition (to feed that hunger), which involved us cooking several different "fast" meals. Came away with some good nutrition tips and delicious new recipe ideas - peanut sauce on homemade pita pizzas, try it!!

Then on to sleep and psych seminars from some of the IST support staff we'd had down at our nat. team training camp in Tucson last yr. Good reinforcement of some of the more fringe, but also necessary aspects of excelling.

My last seminar was probably my second favourite, to the nutrition, and went over the struggle between sport and "life" that athletes go through. Mostly, I just always love hearing athletes' stories because they're guaranteed to open your eyes in some way.

Clearly aware of their audience...and the fact that athletes are pretty terrible at sitting still all day long...we got a break for a craaazy yoga class sponsored by lululemon. Eoin Finn, the instructor is pretty well known in the yoga world, and he lead us through what I can safely call a workout, he terms super flow. Yoga can't even be included in the name, as it's some combination of yoga, tai chi, surfing and karate. Guaranteed for a laugh. Can't wait to try out the "Happy Hips" DVD they gave us...

The day wrapped up with a Athletes Panel, with Adam Van Koeverden, Emily Brydon and Adam Kreek. Again, hearing from such accomplished athletes wrapped up the day pretty nicely. However, not only are they all olympians, but this group are all highly involved in community work. It was impressive to hear about the commitment that they've put into using the opportunities they've had and the position they've been given to make a difference for other kids. Primarily as a way to find a purpose for the rationalization of putting so much into going down a hill super fast, or making a boat go. Something that resounded with me.

S'all for now.

7 days 'til sunshiney, warm Palm Springs!

Team Juvederm-Specialized-Mazda

2011-01-06T08:13:00.000-08:00

Click Here

... and be prepared to read in French

2010 through the Camera Lens

2011-01-03T08:39:00.001-08:00

I'm on a writing strike until tomorrow when class and therefore large amounts of note taking begin.

So I'm going to go with a photo recap of what I saw and did in 2010 instead. That and the fact that this year has had SO much crammed into it that I can hardly remember what happened in June let alone January, so the pictures are my memory crutch.

January - March

Woo olympics

Redlands

April - June

Off to Belgie

Gatineau

July - September

TdF

Back to Euroland

(trying to keep entertained in Europe)

And then Aussie Land

October - December

World Champs

Onterrible

Off Season!!!

REC

Sunshine Coast

Lace Up!

lil' procrastination

lil' school

Summerland

X-mas

Canmoooore

Banff

...and so much more.

I'd never take the year back...but can only hope for smoother sailing to come.

Happy 2011 Everyone!

Comfortably Numb

2010-12-12T17:44:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I'm stealing the title from a Whistler MTB trail I've never actually done, but I feel it aptly describes the tired behind the eyes, hot faced feeling after a hard weekend of training -- and then getting to come back to genetics revising!

That would be as opposed to what I was feeling Friday, after back to back Ecology and Biochemistry midterms, which was a little closer to completely numb/about to pass out. It's amazing what all this learning (and caffeine) does for your health. There are likely fewer groups with heads filled with somewhat vacuous knowledge yet barely functioning and unable to construct proper sentences as university students at exam times. Needless to say campus is a fun place to be right now.

So I escaped the city this weekend to get some riding in without the excitement of dodging cars every second and scheming ways to not get stuck at traffic lights (ie. the turn right every time you hit a red game, quite fun to play in Richmond).

Saturday we did a good loop out to Langley and laid down a little recon of Armstrong hill so we'll be ready come Spring Series time.

Today, waking up to a nice, steady drizzle we waffled back and forth between a variety of activities, including sucking it up and spending multiple hours miserable on the road bike, to running up Buntzen for 4 hours. Face with the running option, I had the brilliant idea of trying to hit the trails on the mountain bike. Leah kindly lent me her full suspension, while she got banged around all day (in more ways than one : ) ) on the hard tail. Fun to get out and rip around on the trails a bit, and blow the lungs out climbing Burnaby Mtn.

I swear it never ends.

For roadies, we managed to be perfectly capable on all the single track. And heading back onto the Trans Canada trail, had a good responsible discussion about the dangers of the slippery bridge and the numerous crashes witnessed here.

Think that helped?

Courtesy of a tree after the 2nd bridge.

Don't worry the knee scar was already there. How I actually managed to get to the tree I'm not quite sure...but that's not entirely new for me.

Ah well, good laugh and some leg burning Contador vs. Schleck action on the road climb back home made for a solid day. Oh and maybe a little ibuprofen. All good, just a good way to get some solid stretching in, in ways you might not otherwise.

Time to get back to that gene interaction stuff you see under my leg. Exciting stuff.

Winter Wonderland

2010-11-22T15:32:00.000-08:00

Whatever this whole el nina phenomenon is....i'm not impressed!

Up the top of Seymour

Friday, Vancouver got a whole dumping of the white stuff. And somehow UBC and the mountains are the only place where it is still sticking around. All the Whistler-loving folks are stoked (made for a good opening weekend), but really do we need it in the city too?

Although I have to say trainer time was made much more entertaining, by watching everyone out the window struggle to function in the snow.

I wasn't about to spend my birthday on the trainer, so headed up to Mt. Seymour Sunday to do some snowshoeing instead. Good fun up the three peaks, especially trying to scramble/slide down the powder on the third.

Somehow all the pictures on that camera evaporated mysteriously. Gah.

Ok so maybe I do kind of like snow...

And after a little bloop of school on the radar, time for some more snow adventuring in store for this weekend...

Riggsy better be able to keep up.

Lace Up for Kids

2010-11-12T14:19:00.000-08:00

This week I was sent a study from the UofA (along with most CSC athletes likely) that was trying investigate and examine the sports activity and specialization history of high performance athletes. Going through it was a good reminder of all the opportunities I got as a kid to participate in a variety of sports and all the opportunities I have continued to get. While these chances might be something I have occasionally taken for granted, for the most part I think I have realized how lucky I am to have skated, cross-country skied, sailed, ran cross country and track, and played basketball, soccer and volleyball...and on.

But I think one things I likely have taken for granted would be my health. Even if I had of had these opportunities, if I hadn't been healthy it would have been nearly impossible to take advantage of them.

And that's something that's almost impossible for me to imagine.

Here at UBC I volunteer with UBC REC helping run the intramural soccer league. In addition to running intramurals REC also runs a variety of awesome events throughout the year. The one charity event is Lace Up for Kids. It's a skating event here on campus that raises proceeds to go towards research for rare children's diseases through the Rare Disease Translational Research Fund at BC Children's Hospital.

Our leagues team has put together a Lace Up team, and on November 25th we're going to be lacing up to contribute to the goal of 25 000 laps skated.

If you like me, were and have been lucky enough to have an active childhood consider making a donation below by clicking below!! Any bit helps.

DONATE

Game On

2010-11-01T20:27:00.000-07:00

...that can be interpreted in several ways, however primarily it's game on for season 2011 as of today.

After a month of being dragged behind "the wagon", it's time to get back on & back into athlete life. Basically, time to leave reality for another 11 months.

I think they say "distance makes the heart grow fonder" and as much as I love riding my bike, it always feels pretty good to be out of the saddle for a while and off a regime. Not that, that means a complete absence of physical activity, or any such situation.

The off-season turns into the one month you can do all the crazy activities outdoors loving people love to do - but which aren't really so conducive to bike riding.

After a small break to replenish the energy stores, I started off the adventuring with a hike up Golden Ears out in Maple Ridge. We had an amazing day for it with perfect fall weather. Not quite keen enough to head out before 10, we cut it a little short to make it to the top. We passed, made it higher and made it down before some couples that had headed out almost 3 hours before us. Side benefit to being in decent shape is the group can power over a lot more, a lot faster. Still, it's good to see other people out there....both as a motivator to keep on getting out there and just to see the amazing landscapes we live in out here being appreciated.

Towards the top

Now I said being able to push ourselves was a good thing. And it is, but doing a 6 hour, 24km, relatively technical hike with lots of jumping and bounding downhill (Ok maybe I brought the pain from that on myself) makes for a pretty difficult next couple days of functioning. I had to get on my bike the next day just to ride the approx. 900m down to the stadium to supervise REC soccer, because there was no way I was going to make it walking.

To ease off the throttle a little (or maybe just to do things in the wrong order) I got some slightly milder hikes in, in Hamilton/Dundas the following weekend. Going off the trail managed to spice things up a little bit, and there were actually some pretty nice waterfalls.

Not to spend too little time without getting the competitive juices flowing, I also brought home the W in pumpkin carving. I'm pretty sure it's clear which is mine...

Back to BC, and up to squeeze in the last bit of Whistler pre-ski season excitement with a hike up to Black Tusk and Wedge Mountain. Two days in a row of 2000m in elevation gain. Not a bad weekend.

Probably one of the craziest views I've seen in a long time.

Well worth the trudge up through the snow.

Little Multi media flavour

Alright time to ride/gym.

Merci Dank U Gracias Dank U Wel Thank You!!

2010-10-14T23:46:00.000-07:00

I think that covers all the languages of the countries I've raced in this year...

With the 2010 season pretty well wrapped up I owe a huge thank you to a lot of people. Family, friends, coaches, people that have offered me advice, followed and supported, fixed with my bikes (double thanks), driven me around...driven and moved my stuff around... and on and on.

It's been an interesting year, for lack of a better word, but I think I'm lucky to be able to take a lot of positive experiences away from it.

Flash back to Worlds and it's a pretty good case in point...

For everyone that saw the results it didn't go quite according to plan (although I swear my bike and I never made contact with any sort of metallic object and there is supposedly concrete video footage...).

I think the story can be told in pictures...

What changes?

BEFORE

1/2 way up the 1st climb

(Canadian Cyclist)

After the top of the climb

(Canadian Cyclist)

Front flat, rear derailleur into rear wheel, spare bike, spare bike back to follow car (that was my team support for the race....giving the bike back in case something happened to someone else).

So not an ideal first World Championships by any stretch, but as lots of people have told me I'll hopefully have many more down the road and this way it can only get better!

Talking to a few people in the week after, they noted that I didn't really seem THAT disappointed with the outcome. I think the impression would have been sliiiightly different had the conversation occurred right afterwards as I sat in the 2nd feed zone, but if this year's taught me anything there's only so much you can control. You're better served to try and find the positive experiences in what you did achieve and find new motivation moving forward than sit stuck on the frustration, sadness, whatever. Basically, I care, I put a lot into this...but in the grand scheme of things, I've gone through tougher experiences this year and hopefully I can carry some positive perspective forward from that.

And it can only help me to have been at Worlds and seen what it's all about.

Watching the Elite Men's Race was a cool experience. The crowds were insane...

So we had to escape to the restricted feed zone to watch...

And it was pretty funny to hear my aunt and uncle (who were also in Northern Aus at the same time) recount how they came home the night of the Women's RR, turned on the TV...and lo and behold there I was standing on the side of the road with a wheel in the air...

And I got to hold a baby kangaroo!

And last but not least it's the off season!!!!! Time to finally relax.

And then bring on 2011.

1 day to go...

2010-09-29T23:31:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow's the last day of training for the season leading up to the World Championships road race on Saturday. With 8 days of training (in crazy weather conditions) and lounging under our belts I think we're finally ready to get the race underway. There's only so much staring at the wall one can take.

Worlds kicked off yesterday with the U23 men and elite women's time trial. USA's Taylor Phinney came good on predictions to take the U23 title by a narrow margin and GB's Emma Pooley took the women's title. I have a feeling she's going to be inflicting some pain on Saturday as well. Already experienced that this year at the Fleche Wallone World Cup.... Tara put down a solid ride for Canada as well, bettering her '09 placing by one spot to finish up 7th. It was pretty cool to watch it all live on TV. We were pretty excited as Tara held the fastest time at the first checkpoint for quite a while. Crazily enough Jeannie Longo, at 52, pulled off a 5th place. Can't even comprehend how she's been at the top of her game for soooo long.

Men's TT is currently underway. Should be interesting to see how the results pan out. Millar is crushing it at the minute but Cancellara looks like he could be easily poised to take a 4th title. Wouldn't mind seeing the Aussie Michael Rogers hold on for the title but at the moment it's not looking so good.

Despite the tight eating, sleeping, riding regime we have managed to squeeze in a few touristy activities. I'll try and upload a few pictures later when the internet isn't moving at quite so glacial speeds.

Back to les devoirs and the telly.

Finally found koalas

Along the Great Ocean Road

Took us a while to get this down pat

Beauty day eh mate

2010-09-27T04:00:00.000-07:00

G'day mate.

Been in Australia for coming on approximately 6 days (I'm not entirely sure how to calculate it with the time/day change and all) but have been a little bit slack on posting. I think it's because I wasn't entirely sure I was in Australia until today...because I finally saw KANGAROOS!! @ a golf course...but nonetheless.

Anyway, flight over wasn't nearly as painful as I thought it might be. Managed to sleep away most of the 16 or so hours to Melbourne. We even managed to cobble our bikes together for a bit of a ride along the coast the afternoon we arrived. Jet lag may have played a bit of a factor in our struggling to remember to ride on the left side of the road and one hilarious crash, but we got the cob webs out a bit. And were back in time for it to hit us out cold at around 7pm.

The next two days were filled with recuperation, reconn-ing the course and reading text books. The course is definitely not a sprinters course and is going to make for quite a difficult day in the saddle come this Saturday. Lots of teams arrived around the same time as us, so there have been quite a few people out on the course all bundled up for winter.

Also, got the chance Saturday to watch possibly one of the craziest sports ever - Australian Rules Football. The Grand Final was on, so spent a little bit of time trying to comprehend what was going on. Not sure I was successful. It's happening all over again the day of the Worlds RR however, as there is no tie break method in the case of a draw game. Like I said, crazy sport.

Sunday we took part in the Herald World Cycling Classic, a race the Worlds organizers put together so everyone could get a bit of racing in their legs. It was held on the Aussie National Championships course a bit north of Melbourne in Ballarat. Unfortunately, we got stuck with the 8:30 am start while the guys didn't go off until noon. It was good to get some race efforts in the legs though, even if they might still be adjusting to the fact that it was not Saturday but indeed Sunday.

And today, approaching stir crazy levels in the hotel, I got out to experience a little bit of Australia with my mom. Luckily it cleared up (thought I was in Vancouver out riding this morning), and we got the chance to see some pretty picturesque views down the Great Ocean Road.

Racing starts on Wednesday for the TT folks so the pace will start to pick up a bit around here. Should be fun to watch the racing on TV. For the rest of us road racers, I think we're just going to be enjoying the luxurious beds of the Sands Resorts, trying to stay a float with school, and finish off the prep leading up to next weekend!

Headed Down Under

2010-09-20T19:00:00.000-07:00

Currently hanging out in another airport - the fine establishment that is LAX - killing a couple hours before the flight down to Melbourne. Thankfully in this terminal they've been kind enough to not put arm rests on every chair so it's possible to lie down.

Last week has been a little bit of a whirlwind. I was in Montreal mid-week for some testing set up through B2TEN in addition for getting to play a bit of tourist around McGill with a friend. In addition, to training, actually going to class and trying to combat packing and laundry situation I was flying around. I think it'll be a good thing to get down to Australia early...not just to get adjusted to the time change...but to get back to a focussed setting for a while. I'm used to juggling, but probably not best for optimal performance.

Not too much else exciting for now. Just mentally preparing myself for the longest flight of my life. Maybe I can visualize my way to lying on a beach for the 16 hours! More exciting update soon, hopefully with some pictures!

And the full team :

Press Release

Airport Ninja

2010-09-12T15:47:00.000-07:00

I've been told that people are actually reading this blog, so I figured I had better hold up my end of the bargain and update it.

If you'll excuse a little tardiness I'm currently on a bit of a tour of North American airports refining my airport and plane skills. Number of airports that now have free Wifi though that might not be such a good excuse....

The rest of the European trip was quite eventful. I can barely remember everything that happened over the course of our time in Holland...

The one-day race we did Anne got in the break and despite getting a little worked over got into the UCI points for 7th. I had a good shot to make the break but was a bit of a "junior" and over thought what I was doing way too much.

Pack @ Omloop (photo: womenscycling.net)

Holland Ladies Tour was fun (for some reason I like this kind of hard racing) but extremely stressful. There's not one second of the daily race that you can drift off, or you'll be in the ditch, on the ground or just at the back of the pack. Where your chances of ending up in the aforementioned places increases substantially. As a team we had some good days, some bad luck (a pedal coming off, a couple crashes, broken shifter, ill-timed flats) and some crazy moments.

Working the front post pedal fiasco

(photo: womenscycling.net)

Case in point, second last day riding to the start (AKA trying to find the start in this town) we got viciously attacked by some sort of bird. Now sometimes birds don't take kindly to cyclists. But I don't think any of us had seen a bird this persistent. It was dive bombing us, flying inches from our back and just generally driving us insane. Wish we had it on video but we were all close to crying from laughter as we tried to out deke or out sprint this bird. We also thankfully managed to make it to the start with a few minutes to spare.

Off on a short lived solo break on stage 5

(photo: womenscycling.net)

On the same day, as it was a double day, Joelle also killed it in the TT and took the young riders jersey. Pretty awesome for Canada. We also moved into 4th in the Team GC. Our friendly hotel hosts (I really think they hated us for disturbing the peace of their 4 star hotel) presented us a with a nice bottle of champagne to celebrate at dinner. Needless to say the lodging and food was significantly better than France.

An unfortunate crash on the last day left Joelle out of the race, along with two of the other girls. Overall, though we had some good results and I personally felt like I got some good racing in.

(photo: womenscycling.net)

I should clarify the blog title now though.

To start the beginning of my September airport adventures, I got back to Vancouver last Tuesday, just in time to start school less than 12 hours later. Awesome jet lag.

Barely moved in and back in the swing of school, I was off to Yellowknife for the weekend. Now this coming week I get to squeeze in a little more school, some training, and a one day trip to Montreal. There was originally supposed to be a trip to Toronto in there somewhere…but one can only do so much.

And then the piece de resistance…. Melbourne, a week Monday. Yes, if you’re wondering, that is where the 2010 World Championships are. I’m pretty stoked to have made the team and am looking forward to racing and hopefully getting to see a little bit of Australia as well.

I figure by the end of this month I should have my Elite status…maybe even my Super Elite. Yay, for Star Alliance flights!

Alright, back on to the plane from Calgary to Vancouver. Get to finish off the movie I started watching on the way up on Friday!

Het Land van Wind en de vlakke straats

2010-08-25T00:31:00.001-07:00

AKA Holland.

Friday we begin the Dutch centric portion of our trip with Omloop Door Middag-Humsterland on Saturday and then the 5-day Holland Ladies Tour starting next Tuesday. Looking forward to some fun 3-4 hours of motor pacing per day, avoiding crashes and trying not to get stuck behind splits. Shall be good training, and hopefully have some good finishes for the team. Besides that Holland is pretty cool.

But back pedaling back to France...

We crushed through the 10 hour drive down to France on Thursday, and thankfully hit no crazy traffic this time. Leaving at 6am, I managed to get comfy in the back seat of the "bus" and sleep away most of the trip. The outlook on France improved slightly as we stayed at a cozy family run bed and breakfast that served up pretty decent food.

Pre-ride

* pictures lifted off of Dave Drumm

Friday we got out on the course for a pre-ride. It was crazy to see the number of campers already parked up at the top. Besides our GP de Plouay WC on Saturday there was also a Pro Tour race Sunday, a France Elite race before ours on Saturday and a bunch of cyclosportif and mtb races on Friday. Lots and lots of cycling fans. The course definitely was a toughie with 3 significant climbs per lap, but seemed like it should make for a good race.

Team presenation

Saturday we started at 1:45 (to make sure we finished within the television schedule) after a series of team presentations and whatnot. The race was ON from the gun. I'd managed to get a pretty decent start line position and ended up in pretty comfortable positioning for the first couple laps, managing to flow with the group pretty well. Covered a few attacks on the second lap, but things really weren't going to get serious until later on, on the climbs. The race went downhill for me half way through or so. Felt like I had good legs, then didn't have such a happy stomach, then didn't have such good legs and went back. Managed to roll the next couple laps but finished HD. Seemed to have picked up a bit of a virus or something as the past couple days I've been pretty glassy eyed and slightly fever-ish. Back up and running now though. Maybe not such a bad time to have a bit of a forced break. Back to the race: it ended up finishing up pretty well for the team. Wish I could have been a bit more of a help later on but Joelle put in a good effort for Erinne, who wound up 8th, and also Anne sprinted to 18th to get in the WC points.

Time to hit saddle!

Vaarwel

Team

Sayonara France

2010-08-15T00:27:00.000-07:00

If only for a four day reprieve...

French land

Route de France wrapped up yesterday. Solid race, but still a longggg 7 days of driving, questionable food, questionable sleeping quarters and hard racing.

Overall, I was fairly happy with how it all panned out. The last day was probably my best physically and mentally. Had a little bit of getting back in the groove of racing to do.

From where I left off:

3rd day :

Wasn't too eventful. Anne Samplonious went off about 40k into the race so we just got to patrol the front. Nederland Bloeit started chasing harder as the gap went up to 6 min., but it was still fairly controlled. Unfortunately, Anne got caught with about 300m to go, but got a bunch of prizes for her effort. One of those heart breaking catches you always see during the Tour that HTC seems to have down to a science. The last 5km was a ridiculous crash fest on a narrow semi-descent. People were flying all over the place and there was probably 3x as many close crashes as actual crashes. Only one broken bone out of it all though.

4th day was an exciting one. Started off with the team car not starting just before the start. There may have been a slight gas type mix up... Just another bump, no big stress. It was raining and windy so of course the pack was strung out and guttered right from km 0. Hard way to start the day. A break got away at 20k or so and stayed away for the rest of the day. Right after that I flatted and had a few moments of panic about who was going to change my wheel, but neutral stepped up despite being a little slow and the rest of the cars were pretty good at helping me back through the caravan. Rest of the day wasn't too exciting. Our group almost caught the break but then heading onto the circuit the front wiped out turning onto the bridge.

5th day:

TT. Super fun, rolling course. Not so fun with no TT bike and ridiculous clip on aerobars. Did what I could and down to 2 days to go.

6th day:

Pretty hard from the start, with a good climb early on. Also, managed to have my inhaler come out of my pocket in the neutral start and explode...made for super awesome breathing and smoker's hack the next day. Things came back together and stayed pretty calm until the last 15k or so where there was another 4-5k climb. Legs weren't feeling too great from the TT ...and poor positioning probably didn't help me out too much either. Worked my way up and almost made it across...but no quite. Ah well.

7th day:

Stoked, because it's almost over and we get to get out of France for a while (I think only bike racers can appreciate the disdain for this country, maybe not so much tourists).

Neutral start rolling out to the climb

It was likely the hardest day, with the group on full gas right from the start. With Judith Arndt only 3 seconds out of yellow, and a bunch of other teams w nothing to lose, everyone wanted to be aggressive. The fact we started climbing from km 0 to km 5 didn't make things any easier. Everyone was shattered across the road strung out probably less than 2 minutes into the race. Had better legs today and managed to make it down the descent into the front group, where it was game on. Attack, cover, cover, try and breathe for a bit and then all over again. Things were going left, right and centre for probably 15km. Finally a big group got established that Erinne Willock was in, so we could sit up for a bit. But of course Arndt was in the break...the yellow jersey wasn't. So another 50km of single file high tempo by Marianne Vos and team. Trust me when Vos is on the front, even in a draft it hurts. Especially after 6 days of racing. With maybe 25k to go the break got caught but there were still attacks going off, so we were still riding in pretty much single file. No pack surfing today. Hit the circuits with 17k to go, and was feeling pretty good about anything. Of course on the second loop I had to pick the precise patch of pavement where a excessively large nail was and instantaneous BOOM. Managed to sketchily kind of slow down and get myself around the corner without killing anyone in the back behind...get a wheel change, and finish the last 10k myself. Because the race was going and we were in the circuits you can't really get any drafting help from the team car even in a mechanical situation. How she rolls I guess. Just gotta hope the nail can now be extracted from my carbon wheel.

Nail dans the wheel

After extraction

- Managed to go into a spoke hole, narrowly avoiding destroying my wheel

Misadventure toll for the week:

1 broken spoke

1 crash and new scar on the knee

1 rock induced flat

1 nail induced flat

1 semi broken shifter

1 exploded inhaler

Result: 31st GC (pour moi, but a co-equipper in 8th), 7th young rider, 5th team GC

Gotta love bike racing.

We've got 4 days to rest and cobble everything back together... get re-aligned and what not and then we're back to France on Thursday for the hardest World Cup of the circuit, GP de Plouay on Saturday!!

Update from France

2010-08-09T12:04:00.000-07:00

Currently sitting in a hall way in a random sports school in Laval, France congregated with all the other desperate internet seeking cyclists, getting a little WWW fix.

We just wrapped up our 2nd day of the Route de France and are in our second school dormitories after another stellar white meal of rice (also may be substituted for pasta occasionally) and chicken.

After a 8 hour - turned into 11 hour due to French holidays drive down to the Bretagne region we started off the racing with the prologue yesterday. Overall it went pretty decently considering I had no TT equipment other than slightly unhelpful and extremely ghetto TT bars.

Today was a slightly less stellar day, although I did get flex my (very weak) French muscles when I somehow ended up doing a TV interview in French. Hopefully I made sense and at the worst didn't say anything offensive. Got caught up in a crash maybe 30k in and scraped myself up a little and gave myself a pretty good smack on the head. Back up and in the pack not too badly though and even spent a little time off the front after. Too far back going into the last 5k...which happened to have a bit of a kicker climb in it... and I got caught behind a split which dropped me back in GC a little. Ah well, still 5 more days of bike racing to come.

Not too much exciting to report. It's darn near impossible to capture the ridiculousness of France from a bike racer's point of view, but we spend a lot of time laughing at how unglamorous it is for sure. No idea how the guys in the Tour de France do it because we're starting to go slightly crazy after only 4 days in this country.

S'all for now...

Pannekoeken

2010-08-01T07:04:00.001-07:00

Yes, yes I know Belgium is supposed to be the land of beer, frites and waffles...but somehow they make really good pancakes/crepes. At least in Tielt-Winge. I'm curious to see if the women that run the store there remember me from April... I figure I went in enough. Oooh and rijsttaarts. But it's not all about the food...

Point is, I'm off to Belgium Tuesday evening and definitely looking forward to it. I finally finished my exams from last semester this past week. Just in time to try and finagle my way into courses for next year and jump right back into class!! Great.

A week today we'll be starting Le Route de France (so as much as I'm going to Belgium I'm really going to France to start with) which is sort of the women's version of the Tour de France. Back in the day the two actually used to be run simultaneously using some of the same courses, albeit a little shorter, but the women's version has faltered a little in the past few years while the men's race has exploded. It's been great but also entertaining to see how many people out of the cycling bubble followed the Tour this year and the coverage it has received even in Canadian mainstream media.

We don't do quite as epic a circuit of France but race basically from the west coast over in Bretagne to the east side of the country, heading a little North in the middle to get around Paris.

The next week we're back in France for GP de Plouay, a World Cup which is reputed to be a pretty difficult course. Then another few days of training and Euro living before heading off to the Netherlands for a one day race and then Holland Ladies Tour the first week of September. Hopefully the block of Euro racing in the spring will pay off and I'll be a little bit more comfortable starting off this time around.

Just running around trying to collect everything and get ready to go now, with a fun local race squeezed in tomorrow. I fly back to Vancouver straight from Belgium on the first day of school (I'm sure I'll be in fine jet lagged form for the first few days of classes), so have to make sure I've got everything straightened out...somewhat at least.

Where did the past month go?

2010-07-12T07:49:00.000-07:00

I’m not quite sure, although I know there was a lot of riding and flying. Life can be a little tumultuous and I think I can safely say that definitely applies to the past month.

And there are some parts of it that are likely best left at that here.

Down to racing.

Gatineau was a fun weekend of racing. It’s always fun to get to ride on the National team, reppin’ the maple leaf in Canada. It doesn’t happen very often. The TT was a pretty flat, power course out on the highway. Not too much exciting on the course; just one to put your head down and suffer. I ended up 15^th with a decent ride. Maybe got a little over excited at the start and the way back wasn’t quite as downhill as it seemed pre-riding, but sometimes that’s inevitable. I had my follow car yelling squad to keep me going over the last couple kms…not that I could hear them much. The road race was pretty aggressive, which made the course a lot harder than it seemed although still not selective enough to create any real divisions in the pack. With a round a bout to negotiate in the last ~300m we kind of knew someone was likely going to be losing skin at the finish and the inevitable happened with an Aussie at the front taking it a little too hot through the 180 bend. She ended up wiping out the HTC Columbia train, plus a few others and holding up a bunch of us. Joelle Numainville got through for the win, which was awesome…always good to have a Canadian scooping up the UCI points and W on home soil and we had a few girls in the top ten too. I think I rolled in for 17^th or so.

I had a few days in Ottawa before heading down to Nature Valley so I got to do a little visiting and some tourist-ing, which doesn’t happen that often. Went through an interesting exhibit at the National Art Gallery (check out Leah's blog picture background for our own art), hit of the Works for some delicious burgers and did a little other wandering.

Next trip was YOW-YYZ-MSP for Nature Valley Grand Prix in Minneapolis. I’d never been to Minnesota before, but for some reason I was surprised by how nice it was. The race started off well with a decent ride for me in the prologue, and then staying out of trouble in the first crash riddled crit. It’s never really a good sign when they’re pounding filler into the holes on the corners twenty minutes before the start. The next stage was cancelled on the start line due to tornado warnings. That’s a first. Race went a little off course for me after that. Didn’t feel great ½ through the next crit and I guess I did something to my stomach it wasn’t so impressed with. Got through the road race the next day but spent the day of the Stillwater Crit curled up in bed. Thankfully, we had awesome host housing.

Next up: Edmonton for Nationals. I thought I had made travel progress westward but for some reason the flight path took me back through Toronto. Oh well, got me a little closer to my goal of achieving Elite status this year.

Nationals was a little underwhelming I guess. First time since I started bike racing 5 years ago I haven’t medaled in one of the events. I just wasn’t quite on in the TT, although I wasn’t totally shocked by that. Scraped together a near top ten for 12^th overall and 4^th espoir. The road race ended up how I thought it might when I first road the course back in May: sprint finish. Lex Albrecht of Quebec had a long day off the front, when she rolled off maybe 800m into the race and no one seemed to even notice. My race was made a little more exciting by some equipment issues. Big surprise there…my bikes seem to hate me sometimes. My bike starting making an awful noise part way into the race coming from somewhere in the drive train. It progressively got louder and louder, and more and more people started asking me what was wrong, but I couldn’t see where anything was rubbing. After going back into the cars once the neutral support told me my front derailleur had slipped down to that each tooth of my front chain ring was pinging off of it. I shot back up to the pack for one of the climbs and then returned back to the car for a little “out of the window, hanging onto the roof rails” mechanical adjustment. Past that there wasn’t much excitement. I tried to get away once but only stayed for maybe half a lap. Eventually the break came back, the race got a little faster and we sprinted.

I feel like that was a less than exciting update...so time for a little more upbeat and exciting news. Despite the aformentioned Nationals, I had a stellar enough start to the season to get myself a spot on the long list for the 2010 World Championships. This was one of my major goals for the season so I'm pretty stoked on that. Means August is now fully booked with another block of Euro racing. How that goes will determine who gets to make the trip down to Aussie land for Worlds at the end of September.

Manayunk Survived

2010-06-07T07:05:00.000-07:00

Race weekend one of June is checked off. With an early morning departure down to Philly on Friday, we covered the 8 hours with enough time to get in a short spin in along the river by all the rowing clubs. Saturday we headed outo on a bit of a Canadian tour de Philly. I'd driven down with the Canadian team Nanoblur, and so got to tag along with them, Spidertech, and a few Canadian TD bank (TD is the presenting sponsor of Philly) people/avid cyclists that had flown down for the race, for a pre-ride of the course. Manayunk wasn't quite as crazy as it had been built up to be...but still deserves the "wall" moniker.

Sunday we rolled out just after 9am after the men had done a few hot laps of the finishing circle. That early there were already tons of people out riding around on bikes, and waiting to spectate. It's a pretty big set-up in downtown Philadelphia with a massive TV screen by the start finish, grandstands and an expo area. With four laps of the circuit on tap the racing didn't start out too aggressively, but with a quick enough pace that we were still a minute or so faster than the guys on our first lap. Last year the women's pack caught the men's but it seemed this year they were determined not to have to suffer that situation again.

Lap 1 and 2 were relatively uneventful: a few attacks, but nothing sticking, a little bit of splitting up on the ascent of Manayunk but then regrouping on the descent and a few sporadic crashes. By lap 3 it was getting pretty windy, just adding to the ridiculous heat (by the last lap I was starting to get goose bumpy), and on one stretch along the river a fans' plastic cooler lid blew its way through the peloton. Everyone seemed to manage to avoid it, but it was entertaining to hear him yelling out "Sorry!" through his loudspeaker the next time we went by. The last time up Manayunk, Peanut Butter & Co drove the pace to the base of the climb and then the tempo was high enough up and on the way down that a group of 22 formed off the front and it stuck as Columbia kept the pace high at the front as we headed to the last two short climbs and the finish. Jeannie Longo tried an attack on the second last climb but no one was willing to let anything slip away. I've still got some work to do on being more aggressive in the last couple hundred metres. Shelley Evans attacked from my left with about 500m to go and I hesitated, while really I should have jumped then...as everyone else did. Ina managed to muscle her way around her for the W, and I rolled in 13th. Still more to be desired, but for the first Philly showing I think I have to be happy. Reward: another 8 hours driving home! Fun stuff.

Good start to June thus far. Next up off to Gatineau on Thursday for the UCI races there this weekend.

Blog Resuscitation

2010-05-30T14:12:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to blog for a while and had it pointed out this weekend that I'd been slacking. Also Fry's been putting the blog hammer down...but on the other hand I didn't want to show up Riggsy too much. I'm postponing the second ride of the day until I can get through it without sweating out a couple gallons of water, that is if I'm still capable of sweating, so time to be semi-productive.

Ontario's been in the grips of a heat wave since I arrived two weeks ago from Vancouver, via Edmonton (got to check out the Nationals course and spend some quality famjam time), via Kelowna (a brief few days of downtime). Makes you appreciate A/C...especially when it's lacking. And contemplate climate change a bit, as I was stuck in unending construction on the 403 for the 4th or 5th time this week. Athletes present a bit of an interesting contrast to this situation. For the most part I feel like we are fairly conscientous: recycling, composting, eating high proportions of local/organic foods, being too cheap to buy bottled water and being permanently attached to our bidons, spending large proportions of our day self propelling ourselves (sur le bike), and generally living fairly simplistic lifestyles. But then we travel way more than the average person does...or ever would likely want to in one year, via all forms of transportation. Since January alone I've flown Vancouver-Yellowknife twice, over to Belgium, down to Mexico, across Canada, down to Arizona, and down to California. Plus driving to races, driving to training, driving to the grocery store that's 800m away (cyclist don't walk...anywhere...ever) and the driving of our lovely race caravans. Ouch in carbon emissions.

Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent. The past couple weeks have overall been pretty stellar. It's been nice to be in one place, or at least area, for a while. Lots of good training sessions, some time staring cross-eyed at the back of a Vespa, time staring cross-eyed at various sections of pavement, one race (Niagara Classic O-Cup), a broken shifter, a little road rash, a broken spoke, some travel planning and logistics, a little downtime, oh! and some school work. I'm looking forward to getting into the thick of June racing though. A few more training days and then the June Jaunt around N. America starts Friday with a drive down to Philadelphia. Next Sunday is the UCI 1.1 Liberty Classic. I've never done it before but lots of people love the race despite the presence of the wall. Could have been a crazy place to be had the Flyers won last night and went for four straight...but I guess could still be a depressing place on Sunday. But I'm sure they will be much more interested in the bike race than hockey. Then back up to Guelph for a few days before hitting the good ol' 401 to Ottawa for the Gatineau UCI races that popped up to replace the Montreal WC, Tour de Montreal and Tour de PEI. the 17 race days I've put in so far this season, 12 have been UCI ranked. Crazy! From Gatineau, it's back to the airport to head straight down to Minneapolis for another race I've never done, but have heard great things about; Nature Valley Grand Prix. My second NRC stage race of the year, with 6 stages in 5 days. Should be fun times. And then north to Edmonton for Nationals the following week.

That will effectively wrap up June and determine what's on tap next. Not too much left but to wait and see...and pedal my bike as fast as I can (sorry, I've been explaining to people a lot this week that I ride a pedal bike).

Meaning I should probably go ride now, before I end up just sleeping or eating too many of my mom's cookies (I love care packages!).

Over and out.

Pan Ams

2010-05-10T15:31:00.000-07:00

All’s well that ends well. That’s probably the best way to sum up the Pan Ams. What started off as a bit of a gong show…well probably still was but we managed to adapt to it a bit better.

Given that I got back from Europe late Monday night, spent Tuesday and Wednesday studying/writing a final/packing with a little bit of spinning thrown in and then had another 12+ hour travel day Thursday, I went in to the weekend with a little bit of intrepidation about how my legs would be feeling (plus the additional factors of an altitude of 6000ft and 30+ degree weather). Nevertheless, another good race experience, and one that I missed last year when Pan Ams had to be postponed because of the swine flu outbreak. The flight down to Dallas went off without a hitch, and despite a rather long lay over there we all made it onto the flight into Aguascalientes. As soon as we got on the flight and realized there were probably 10-15 cyclists on the tiny plane…well we knew the luggage saga was likely going to start. Sure enough, we had ~7 bags missing between 5 of us including my road bike (and clothes) and all of the mechanic’s luggage, which included my TT bike. Onto the coach bus to head off to the hotel. And of course at 10pm they turn on all the TVs on the bus and start blasting Latino dance music videos. Something you had to be on the bus/in the situation likely to appreciate, but we weren’t sure whether to cry or laugh or both. And we would come to dislike the buses much more over the coming days.

Friday was pretty uneventful. We got our first “feeding site of ciclists” experience. For some reason, although we could have breakfast at the hotel, we all had to load up onto buses and travel 20 minutes to half an hour to a random hall somewhere in Aguascalientes for both lunch and dinner. I don’t know if things had changed since H1N1 but we were always greeted at the door with a squirt of hand sanitizer and all the servers wore masks. I still had no bikes, but thankfully Laura Brown had gotten her track, road and TT bike, so I was able to use her road bike to get out for a bit of a spin (hence the always carry your pedals, helmet and shoes in your carry-on). There’s only one American Airlines flight into the city every day so going to bed Friday night I wasn’t sure if my TT bike would show up, or failing that even my road bike. Contingency plan: Laura’s road bike. We were supposed to be able to go see the TT course but the transportation plans fell through, but as we found out the next day the course wasn’t exactly as close as everyone had been saying and we were likely better off not spending 2 hours in car getting there.

Luckily enough, I woke up Saturday morning, headed to breakfast and found out both had my bikes had arrived. The only downside to this was that I hadn’t seen let alone ridden my TT bike since last August. Anyway, off the TT course that was theoretically a half hour away. Add in the usual slow departure of the bus and the fact that it was really closer to an hour drive, and we rolled in with 45 minutes ‘til start. Scrambling to build rollers, get through bike check, see a bit of the course, try and get my bike to fit properly (which it never really did quite) and get ready didn’t entirely make for a great warm-up. In retrospect, that likely wasn’t great for me given the significantly less than fresh state my legs are currently in. The course was basically rolling up on the way out and down on the way back x 2. The first lap wasn’t too bad for me (although was likely never going to be a great ride). Then towards the end of the first lap some sweat rolled down from my TT lid and into my right eye. A few blinks later and I realized it wasn’t just water in my eye making it difficult to see…my contact was gone. My glasses' lenses are close enough to coke bottle proportions, so this situation definitely wasn’t ideal. Made it around onto the second lap alright, but things went downhill, or maybe just down, at the second turn around. I really don’t know what happened, but coming out of the 3^rd turnaround with 5km I must have hit a patch of gravel on the right side, and not being able to see it, didn’t expect it and I was on the ground. First time I’ve ever done that on a TT bike. Rolled in for 11^th, and at least gave the commissaires at the turnaround a good laugh. They had fun imitating my fall when they came back to the start house where we were sitting watching the guys' race.

Yesterday was the road race, and it went significantly better. We all had our bikes by this point and luckily got to race first at 9am so we escaped the heat of the day. The course was a relatively rolling 15km circuit with a slightly uphill finish. We were going in with the defending champion, so the goal was to try and defend that, with a strong 6-person US team + all of the South American teams against the 4 of us. Really, it worked out about the best it could of. It wasn’t a super aggressive race and when attacks did go we could either cover them on just sit on the Americans as they brought stuff back. The group did split up a bit, but for that last couple laps all I had to do really was keep Joelle in good position and make sure nothing dangerous slipped away. It came down to a fast finish, with a powerful US lead out that about all I could do was drop her off on it. We came up a little short but Joelle made it onto the podium for 2^nd and I was 8^th, finally getting some UCI points that remained elusive in Europe. We stuck around to watch the guys race a pretty brutal 170km in temperatures that had to be approaching 40. Did a little support work helping with feeding and got in the follow car for a few laps, another interesting/different experience in South America. A Chilean rider put in an impressive performance soloing probably 5 laps, or almost the entire distance we did, for the win.

It was an adventure, but we all survived, some without luggage until 5 hours before we flew back, and earned our trip back to Canada. The trackies are still kicking it down there for another week, so good luck to them! I’m looking forward to a couple weeks of rest and actual training. And then onto an action packed June!

BeNeLux

2010-04-30T01:32:00.000-07:00

In Leuven

We're on our last few hours here in Tielt-Winge as this weekend we'll be checking off the third part of the BeNeLux triplet with a UCI 1.1 Saturday and UCI 1.2 Sunday in Luxembourg. It should be fun racing with some actual climbing!

Last weekend's racing had its ups and downs. Saturday's race ended up being essentially 10km long before there was a crash, which most of Columbia (and our team) was behind, meaning Cervelo took to opportunity to hit the front with full force and gutter the entire pack on the narrow NED roads. With a fracturing pack and our sprinter behind the split we had a few full out efforts to get her back up the road. I don't know if it was some residual tiredness from Wednesday, just the effort of bridging with the pack trucking along at 50kph or both but me and one of the other girl's completely blew just after the first lap and our day was pretty much done. Another two laps before getting pulled and then some sideline viewing. Unfortunately, a break of 14 managed to hold off the pack 'til the finish despite the gap coming down to something like 20 seconds.

On to Sunday, we were back racing in Belgium at GP de Roeselare. A course change for this year meant we hit the infamous Kemmelberg (of the Pro Tour race Ghent Wevelgem) twice about half way through the race before racing back into town onto a technical finishing circuit. Not so sure I like climbing on cobbles that much...but that may have partially been the addition of the rain, and never having climbed cobbles before. Thankfully the descent was the paved version as the cobbled version has been put out of commission... for a good reason. Overall, it was a good team effort throughout the race. I didn't have my best race over the course of the day but managed to pull it together for the most part for the finish for 19th in the field sprint. Still learning to position myself in these European sprints.

The past week has been fairly relaxing here. A few easy coffee spins, a bit of actual training, a trip to Leuven for Jo's birthday and some super fun adventuring rides. Sometimes it's good to know where you are going on rides but I'm personally a turn when you feel like it kind of rider and we found some pretty cool roads (along with some dirt and gravel trails...) this week just riding around. And somehow in Europe you always end up back at home or close enough anyhow.

Off to the races and then back to Canada on Monday! Until Thursday that is. Have an exam to write Wednesday and then down to Mexico for four days back to tackle the courses from 2007 Junior Worlds again (sans broken arm this time!). I think that's touching down in 6 countries (Belgium, Luxembourg, Britain, Canada, US and Mexico) in less than a week.

...& we made videos of the house in Tielt at the beginning of the trip

Guy's House

Women's House (not sure what I was wearing...)

Fleche Wallonne

2010-04-22T23:23:00.000-07:00

The "arrow" of Wallonne is a big enough race that I figured it probably deserved a post of its own.

La Fleche Wallonne Feminine is one of maybe three races on the annual calendar that is run at the same time and same general location as a Pro Tour race. I believe however, it is the only one where we actually race on the same course as the guys (although they go up Mur de Huy one more time and do a longer lead in to the climbing circuit from Charleroi). The fact that both the men's and women's races are run together by ASO (organizers of the Tour de France) is pretty obvious especially in comparison to the typical women's racing situation. From the team presentation in a town square the night before, to the individual race bibles to the crowds and festival on the side of the Mur it's not something you would typically find at a women's race, even for a World Cup.

Team Presentation

(we may have been the only one's actually in our chamois but w.e)

The course itself is pretty wicked as well. While there is a large amount of climbing through the course the fact that the Mur de Huy lies at the end means that the tempo isn't too brutal on them. We started off from the top of the Mur de Huy and headed out for a relatively tame first 35km of rolling terrain. I almost bit it on the first descent maybe 10km in after hitting a pot hole but landed on my top tube and managed to keep the rubber side down and push myself back up onto my saddle. Once we hit the more rolling climbs I realized my brakes were rubbing but fortunately it only took a quick trip to the back of the peloton and DK's driving skills to get up from 19th in the caravan to behind the commissaire and then a quick fix from the mechanic out the car window. JO did an awesome job of keeping our team leader in good position until the first major climb of the day and then myself and the other girls were able to take over on the climbing sectors. The first climb was pretty gentle, as was the second although it was on a slightly more narrow and steeper road that lead up through an area that had a castle with a full on moat around it. The third climb was also pretty inconsequential although the descent meant for some bombing through the pack to get our team leader into a good position before climbs four and five which really were pretty much the same climb making for about 4km of climbing at around 7%. While the tempo was a bit higher the racing still wasn't aggressive, nor was it aggressive on the sixth climb of the day before we descended back into Huy to hit the Wall. There the race really started. Fortunately, I was able to move up on the outside of the pack on the back of a Columbia train before we turned onto the narrower section of the climb. The Mur is something you have to see yourself to probably truly appreciate but it is 1.3km long with an average of 9.3% (but that is brought down by the much shallower lead in) with points hitting 26%. Lets just say having a 27 on was definitely an asset.

From that point is was basically just make it to the top in as good a position as possible. I was a little bit off from the front group that included most of the Cervelo and Columbia girls along with Vos and Johannsson but was close enough that myself and a few other girls managed to make it back on shortly after we'd crested the climb. From there, there was a pretty continuous stream of attacks as the group rolled on for the last 28km of the race. With maybe 15km to go we hit the 2nd last climb of the day (the one climb I hadn't seen before) and it pretty much blew the group to pieces. It was theoretically only about 2km long but there was a steep secondary climb after the end of the actual climb that just added to the pain. A combination of a high tempo, poor positioning and so much climbing already in my legs left me behind the split of 14 girls up front. The race summed up with a descent back into Huy and then up the Mur to the finish line. Definitely one of the hardest finishes I've done before. Especially the last 150m that just seen to go on forever. Ended up 35th at the finish a minute and a bit back of Emma Pooley the winner. She had a pretty awesome race and her post-race interview was pretty entertaining to read, but also indicative of the team aspects of bike racing.

The Pro Men's race was pretty awesome to watch as well. We went down and joined the U23 guys on the Mur de Huy and so we saw them go by twice. The Canadian boys had set up on the side of one of the steepest corners of the climb and had a good cheering sector going. They managed to attract quite a bit of attention between their toques, sign and screaming.

1/2 Way

2010-04-18T23:51:00.000-07:00

We're halfway through our stay over here in Europe and halfway through our racing schedule as well.

Last week wasn't super busy, but busy enough for a group of cyclists. We spent the first few days basically recovering from our busy week of racing and prepping to head out to the Fleche Wallone course on Wednesday.

We pre-rode most of the course, although there are still sure to be some surprises as the lack of street signs can make it very difficult for those navigating from the follow car. We still got to see the majority of the climbs along the big loop (of which there are quite a few in very rapid succession) and finished up our ride on the Mur de Huy, aka the wall. And luckily enough for us, its going to be the first year the women have to do it twice (the men do it three times). It's definitely going to be a change from the relatively flat racing we have been doing in Holland, because Huy is guaranteed to make the race difficult without even starting to think about the other narrow climbs and technical descents we have to navigate in the first 80km before hitting the wall for the first time. It should be an awesome race though with a full World Cup field and also we should get to experience some pretty crazy crowds. We run through the course before the Pro Tour guys do, but all the fans have to be out in time for our race so they can get good spots. We've been strategizing with our u23 guys' team as to how they need to position themselves on Huy to give us some assistance this Wednesday...

pre pre-riding Fleche

We did race once this week however back over in Holland. We headed out Friday to Apeldoorn, about 200km from our base. It's funny because in North American you might just drive that the day of the race given that we didn't start til 1, but as we have been finding out everything in Europe tends to progress a little bit more slowly. Some of the girls in our race were also affected by the flight cancellations all over Europe but I don't think we were as hard hit as Amstel Gold. The Aussie's, who were at our hotel, had to all jump into a van last minute and make the 14 hour trek from Italy after they found out their flights weren't going anywhere. Back to Apeldoorn; a pretty wicked city. I haven't exactly figured out the entire story yet but basically it was Canadian soldiers that helped to free the city in WWII I believe and so they were flying Canadian flags on the race course and their sister city is Burlington ON. The track team was also here back in March prepping for Worlds, and because Apeldoorn is the site of 2011 Track Worlds. We actually started out at the velodrome, and it looked like a pretty awesome facility. It's still always amazing to see how much cycling is a part of the culture over here.

On to the race: this was Ronde van Gelderland, a 1.2 race. Given its 1.2 ranking, and the fact that Fleche is coming up the top teams didn't have all their top riders, but there was still a decent field just with some more regional teams mixed in. This made for a bit of a sketchy race, particularly in the 7km neutral start where I witnessed at least 4 crashes. One of the girls, Moriah got caught up in one and did a pretty spectacular flip, but managed to jump back on and back into the pack pretty quickly. As a team we finally got our positioning down, which was definitely helpful on the narrow dike roads the route took us across. Unfortunately, even at the front there are still crashes and we didn't go unscathed. There was actually a bit of climbing in the course, which was a nice change, despite the fact that most of us spent the second loop of the climbing section chasing after there was a big crash at the very base that took a while to weave through. Overall, it ended up being a pretty good race for our team. I screwed up the finish a bit. There was a roundabout about a km out and I was trying to move up a bit on the right hand side but we were going left into the roundabout and then taking the first left. Myself and the few girls in front of me got squeezed out and had to go around the right hand side of the lane divider before funneling back into the pack. Meant my sprint was maybe more from a km to 500m to get back up to the front, rather than to the finish but such is racing. We had two girls in the top 20 though with JO in 16th and Leah in 20th. Still some work to do on the finishing, but its all progress for us.

Yesterday was a pretty lazy Sunday. The guys had raced a Nations Cup (U23 version of a World Cup) on Saturday in NL as well so we both had recovery on tap. People seem to spring into action here in Tielt on Sunday mornings... I don't think we've ever seen it so busy. I guess having to get your shopping done between 8-12 gets people moving. Anyway, we did a relaxed recovery ride into Aarschot for coffee, followed up with some impromtu bike handling/pack aggressiveness training, followed up by team pictures and a BBQ.

Our "choir" shot @ the front of our house

Boys' bbq experiment

Tomorrow we head out closer to Fleche and then race Wednesday there, Saturday in Netherlands and Sunday back in Belgium. Wish us luck!

The European Experience

2010-04-11T10:49:00.000-07:00

Dottignies

The interesting and kind of unique aspect of cycling is that each race is very unique and you're highly at the mercy of the area you are in and what the race directors decide to throw at you.

And Europe is especially good at keeping you on your toes.

It's been a busy week with over 530km of racing plus warming up and cooling down, plus neutral starts (more on that situation later), plus three days of recovery rides. I'm kind of looking forward to the only one race we have coming up this week!

Anyway, back to Monday we had our first race in Belgium, GP de Dottignies a 1.2 race. Being 1.2 it's supposed to attract a bit of a smaller field but that definitely was not the case. There were over a 160 starters and really there were only 2 or 3 major teams missing. It went pretty decently for me...by the end anyway. There was a cobble section about 30-40km in to the 120km that I wasn't in great position for and with a heavy cross wind and everyone fighting for a spot on the narrow strip of smooth tarmac at one side there were holes opening up everywhere. At the end of it I was in a group a little bit off the front group. We ended up being able to get it moving pretty well and hit the circuits less than a minute down and caught back on 2 laps into the 11 we had to do. I had some shifting and wheel issues (free hub making a pleasant air horn noise when I stopped pedaling, making everyone less than pleasant towards me) but the group pretty much stayed together for a sprint finish.

Tuesday we had a nice recovery spin into a nearby town for coffee and then Wednesday headed out to the Netherlands for our first big block of racing. The races were all in the Drenthe region and were comprised the Ronde van Drenthe series of Drenste 8 van Dwingeloo (1.1) on Thursday, Unive Ronde van Drenthe (World Cup) on Saturday and Novilon Eurocup Ronde van Drenthe (1.1) on Sunday.

We only had about three hours to get to the race site but it turned into four after a flat tire on the autobus. No opportunity wasted though...

Our fearless leader DK leading us through a inpromptu yoga sesh....beware of nettles in industrial areas

So like I said, as cyclists our experience varies depending on the country we're in. In the case of Netherlands that means flat, narrow roads, cobbles and lots of wind. Makes racing different, hard and a lot about your positioning in the pack. No matter how strong you might be if the pack lines it out 150 girls wheel to wheel at 40-50kph and gaps start opening your race can be essentially over pretty quickly. And while the task of moving up and trying to stay in the top 20 girls may sound easy, let me tell you it isn't so. About 40 back the "washing machine" starts and you can spend forever going up and back and up and back over and over and over again with the same girls.

Anyway, the first race pretty much fit that bill. I had a lot of trouble moving up, combined with some bike issues and was behind the split when it opened and no one had enough horsepower left to close it back.

On to the World Cup on Saturday. There was a pretty stellar dinner and team presentation the night before (probably partially because it was joined with a men's pro race) that was complete with a drag queen.

Another side note about Netherlands; huge step up in food and accommodations from France where you're lucky if you can both identify what you are eating and it isn't white and you are sleeping in school dorms and are lucky if there a pillows. We were staying at a super fancy hotel with amazing breakfast and dinner buffets...makes life so much easier.

Ok World Cup, so a lot more of a show surrounding the race. That meant a very interesting "neutral" start that was supposed to be a 1/2 hour long. This is before a 140 km of racing and while it may be speed controlled by the front car that doesn't mean anything because everything is a fight for position. So we started inside the sports complex we had had dinner at the night before and rolled out of there (weird start to begin with, but nice because its a little bit warmer) and then did a little tour of town which included some people rushing a grocery store parking lot and nearly giving some old ladies just out to do their grocery shopping a heart attack...and then to top it all off into and out of a mall!! There was even a red carpet and red velvet roping leading us into the mall.

Riding through the mall

And then out to the start line to sit in the freezing cold for about fifteen minutes. Wonderful. So the race, basically was a positioning battle for the first 40km 'til the cobbles started. There was a crash maybe 2 km out from the cobbles which I was behind so that left a lot of us chasing back on. I was the first person not to make it onto the front group, but a group formed. We managed to eventually catch the 2nd group up the road once we got back onto the circuits in town after our first time up the "climb" which was a landfill hill. In the end I rolled in, in the group with a small group a minute ahead, for 37th.

Sunday's race wasn't super spectacular. The neutral start was again interesting. Parking was about a km away from the start/finish, so they lined us all up in a factory/warehouse for the start of the neutral start and took us off towards the start line. There we still had to sign in. Imagine 140 girls fighting to get onto a stage up a narrow metal staircase to sign a bristol board sized paper. I didn't go up and got someone else to sign for me but apparently people were pulling pens out of each others hands and pushing and shoving. Insanity. All to get to the start line first...for a 140km race. So for the race, got tangled up in a crash about 10km in but made it out with only a few scratches and bruises and got caught behind another couple. Made for a lot of chasing less than an hour into the race. Then I flatted with 10m left to go in to cobbles section and a large portion of the caravan had gone by, by the time I managed to get a wheel. I spent a lot of time in the caravan weaving my way back...thank god for it. But by the time I got back on the pack was lined out and there were splits starting to open up and that was about it for making it up much further. We eventually settled into a group once we were back into town and chased for about 40km but with UCI races there's a pretty short time window and by 100km in we were 6 minutes back of the main group and that was the end of the day. Looking at the results afterwards we were in a pretty big group; only 29 finished out of 160 starters.

We're back at home base in Belgium now for a week. Wednesday we're heading out to pre-ride the Fleche Wallone course and Saturday are heading to Netherlands for one race but for the most part just some down time to do a bit of training work and hopefully some school work.

Whew that was long. Sorry, doesn't even cover half the adventures that have occurred thus far though.

Dank U

2010-04-03T05:12:00.000-07:00

Dank U Air Canada and British Airways for getting me and my stuff here in one piece. Except my front skewer! Why’d you have to open my bike box again after already opening it in Vancouver! After one day that’s the extent of my Flemish so far. I’m not so sure it’s going to improve much more; my French already needs enough work. But I felt like I needed to know how to say thank you because the whole grocery store experience was already awkward enough.

Anyway, in Belgium now and then flights were uneventful, other than Moriah trying to smuggle the mini bottle of plane wine through security in Heathrow and then getting selected for the “naked picture scanner” (which they have in this little free standing box of a room, little weird). We actually decided that we felt decidedly less messed up than usual. Possibly because after racing for four days last week and then a 3am airport departure on Monday our bodies’ internal clocks were already in mass confusion. It’s currently 5am though so apparently mine missed the memo about the awesome first night jet lag induced coma sleep I was supposed to be having right now. Set my alarm for 10am just in case but apparently that was highly unnecessary. Ah well.

Our digs are pretty decent. Fairly typical Euro housing: old and small but serviceable. We’re in a bit of a complex or something. I’m not really sure how to describe it, but the guys and coaches are in a separate segment to us six girls (+ a few British cyclists, I’m not really how many yet). Some how the guys got the internet router so I think we’re going to be spending quite a bit of time over there anyway. Already got to watch some cycling on TV. It’s crazy how much it’s televised over here between track and road at the moment. Being classics season I guess it’s even more so.

We’re officially not doing Flanders so our first race won’t be until Monday; another UCI race in Belgian. Despite the fact that it’s probably a good thing given all the traveling it would have been a cool race to do. Especially because the women’s race basically starts 100km closer to the finish than the guys and then just races in ahead of them. We’re living in the Flanders region of Belgium so its super close. Hopefully we’ll get to go see some of it, but I’m not sure how that will fit into our schedule.

Going to see if I can scrounge another few hours of sleep before the sun comes up. Looking forward to the first ride here. And maybe finding some chocolate or waffles…

Redlands

2010-03-30T07:17:00.000-07:00

My prep going into Redlands was a little unique...and although it seemed to work I'm not entirely sure it'll be easily replicated again. Why?

Sunday

-30

"Winter"

Monday

"Spring"

Tuesday

+30

"Summer"

Anyways, Redlands was a solid start to the season. The weather was awesome and not as deathly hot as it had been for everyone racing San Dimas the weekend before. Kenda had decided not to do the race so I was guest riding for Specialized Mazda Samson...it ended up being pretty much an entirely composite team because the regular team members were off on various adventures like collecting double world track champion titles (Tara Whitten!!!!!!) in the omnium and point race. SO COOL!

We had a good time in our super small borrowed jerseys though. Thankfully I was granted one of the few mediums because I looked the most ridiculous with the others amounting to approx. a belly shirt. Despite not having the most support, we did a pretty good job of flying by the seat of our pants and Moriah took on the managerial responsibilities in addition to pedalin her way through the race. And our host, Robert, was also a rock star in coping with having 6 girls take over his house completely. His house provided the perfect post stage race relaxation base. We finished stage 1 at about 1pm and so after a quick leg soak in the pool spent the next approximately 5 hours reclined in lazy boy chairs/couches watching parts of at least 6 different movies (21, The Prophecy, 17 Again, Twilight, American Pie 2 and X-Men: Origins to name a few; possibly the most random mixture ever). Ah the life of a cyclist. This is precisely the reason I'm happy to have some school work and studying to do this summer so I don't completely fry my brain.

Back to racing:

Prologue --> 3 miles up hill-ish. Good leg opener for the weekend and a bit of a realization that it takes a bit to get back into the TT-ing process.

Stage 1 --> Beaumont Road Race. Without the typical blustery weather it ended up being a way calmer race than it has in the past. Despite some nerves about the first QOM loop it ended up being a less challenging hill that it seemed from the car. I got stuck behind a crash part way up but there was enough of a descent to get back up to the front pretty quickly. Came down to a sprint finish with a pretty big group left over.

Stage 2 --> Criterium, 1 mile loop with 11 corners for 60 minutes. AKA lots of accelerating and equal amounts of hard braking. Again, it was quite a it easier than 2 years ago and thankfully we had a pretty clean race. Not so much the case for the guys... but if you watch the video below its pretty understandable why.

Stage 3 --> Sunset Road Race. Lived up to its usual pack and leg shattering nature. Basically a neutral roll out to the start of the climb and then up and down 9 times before shooting back into downtown for the finish. Its a pretty sweet course though and as much as you curse the climb while you're on it the narrow winding roads leading up to it and super fun to speed through.

And results wise it was a pretty good way for me to start of the season. The European racing to come is still daunting but a little less so knowing that I've got some form going in.

That brings me to the fact that I leave for Belgium in just over 48 hours!!! My new bike frame arrived in Canada yesterday so its currently in the shop getting built in a scramble so I'll have it to take over and test out on the cobbles, which I'm super stoked about.

A team mate's new bike all built up

Time to get some packing, laundering and general organization done. Actually, I guess that would require me to unpack first. ah well. Somehow I don't think complaining is going to earn me any sympathy

YVR-YEG-YZF-YEG-YVR-LAX-YVR-LHR-BRU

2010-03-16T10:27:00.000-07:00

In a 12 day period! And there just happens to be a fairly big 4 day stage race in there too.

Skins are gonna be getting a lotta lovin' in the next 2 weeks.

Race season has officially started. The past two weekends we've had our first rounds of training races out here in BC. Put on by Devo, the Spring Series is a pretty awesome way to get the legs back under you and comfortable in a pack again before the actual racing starts. Emphasis on comfortable in a pack...the first day of the series in the B race I think we had 5 crashes at least. Granted it was raining but still! Thankfully I'd escaped into a smaller group of the front after the first 2. Racing with the guys always ensures some hard riding and its good to get in an aggressive pack so early on.

So by my line-up of airport codes, I'm missing this weekend's racing (and not doing San Dimas) to essentially do a 24 hr touchdown in YK before coming back down to Van to pack up and head to Redlands on Tuesday! I skipped out on this race last year because of school but I'm looking forward to doing it again. The first year I did it as a 2nd year junior one of my team mates told us all that her coach had prepped her for the race by telling her that it was likely going to be equivalently painful to giving birth. Did a good job of terrifying 16 year old me. Getting to spend a week in California should also be enjoyable.

Then back to Van for two days of classes (or maybe just packing; we'll see how efficient I am). And off to Europe for a month. Lots of love to UBC for letting me defer my exams. I guess its proof that getting an education and competing in elite sports don't have to be mutually exclusive... at least if the school is willing to be so flexible. By the number of surgeons, lawyers, Masters and PhDs in the North American women's peloton I probably don't have an excuse.

Although if I didn't have school I could be down in South Carolina right now. Damn. I kind of miss Caesar's Head and good ol' Sassy. Maybe next year.

I'll try and allocate some energy to the bloggage while I'm in Cali.

Later

Inspiration

2010-03-04T20:59:00.000-08:00

The Olympics are always good for a solid dose of inspiration. Last summer Olympics were the first where I had actually raced against some of the people that were competing, and the 2010 games were the first where some of the athletes were people I used to race against in short track. It all just brings it closer to reality.

I'm not really sure what my favourite moment of the Olympics was because there were so many impressive, goose bump raising moments. Obviously, the physical and technical feats of all the athletes are pretty impressive but I find the mental toughness of the games the most interesting and inspiring. And the Canadian athletes did a pretty darn good job of focusing mentally and getting done what they were there to do. Ignoring all the rambling about OTP and gold medals, and competing. We had one article passed on to us at camp written by Clara Hughes that was pretty interesting: http://sportatitsbest.com/2010/02/03/clara-hughes-part-2/. As a speed skater turned cyclist turned speed skater, her racing is pretty interesting to watch. Jasey-Jay Anderson's comment about just wanting to make good turns was also a pretty key one to me. It always seems so obvious but there are so many situations where just focusing on the process can be incomprehensibly hard. I got to see the women's XC 30km mass start up at Callaghan and watched some of the men's 50km on TV. Of all the sports in the Winter Olympics its probably the closest to cycling and seeing them push themselves the point of collapse is pretty inspiring and a good reminder to keep on pushing. And the fact that you can race for 3 hours and still! have a race come down to a sprint finish.

While I don't necessarily agree with a lot of the criticisms around OTP and the corresponding crackdown on the athletes at the beginning, it's still a good thing I think to see Canadian athletes being in it to win. Sure I don't think Melissa Hollingsworth should have necessarily had to apologize to everyone for a fifth place when she went out and competed and there were faster sleds that day... but for example Devon Kershaw's reaction to fifth place and wanting to be on the podium so badly is an important indicator. Canada got more gold medals than ever...and even for those that didn't, they wanted to be there and believed they could be. Personally, I think that's one of the most inspiring elements: the desire to just want to be able to go out and throw down. Not so much the medal count per se; that's more a by product of that attitude.

The outpouring of Canadian spirit and support was inspiring too. Being up at Whistler and in Vancouver and seeing all the red and white was pretty amazing. For a country that has a reputation for a lack of national identity we seem to have scrounged one together the Games. So maybe it will finally hit everyone that sport can be about more than just the physical activity...although that is important!

Final lesson I took away is go after what you want. It might seem cliched but it is true. Can't hurt to try. I took it to heart AND result: my April just got a whole lot more exciting! More on that later.

Back to Canada-land

2010-02-22T17:25:00.000-08:00

We've been getting questions all week about why a group of Canadians is down in Tucson while the Olympics are back at home. And as much fun as camp has been a lot of fun, I am looking forward to getting back to Vancouver to take in some of the Olympic atmosphere and events (and to Canadian coverage; some NBC has been alright but getting stuck watching ice dancing during the US/Canada hockey game was the straw that broke the camel's back).

I can barely remember all the went on over the past week but there's some pretty entertaining blog articles from the other cyclists on the CCA website.

One of the highlight rides of camp was our summit of Mt. Lemmon. We split up into a few groups to go up based on pace. Rob Jones from Canadian Cyclist and the Louis Garneau rep for the CCA were also on hand for a couple days and they were busy going between the groups on the moto getting lots of action photos and video. Definitely the longest continuous climb I've done in a while. It's a pretty awesome climb though. 25 miles up to over 8000 ft. with just a little bit of descending along the way. The views are pretty amazing too. Over the course of the climb the surroundings change like crazy. I found out after that the change in vegetative zones (6 of them) is equivalent to the change you would experience going from Mexico up to Canada. Yes, I'm a science nerd.

We were met at the top by the support cars with these awesome cookies. I don't think anything could taste better after climbing for almost 2 hours. The descent down Lemmon was almost as hard as the climb if you were at the front...mostly b/c of the crazy winds we were hitting.

We had a photo shoot day the next day as well amongst the cacti and a generally entertaining ride. Check out Andrea's blog entry for full descriptions. It also involved a coffee shop stop with the most amazing cookies ever! For people that spent ~ 10 days in Tucson, we could probably collectively give a local's review of the coffee shops in the area.

Unfortunately our weather luck turned for the last day of camp. After straight sun and blue skies we found ourself riding into hurricane force winds with a black wall of clouds. Even with a little route adjustment we still found ourself in a deluge. And let me tell you the desert that is Tucson is not equipped to deal with the rain that can come down here. Always a little scary riding through the streets when you can't see the pot holes or cracks, your wheels are maybe a 1/3 under water at times and you can't feel your legs or fingers. Fun times.

While most of the group left yesterday there were some of us staying on a little longer. Today we decided our last ride would become a Tour de Coffee Shop. Our plan started out a little bit more ambitious but with weather warnings again we cut our route down to two...back to the favourite near our hotel and then downtown to the University of Arizona to Clara Hughes' favourite coffee shop in Tucson- The B Line. She may be a speed skater now... but still has the cyclist coffee obsession.

Time to ween myself and go back to my non-coffee drinking habits. But its always a good part of camp!

Another cool thing to come out of camp. Geoff Kabush and the CCA are working together to develop a clean-sport initiative starting at the National Team level. We got hooked up with some sweet socks, sweat bands and stickers this week.

Time to head out of America's Friendliest Airport (thanks for having free wi-fi Phoenix). Back to Vancouver and head long into the season. Looking forward to getting a little further inspiration up in Whistler

Happy Valentine's

2010-02-14T18:59:00.000-08:00

So I didn't really expect to blog so soon but I got assigned the first CCA blog entry of camp so

here it is: CCA Tucson

Today we had a pretty solid ride as well. The mountain bikers headed off into the desert and the roadies stuck to the safety of the pavement. The group I was in got a little lost. After making a decision at a T intersection we hit a dead end...

So then what do you do?

Follow the bike sign!

Except if there is a bike sign going the other direction...

We picked the wrong one, but eventually made it onto the right loop.

We've been keeping pretty busy with IST sessions as I mentioned. It has all been pretty interesting. For me I think the biggest revelation was some accupuncture treatment I had done. I was really impressed with how effective it was and it really exemplified how much everything in the body is interconnected.

Managed to watch some of the Olympics so far, although I wish we could watch the CTV coverage. I feel bad for whoever has to watch more Apolo TV with me. Although I think we're entertaining ourselves yelling at the screen. Oh and the NBC news anchors can stop talking about the Canaaaadian curse finally! It seemed to be causing confusion anyway.

And finally a solid Valentine's Day. One of the girls, Jenny, made all the girls valentine's and David Boily gave us chocolate squares. Best parts of the holiday. Topped off with Chipotle and some hot tub/ice bath time.

And we've still got a week ahead with a full forecast of sun (tanlines are already back in full force after three times; no hope for looking normal this year). I'm looking forward to the riding, and we've also got a hike scheduled which should be pretty fun! Definitely one of the best camps I've been at so far, so all's good.

Migration Time

2010-02-08T14:34:00.000-08:00

Time for some serious bike practices. Thursday I'm heading down to Tucson for just over a week for the first National Team project of the season. Shouldn't be too crazy, just logging in some long miles, but yah never know. It's going to be a road and mountain bike combined camp with each doing some sport specific sessions (meaning us roadies aren't going to be trusted with mountain bikes). Also, starting to do some IST stuff (psychologist, physio, sleep doctor) which should be really interesting because we haven't had too much access to it before!

Only thing I'm a little choked about is that I'm not going to get to see the Olympic torch come through campus/see it at all. aah well. And I missed going to see the dress rehearsal for the Opening Ceremonies...to write a sport psych midterm.

This weekend I headed over to PacSport for my first MAP test in almost 2 years. My pinky is still recovering after multiple prickings. My body likes to give the testers a hard time by clotting super fast. Heading into camp though it's good to have a better sense of where I'm at and my new training ranges...and to have a baseline to work from for the rest of the season.

Also, stopped in at Canada's Northern House this weekend to check it out. I think its one of the first Olympic provincial/territorial houses open and its pretty cool. During the games there's going to be performances and demonstrations going on but the displays were all pretty interesting and there's some interactive stuff, including a green screen to record a postcard video...

Here's ours

Apparently our hotel has been scoped out and we're near a Starbucks and therefore will have internet (good thing b/c coffee+internet=happy cyclists). So hopefully I can dredge up the motivation and energy to blog about what we're up to!

CX

2010-01-31T18:54:00.001-08:00

In honour of it being cyclo cross worlds this weekend I decided to add a little resistance to my training and do all my road riding on my cross bike.

I wish that had been a decision but really it was just coincidence. I took my road bike in on Friday to get my power meter put on and a bit of a tune up done. All smooth sailing until I got a call with the message " Uhhhh your derailleur hanger just snapped..." If I was a prepared and organized person I might have had another one lying around but nope so with that the bike was out of commission until sometime next week. Aahhhh. With lackluster cross country skiing conditions and a lot of riding to do I needed a bike! Fortunately I have my "winter" Colnago and my cross bike; unfortunately my Colnago has a stripped crank and my cross bike has been in pieces for a year and a half. After a little bit of frustration that everything was breaking (I also had to return a three week old heart rate monitor for warranty that day after the batter somehow was rusting making it non functional (therefore I had no watch) and my phone decided to start spontaneously ending calls) I managed to scavenge some parts from a friend and get the bike up and running.

Considering, ended up being a pretty solid weekend of training and I'll likely feel like I'm flying once I get off the knobby tires again.

Back to the actual cyclocross part, I did take a few short cuts across fields - just because I could - and realized I kind of missed the racing. Marianne Vos won the women's World Champ today. That's gotta be something like her 5 or 6th world title between track, road and cross (and she's only 23!!!!). I got to witness a little of her cyclocross skill this summer in France. She was definitely a good wheel to be on through the super sketchy neutral dirt/gravel single lane starts. Even if people around her were going down she'd manage to weave a path through.

For those of you who've never seen a cross race check these out:

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

It's tons of fun and slightly insane!

And since count downs are all the rage here right now:

10 days 'til training camp, 11 days 'til the Olympics, 24 days 'til Whistler n Olympic fun and looking like 7 weeks 'til the first race of the season!

El Niño

2010-01-24T16:57:00.000-08:00

This phenomena is probably keeping VANOC awake at night planning where they are going to truck snow in from, but for me it's making sure I hit the sack pretty wiped at night. This afternoon is the first time it has rained in almost two weeks and its been around ten degrees everyday. Not so great for the Cypress snow conditions but pretty wicked for riding conditions in Canada in January. Even got to ride up Seymour this week (Cypress road's been closed in the lead up to the Olympics unfortunately) where there was no snow to be seen and I actually managed to survive the ~20min. descent with feeling left in my hands and feet. Not the normal situation.

Things are definitely gearing up for the Olympics around here. Yesterday I made a bit of a detour on my ride to peer into the Northern House (NWT, Yukon and Nunavut's cultural centre for the Olympics). Looks pretty cool inside, so hopefully I'll get a chance to actually go check it out. The Richmond Oval is also no longer a gravel pit all around the outside but is slowly coming together.

All in all, not too much exciting this week. Filled my Naam cravings for the month. For anyone visiting Van you've gotta check out The Naam in Kits; it is a vegetarian restaurant (which I am not) but they have awesome food. Despite going enough to have probably memorized the menu we still take forever deciding.

Speaking of vegetarian food, my new experiment for this week (although really I was served it at a friend's a while ago ) was this salad:

Mixed greens, avocado, cheese, salsa, and then the tofu ground beef stuff sauteed with some veggies (I was pretty impressed with it, but according to a vegetarian friend its one substitute items that wears on you pretty fast)

And decided to make some ride food so that I'm less tempted to stop at Whole Foods...and somehow I ended up w good luck bread! Or Lululemon I guess depending on your take

Clearly time to go make dinner before I bore anyone too much with all this food talk.

PS. For my sport psych class we've gotta do a documentary case study on a situation where an athlete/team is struggling psychologically in the lead up to the Olympics and then plan out an intervention. Anyone heard of any good potential cases?

Secret Training

2010-01-17T08:44:00.000-08:00

Back in the Saddle

2010-01-12T08:29:00.000-08:00

Literally and figuratively.

School's back in full swing and I'm back into another full block of training. Last week was pretty chill on the training side, not so much on the school. I swear second semester they don't even give you time to breathe before launching straight into new material anyway. But I did get the chance to get in a couple yoga classes which for the most part make my body feel a bit better. Other than the fact that I seem to shake more in some of the poses than all the business men and women in the classes. Guess being an athlete doesn't cover everything... And squeezed in a massage at the UBC Aquatics Centre; one thing I definitely miss from the racing season.

This past weekend I headed out to Port Moody to get in some non-city riding with Leah Guloien. I don't really mind riding through the city because for the most part Vancouver is pretty good with bike lanes etc. and it keeps it interesting, but if there's one part I do miss occasionally about riding in Ontario its the open rural roads. Oh well, only have to drive 45 minutes to get it out here. We got a solid ride in with a little climbing and just as we were both starting to feel that the ride was definitely going over prescribed time Leah's spoke broke right in front of a Starbucks. What can you do but get a coffee and wait to be chauffered home? After a little rest we hit up the gym for my Speed Endurance workout before finally collapsing in the sauna. Long day.

Sunday I headed up Cypress Mountain with a friend for some snowshoeing (although I'm not sure to what extent you could call the white covering snow). It was above zero up at the top too, and the mountain ended up closing for two days this week right after we were there. Anyway, I haven't snowshoed since I was probably six or seven, but it was pretty entertaining.

Old Man of the Mountain: a thousand years old; so big it apparently only fits sideways

We're pretty sure they gave us the ghetto snowshoes because everyone else who it seemed would have rented snowshoes had the metal framed ones. There may have been some reasons for that though...

We got in about 2 hours of running/walking and covered up to the highest point of the trails. And decided that crossed bamboo poles in front of a trail couldn't mean anything too important. Had to do a little creative climbing to avoid a not-so-frozen lake. Apparently it was the one trail closed that day. Oops, apparently they were right about us.

Time to get ready for class. Hopefully things are going to get a bit more interesting in the next little bit as the season starts to get into full swing. Four weeks to wait until I join the rest of the cyclist snow birds down in the southern states; Tucson in particular for me this time. We've got what should be a pretty wicked mountain bike/road ten day camp the second week of February. And then I get to fly back to head up to Whistler for a couple days of absorbing the Olympic atmosphere...and maaaayybe seeing some events. Should provide some more blog worthy material.

S'all for now all y'all.

Getting ready for the south.

Airline Logic

2010-01-03T15:09:00.000-08:00

It's the end of winter holidays so that means travelling is guaranteed to be an experience. Between weather, security issues and just the sheer number of people trying to fly you kind of expect not to get anywhere on time.

So when I was heading out of Yellowknife and they announced that the rear luggage hatch was frozen shut and they were going to have to keep the luggage from Edmonton on and load our stuff into the front my only two thoughts were that'd I'd better get my head phones out of my back pack because we were going to be on the ground a while and that my bike definitely wasn't going to make it to Vancouver.

Really, not a big deal because it wasn't like I was heading to race and I didn't think anything of it until I was in Vancouver, only an hour and a half late, and heading to West Jet luggage services to go through the lost baggage process. The girl there laughed and said it seemed like I had been through this a lot before.

True.

Any cyclist that has done the least little bit of traveling with a bike knows the ins and outs of the airlines excess baggage fee and lost baggage system more than most people. Depending on how generous the check-in people are feeling you can pay anywhere from $50 - $ 300 (I don't recommend flying Delta with a bike) to check your bike and then maybe overweight and excess number fees on top of that if they are in a bad mood (I know someone who ended up paying over $500 to get their two bikes down to Junior Worlds when we went to Mexico). Other than the fact that most other sports equipment flies for free, I do kind of understand the fee they levy. Travel days you don't really need to train because between lifting bike boxes in and out of cars/taxis/buses, dragging them through airports and then lifting them on and off of scales, security tables and conveyor belts you can work up a sweat. The part I realized doesn't make sense after the WestJet agents comment is that after we pay the extra fee the bike is the first piece of luggage left behind if anything happens; especially in cases where you end up paying the price of a ticket essentially.

Oh well, my bike arrived the next night and they gave me a $100 flight credit for going to pick it up.

My skis (one of the pieces of sports equipment you don't have to pay for) however arrived at the same time I did. It raining Saturday so I probably would have been stuck inside on my trainer anyway (although I've found a new source of entertainment, Dexter, courtesy of Michael Gilday). So, Saturday after contemplating checking out Cypress Mountain to get in my training, I bit the bullet and decided to head up to Whistler for the first time this year to get in some xc skiing with Mike Adams. All the Olympic sections were closed in Callaghan Valley but still got in a good ski up through the mountains to Callaghan Lake. It was a bit of a shock going from skiing in -20 - -30 to +2 and I didn't totally manage to escape the rain in Whistler although once we climbed high enough it turned to snow.

Today felt like summer after the past two weeks in YK and the perfect justification for living in Vancouver as a cyclist. Sunny (ish), no snow and + 10 is pretty hard to find any where else in Canada in January. Lots of people were out taking advantage. New Year's Resolutions anyone? I was also in the gym today relishing the space before the Bird Coop gets its usual two week post- New Year influx of people.

My New Year's Resolution...although I'm hesitant to call it that... is to mix up my diet a little bit and try and cook some more interesting foods. We'll see how long it lasts, but for now here's dinner:

Beef Tenderloin, Green Beans, and Acorn Squash stuffed with wild rice, cranberries, apples and almonds. so good, but a little laborious.

Happy Holidays!

2009-12-26T14:56:00.000-08:00

Hope everyone's having a good holiday break so far and survived the Boxing Day craze.

Christmas tree and stockings

The last week has definitely been pretty relaxing. Managed to get all my shopping done before I left Vancouver so I didn't really have too much to worry about. Only speed bump was a rough two days after getting gently coerced to get my H1N1 and seasonal flu shots on Tuesday. Barely managed to sleep that night because every time I rolled over my arms woke me up and progressed through a bit of a fever and no appetite for a two days. Pretty weird actually, because it didn't feel like I was sick but at the same time I just didn't feel right. Not a huge deal but not particularly fun during a heavy training week either.

We've had some downright balmy weather up here in Yellowknife the past week though. The day I flew in it was maybe -5. Back down to -20 but still warm enough for relatively comfortable skiing. I've been out skiing a fair bit. Its a more enjoyable way to pack in the hours then being trapped inside on the trainer...although that's still a necessity.

I had a bit of a revelation today; glide wax really works! I've been doing a bit of skate skiing on the recommendation of my physio (help strengthen the adductors and abductors that cycling doesn't work too much). My skate skis are a bit of a joke to begin with, I think they started out as my mom's but were short enough for me to use when I was probably six. And I definitely was shorter then. Anyway, apparently they also hadn't had glide wax put on since I was six. Did that today and wow they actually kind of slide now!

In other news, my pre- New Years resolution is to not crash my parent's car into anyone/anything while I'm here. Going from a Honda Fit to a F-150 is a little interesting, added with me slamming on the brake with my left foot when I think I'm still in a standard. Stretch goal is to make it into my dad's work parking spot without having to back out again 4 or 5 times.

Time to go face the trainer and make sure all the home cooked food get too comfy. Hopefully there is something interesting on TV. Law and Order or CSI usually does the trick... I'm not sure the Canada-Latvia game (blowout) is going to be enough to hold my attention.

Freedom!

2009-12-16T08:47:00.000-08:00

... and I have a huge pile of paper to prove it.

School's been kicking my ass lately but finally the ridiculous exam schedule has paid off and I'm done at least a few days before most people and a week before the exam period actually ends. I've got a couple things to do in Van, including some frenzied Christmas shopping before I head back up to Yellowknife Saturday for a couple weeks. It's been a balmy -40 up there for the past week but I think its supposed to warm its way up to -16 or so, for a little while anyway...and time for Christmas break training AKA boot camp according to my coach/training plan.

Even with exams, training has been going pretty well...a good outlet for stress. Although of course the weather in Vancouver decided to take a turn for the worse. We actually even got a little snow. Needless to say riding outside has started to get a little messier and require a little more clothing...

Winter, coupled with the crappy weather, also brings the longer rides. As part of my study procrastination I've been surfing the net quite a bit and I was reading Alison Testroete, another cyclist's blog, the other day and she mentioned that she had been listening to audiobooks while riding. I've never listened to an audiobook before because for the most part I actually enjoy reading but it seemed like something worth trying out. I really wasn't quite sure what it would be good to listen to while riding though. OPEN Andre Agassi's biography came up on Itunes while I was looking and I thought that might be a good option. It's been really interesting and if anyone is looking for a good read I would definitely recommend it. Puts an interesting perspective on the pressures of sport from the standpoint of someone who hates the sport that is their life. Also helps that with the pace its read at it gives you something like 18 hours of play time.

I've also been spending some time on the trainer to mix things up, try and multi task with some studying and beause others are a little more hesitant (or just more sane) and prefer to stay inside.

We've also decided to add a little Christmas cheer to our apartment and copied some people from the building across from us by making paper snowflakes.
Apparently the skills you learn in grade three don't always stay with you and my first attempt was definitely a fail.

but after some googling we managed to refresh our memories and progressed from rectangular snowflakes to crosses to actual snowflakes.

Even Rocky got a little Christmas decoration.

One of my room mate's mom also sent us a sweet advent calendar so we've been getting our daily dose of chocolate.

It did mean unfortunately that my Birthday wall had to come down but it was probably time...

Oh and the chocolate vegan birthday cake I was talking about a while ago ...just took a bit to get up.

Alright, that's all for now. I've got to head over to West Van for a meeting with my strength and conditioning coach and then probably hit up the track.

Oh Vancouver

2009-12-08T16:16:00.001-08:00

Really where else can people still lie out on the beach naked in December...

After at least two weeks of solid rain the weather finally broke and its been clear and sunny around 5 -10 degrees for a week and a half now. I headed out for a run this afternoon to break up the tedium of studying and decided to head down the stairs to Wreck Beach. If its nice out I like heading down there because it makes running a little bit closer to an actual enjoyable activity. Take in the ocean and mountains and its more like running through an obstacle course over the rocks/boulders and logs/fallen trees. Anyway, there were a few older people all bundled up heading down to just look out and a few students studying and then, bam, a few clusters of people taking advantage of the clothes optional. It was warm...but really...everyone else down there was wearing winter coats and toques. I haven't gotten that soft yet that I find 5 degrees cold, but I'm probably getting there. Another week or so of exams and I'll be back up in Yellowknife for a good round of hardening -40 though.

...that is if I make it through to next Tuesday. I walked into the school I volunteer at yesterday and immediately got told I looked like a student . Glasses, hair up - must be exam time. I start Thursday with Organic Chem, Animal Bio and English Friday then Monday, Cell Bio and Tuesday Poli Sci. Then freedom and the chance to just be an athlete again for a couple weeks. Looking forward to it. I think anyone with any connection to a university is stressed at the moment though. Students obviously freaking out, profs and TAs have to deal with the freaking out students...went down to buy a muffin at the library cafe and even the cashier there went on a little rant about how bad this weekend has been.

Time for a little more chemistry, some weights and then more chemistry for the foreseeable future...

Valve Length

2009-11-30T09:16:00.000-08:00

Seems like a fairly insignificant factor but...

Saturday I headed out early for a ride around Richmond in the normal rainy weather we have here in B.C. Twenty minutes in I was promising myself I was finally going to buy fenders, but by about an hour in I was completely soaked anyway but the riding was keeping me warm. Two hours in I flatted... I got the half a staple out of the tire and new tube in despite the quickly numbing hands. Now a couple days before I'd switched out my rear normal training wheel because I'd been having some problems with it and the only other wheel I had was my race wheel. So as I went to put my pump on the valve... I realized there was no valve. I normally have long valve tubes but I'd gotten my spare from a friend a couple weeks ago, and it clearly was short valve. Seriously was not impressed and didn't help that I was both wet and cold. Contemplating what to do I walked about 15 minutes to a gas station to get out of the rain. Was going to call someone, but then there was a taxi just waiting at the gas station, and I softed out. Pretty sure the guy though I was crazy, but definitely felt bad for me too. Wouldn't let me tip him and gave me his card in case I ever needed a ride to the airport or got myself in a mess again. At that point decided not to try my luck on the road again and hit up the gym for a deadly circuit workout. First stop when I headed off campus that afternoon was the bike shop to stock up on some long valve tubes.