That's What's Up

Stats

2010-11-01T17:11:00.003-04:00

Seeing as how it's World Series time and baseball nerds are obsessed with stats I figured I'd look at the stats of this meager blog.

So far I've had readers from weird places, the weirdest of which is the Ukraine, second weirdest probably Singapore. Or maybe somewhere called the Balkans. Most people come to this site through henriscycling.blogspot.com. Thanks Henri.

FYI Denise's (bush league) blog ranks a distant fifth in referrals, behind Sandy's blog, which has been inactive for well over a year. Hahaha. Also making the cut was Veloce's blog, which was updated once circa 2006.

By far the most interesting stat are the searches used to find this little gem. 'Back up thats whats up' and 'canadian history whats up' are two beauties, while 'north renfrew times keir plaice' and 'is lebuzz good on thursdays' are two of my personal favorites. I will not reveal the number of hits I've had, as this would be like giving a cell phone and a backpack to an Al Qaeda member.

Praise for That's Whats Up-

'Five stars, two thumbs up...his writing is unique, thrilling and inquisitive. He asks the questions that no one else is willing ask. A must read for the modern Renaissance man.'
-Kevin H. Hazzard

'Although I won the Nobel Peace prize, those accolades should really be bestown upon one James H. Riggs. He is an apostle for a new era.'
-Barack H. Obama

'After reading Denise H. Ramsden's blog I was left with a cold, vast emptiness inside. An emptiness only filled by the masterful wordcraft of James H. Riggs.'
-Sean H. Connery

Happy New Year!

2010-10-31T10:56:00.005-04:00

Not quite, but for cyclists all over November 1 marks the day to get off the couch, squeeze into that once well fitting spandex, and get back on the bike. Actually this would have to more true for me last year, this off-season I've managed to avoid most of my annual fattening-up, and come into November in pretty good shape.

But first, a retrospective...

I started in California, which was wicked awesome. Then Tucson, which was also awesome. After a brief stop in South Carolina it was over to Tielt-Winge, Belgium. While there we manged to get to France and Holland too. This is the bit where it starts to come appart, I had a hard time in Europe, and came back to Canada not quite where I wanted to be fitness or confidence wise. Worked hard, raced a lot, but still came to Nationals in Edmonton slightly undercooked. There I did what I could, but a poorly timed flat tire and shaky mental state meant a result was beyond me on that day.

With a sub-par first half behind me, I had to rearrange my goals for the second half of the year, and got to it for the last races of the year. Unfortunately for me, my best rides came in late July and August, capped off with a provincial championship, and good rides in the crit heavy last month of the season. This last sentence still makes me laugh, as anyone would tell you crits are not my favorite races, maybe it was the pseudo-stage race consisting solely of crits I was forced into doing with the Jetfuel guys (just kidding, that was one of the best races of the year!), or maybe a lack of anger management skills that allowed me to summon up the psychotic tendencies required for these types of races.

All of that brings us to now, with a nice month of off-season fun I'm ready to get'r goin again. First I should say thanks to all those who helped me out this year, especially my team, Garneau-Club Chaussures-Ogilvy Renault, my coach, everyone and anyone who let me sleep on their couch, and my parents who continue to let me make forts in the basement (for recovery purposes). For 2011 I'm excited to try and acheive the goals I've set, and if it all comes out it should be one exciting year! I'll be back with Garneau next year, racing in Quebec this time, and working with a new coach who has a great deal of experience and some pretty interesting ideas. Now for some pictures, since I can't figure out how to put them in the text (??)

Thought it would be best to take a picture of the newspaper instead of taking the newspaper (I know its upside down)

Off the front in Windsor...the Eye-talians were weeping with joy by the end.

Making faces at Queen's Park

Putting on a clinic.

The Laziest Return in Blogging History

2010-08-22T09:45:00.001-04:00

After a 4 month hiatus to gather my thoughts......

Provincials race report

ZLM Tour & Fleche Wallone

2010-04-23T08:20:00.003-04:00

Our sign for Fleche Wallone (stolen from the Dr's blog)

ZLM Tour-Drove to Holland the day before, stayed in a bit of a sketchy hotel behind a gas station and got honked at for riding on roads we weren' supposed to. I picked up a stomach bug or something of that nature and was not having a good time the morning of the race. Consequently i told the guys I would ride as hard as I could to help them. Lasted 140k before the lack of food caught up to me and I got spat out the back. The race was exceptionally fast, flat, with some good crosswind secions right along the ocean. The course went over a couple of 4k bridges out to an island off the coast and then back. A couple of days of recovery were needed after a tough week so on Monday four of us went into Leuven for the day. It really is a cool university town, we spent the afternoon walking around and then had dinner before taking the bus home.

Wednesday was even more exciting, the boys loaded up the van and drove to Huy to support the girls and pro guys in the Fleche Wallone classic. We found a prime spot at the steepest corner of the Mur de Huy and posted up with our sign and toques. It's a great race to watch, as the guys come through 3 times and the girls twice, a total of 5 chances to see the race. With two canadians in the pro race it was awesome to watch Ryder make the top ten and the girls tear it up. The climb really is unbelievably steep, so respect to everyone who made it up.

Yesterday was a cool day as well, after training in the morning Vincent told us he was going to have a chat with Christian Meier and Ryder Hesjedal, two canadians on the Protour team who raced the day before, and that we wwere free to come if we wanted. Myself and Tony made the trip and it turned out awesome. We talked with them for an hour and a half about everything cycling. Both are really cool guys and it was interesting to get the perspective of someone who is living our dream.

Another couple Kermesses this weekend, psyched to get racing again.

Flanders & Picarde

2010-04-15T08:13:00.003-04:00

As I write this the team is in the middle of the biggest week on our schedule, with 3 Nations Cup races in the space of 7 days. The Nations Cup series is made up of 7 races around the world contested by teams of 6 riders from each country. It's a series specific to U-23 riders and wins in Nations Cups often set the stage for a rider to step up into a Protour contract the next year. So back to our races...Tour of Flanders was last Saturday, the course featured 17 climbs (which is actually 2 more than the pros do) and a bunch of cobble sections packed into 170k. Flanders is a big deal to the Belgians, whether it be the pro or U23 version, and there were plenty of people out milling around the start, looking for autographs and pictures. Long story short, my nerves got the better of me and I was dropped before the finishing circuits, ended up riding back to the start with a Luxemborg and Ukraine dude, which made for great conversation.

Fast forward to Wednesday, now we were in Picardie, France. This area is located in the Somme/Dieppe region right along the coastm meaning lots of wind and some decent hills. After some hugely overpriced truck stop food on the drive down and some hugely overcooked pasta at the race hotel the night before we were on the line again the next morning. Again the fans were out in force, including the most organized autograph seeker I have ever seen, and we were introduced on stage by Daniel Mangeas, the Tour de France announcer. No one else probably cares about that but it was pretty cool to me. Anyways I had my head screwed on right this time and made it to the last 50k before I exploded on one of the climbs after doing a big turn of work pulling on of our leaders back to the group after a mechanical. From there on in a small group of us rode around to finish, but ended up just missing the time cut. It was a good experience anyways, riding in the hills and wind against the best U23s in the world make you learn fast!!

The last race in the trifecta is the ZLM Tour in Holland this Saturday, and then we have a bit bigger break to recover before some more Kermesses and a UCI race in Holland at the end of the month....Cheers for now

Jamie

Freaky deeky Dutch

2010-04-06T10:11:00.002-04:00

That's what Flemish is like, a strange mix of German, Dutch and French. In my five days in this oddly sunny country I've managed to learn two or three words, and have set my sights on mastering the majority of swear words that exist. But lets back the frites truck up shall we....

I would love to say the flights over were uneventful, but that would be lying. For reasons unbeknownest to me the very first plane from Ottawa was late, causing a cataclysmic reaction that resulted in a death sprint thorugh Dulles and my bags not making it to Belgium for an extra two days. Needless to say I stunk pretty bad when they finally did arrive and have rarely been more pumped to put on new underwear. I have good teammates here though and was able to borrow some riding stuff and get a couple of rides in while waiting. The riding is excellent, if somewhat windy and flat, and all the stereotypes about Belgian roads hold true. Many roads are no wider than bike paths, there are actual bike paths everywhere, and in a bizarre twist of engineering the bigger roads are constructed of out massive slabs of concrete, leaving an inch wide 'death gap' down the middle that causes some problems during races. Our accomodations are large by european standards, I would describe it but there is a 'CCA cribs' production waiting to be uploaded that will give a great video overview of what the place looks like.

On the racing side of things the men's team is two races into the sched, both of which were kermis (big circuit races) not all that far from here. The first was on the same day as the Tour of Flanders, so it was a small field, only 120 guys. Ha. Nothing crazy about the course, just some serious wind and pretty aggressive racing. The team did a great job patrolling the moves, with Michael in the early break and Keir in the first chase. My race was not so hot, I went down pretty hard at around 50k to go and my day ended there. I split the time remaining in the race between taking pictures of the boys and watching the end of Flanders in the bar on the side of the course. Many beers were drunk (by the Belgians) and many a foul word was uttered when the local boy failed to come up with the goods.

Race number two was another kermis, this time with 180 guys on line and another windy, rolling, moderately technical course. Positioning is critical in fields like that, and I got caught out by being to complacent and a bit too far down the pack. A split happened and it took myslef and 4 others 60k to bridge from the back group back up to the front. After the chase my legs were pretty much cooked and I rolled in the the pack in the mid 50s-60s.

That's it for now, tomorrow we are pre-riding the Tour of Flanders course with Dominique Rollin to try and get a feel for the climbs and cobbles, and then Saturday we start the first of three Nations Cups in seven days!!

Perma-Packed

2010-03-30T20:22:00.003-04:00

Not too much to say about my time is south Carolina. Good riding, nice weather, lots more on the OCA site if you're interested. Anyways I had someone ask me the other day if I had started packing for Belgium yet. The answer was of course no, more specifically I don't really unpack. It's more like taking clothes out of a bag, straight into the washing machine then back in the suitcase. Here's what's in the bag for this trip...

Suitcase- 1 pair cycling shoes, 1 pair sandals, 4x kits(shorts+jersey), 1x long sleeve, a bunch of socks, pair of sweatpants, leg/arm/kneewarmers, various gloves, 4 T-shirts, long sleeve baselayer, massage stick/practical joke device, travel roller, toothbrush, anti-saddle sore soap, vest, 3 pairs of sunglasses and a rain jacket.

Carry-on- another pair of cycling shoes, pedals, laptop, ipod, a book or two, a dozen earplugs, melatonin to make me sleep

Bike bag- bike (really?), 2 sets of wheels, extra tire and I cram my helmet in there too

Super psyched for the trip, leave here tomorrow at 3, get to Brussels the next morning after a mercifully brief stop in Washington. Lastly I have to give a huge thank you to Shawn, he's leeting me use his unreal classics wheels for the cobbles of Flanders. They're perfect wheels for that and he saved me serious $$ and hassle!! Cheers buddy, I'll get that Tom Boonen autograph for you as soon as I get there.

Apparently weeping with joy at the top of Sassafras.

Ottawa?

2010-03-05T09:43:00.001-05:00

Where did the week go? It feels like just last night I got home from Tucson, and now I’m looking at the very limited number of days left until the next camp and getting even more excited. This past weekend was swept up in a whirlwind of ringette watching (my sister’s provincial championships) and some special occasions for the family. By the start of the week though it was full gas back training, in what has (knock on wood) been unreal weather for Ottawa in March. The mornings are still cold, but the sun warms things up a little above freezing by noon. Seeing as how I can’t wait until noon to ride this means I take off in what ends up being way too much clothing by the end of the ride. For instance, during yesterdays five hour slugfest I lost almost 5lbs. Five pounds!! In the winter no less. Between the beauty weather, Europe fast approaching and the just finished Olympics, motivation is easy to come by. The thing was that while down south this spring trip seemed pretty far away, but now that March has arrived it quickly dawned on me that the infamous Tour of Flanders is only a bit over a month away. Nonetheless I have confidence in the training and preparation I’ve done so far, backed up by good numbers yesterday in what was an important ride.

And how could I write without talking more about the Olympics. Maybe it’s my quickly advancing age, or maybe the fact that I got to meet/ride with a bunch of Olympians from the last Olympics, but the whole thing seemed more personal, and dare I say it more possible. Seeing that these athletes are just normal people and basically ride a bike the same way (with two legs) brought the thought of the Olympics down just slightly out of the stratosphere for me. Aside from that the performances of the athletes were hugely inspiring and made me extremely proud to be Canadian. Obviously the gold medal hockey final stands out as the most exciting moment for me, but there are two others that I will remember for a long time. The men’s 30k XC skiing pursuit stood out for the sheer brutality of the race. Those guys are animals and just pounded on each other for the whole 30k, the amount of suffering on display was almost painful to watch! The other was the performance/celebrations of Jon Montgomery, who I think should be a shoe in for the next Greatest Canadian title. The guy wins a gold, chugs beer, and auctions cars. What else do you need? On a final optimistic note, I thought it was so good to see the feds increase (!) the funding for the OTP program, not only for the fact that it’s more money, but I think they finally understand that Canadians really do care about sport.

I think it’s warmed up enough for me, gotta go ride….

Back to the Great White North eh

2010-02-26T15:27:00.003-05:00

Sitting in Tuscon airport, super bored after snaking my exceptionally overweight bike bag and suitcase through for one falt low fee. Nah, just kidding, they charged me up the ying yang as per the norm, and shortly I'm going hunting for decent coffee. These last few days in Tucson have been really nice, long rides every day with plenty of climbing to hold me over until South Carolina. Yesterday I did the first 14 miles of Mt. Lemmon, twice. With the snow they got high on the mountain last weekend it would've been a little too cold to go all the way to the top, there was snow at the 4500ft mark and the thing is 9000ft high!!

Right now I'm pretty tired from doing a week's worth of training in 4 days, hence the coffee search. As a final ride in the sun the morning I rode over to Le Buzz cafe and crushed a cappucino to get me going. Le Buzz makes really good coffe, slotting solidly into the number three spot on my all-time list. Going home for a week and a bit should be good, no point in wasting the good weather on a recovery week I think. A little bit of riding in the cold and I'll be back down south for the OCA HP camp, this time as one of the older, supposedly more mature riders. It's going to be quite different from the last camp, where I was one of the youngest and just tried to keep my trap shut and listen....either way a couple-ten days of snow and homemade quad-macchiatos will do me good.

Europe is approaching soon too, the stoke is pretty close to an all time high. With all this Olympic coverage it's easy to find motivation, I'm trying to save it up for the sad day when the games end!!

Team Canuck Camp wrap-up

2010-02-22T18:14:00.003-05:00

Since the camp has long since ended, I am am finishing up my time here in Tucson I thought it would be a good idea to write something. The last ride of camp took place on Saturday when a few of us rode the Shootout for a good test of the legs. The Shootout is a legendary ride here in Tucson, over 150 people regualrly show up, including many pros living down here in the winter. The ride starts easy but after getting out of town it seriously picks up until it is a full on race. This continues all way up the 15k climb of Madera canyon before everyone calls it a day and rides easy home. We ended up with 160k in 5 hours and a great workout. Overall this was easily the best/most fun training camp I've ever been to. The group as a whole was awesome, I learned a lot in the IST sessions and the rides were great. The week of training leaves me fatigued but not close to destroyed and ready to get back at it tomorrow after today's easier spin. There's tons more written on the CCA website and I put up a couple few photos here. I'll put up more later but the internet I'm stealing is exceptionally slow.

Tucson

2010-02-13T23:35:00.003-05:00

Today was day 2 of the CCA training camp here in Tucson, Arizona. From what some of the older riders were saying these camps were commonplace back in the 90's and this one is part of a resurgance of the National Team program as a whole. There are about 30 riders here, evebly split between road and mountain bikers, and guys and girls. Yesterday's ride we went about 14 miles up Mt. Lemmon as part of our endurance ride. As this camp is mostly about base miles and laying the foundation for the season we did another steaddy ride today, a bit longer one over Gate's Pass.

As well as riding we have a bunch of IST seesions, basically all the sport science and medicine in place for the athletes. We have sessions on recovery, sport psych, physio sessions, sleep and athletes and more. For me the physio session has been the best, the physio here is world-class (she worked with many of Canada's winter Olympians) and in just one session managed to straighten out my messed up body. Aside from all this the coolest part of the camp has been riding and interacting with a lot of the best cyclists in the country. There are a bunch of Olympians, World Cup winners and countless national championships included in this group and overall the professionalism and focus of everyone has been impressive. The rides are bang on and everything is just at a super high level.

That's all for now, time to watch the Jennifer Heil tear it up!

CLD-LAX-TUC

2010-02-11T01:03:00.003-05:00

My last night in California brings me both excitement and sadness. I'm excited to get to Tucson and get going on what should be a great training camp put on by the CCA, but I'm a bit sad to leave Cali. Like I've said before, the place is unreal, I can't think of a better place to train. Anyways I have to go do my very last minute packing and go to sleep, a 9:30 flight that should be in Tucson around 2 to kick things off.

I say I'll try and update from Tucson, but the truth is when I'm having fun and/or tired from training blogging is usually the last thing from my mind. But I promise to do it at least once and I will take pictures...gotta document this stuff.

2010-01-28T21:00:00.003-05:00

Wild Animal Park

In-N-Out Burger...2x2 Animal style

Flow. Give it a few weeks.

California is legit. Too legit to quit you might say. Seriously though, the lifestyle I'm lucky enough to be living at the moment is close to ideal in my mind. For hard training days I ride up into the mountains, the endless climbs and winding roads make a long ride really easy. Getting in a really hard ride is easy too, you pretty much just ride and the hills do the rest. On my easier days I ride down along the beach, scouting surfers and looking for the most dirtbag Vanagons. The weather has come back up to what San Diego-ins expect, which makes riding a pleasure. Occasional fish burritos and In-N-Out burgers (it's ok, Floyd eats them and he won the Tour) and trips to the Wild Animal Park to see the gorillas and rhinos complete the package. Like I said, legit.

Thanks for stopping by...Stay classy

2010-01-18T18:30:00.003-05:00

Well that's a bit of a lie, San Marcos, CA is where I am currently residing. A bit less than an hour from San Diego itself and right at the base of the mountains, it's a pretty unreal place to be. So far I've been here for 3 days, the first two were riding up into the hills and today down to the coast. I have to say the hills here are steeper and more numerous than anywhere else I've ridden. Nice had long steady climbs and South Carolina has some decent climbs, but here there is simply no flat ground to be found!! Yesterday I did about 7000' of climbing without even searching out the hills and today on the flatest route I could make I was still over 3000' in 2 1/2 hours. Since I am staying here for almost 4 weeks before heading to Tucson I have been easing into it somewhat, with two good days over the weekend and then an easy spin today, making sure that my legs are ready to go and avoiding any injuries. Today's ride was beautiful, right down along the Pacific coast highway, watching a bunch of people surf in the rain. It looked really cold, they all had full wetsuits and hoods and stuff on but it was cool nonetheless. Currently it's raining pretty hard, just getting it all out of it's system I figure!!

No sightings of Ron Burgandy or Arnie yet, but we're going to In-N-Out burger soon so that's looking like my best chance.

100 Post Anniversary

2010-01-12T19:34:00.002-05:00

It's a big day for That's What's Up, unfortunately no one else cares. The most exciting thing to happen lately is my booking a flight to San Diego!! Leaving this Friday and coming home after a stop in Tucson in February. I've been training as usual, mixing trainer rides, skiing and riding outside on the trusty MTB if the temperature rises above frigid. Today definately qualified as frigid, so trainer and skiing were on the menu. Apparently not frigid enough to freeze the one of the many creeks running through the fields behind our house though. Crossing said creek one ski broke through and my foot was instantly frozen. Turns out jagged ice frozen to the bottom of a ski doesn't glide so well, so I invented a brand new technique to 'ski' home and promptly campaigned the IOC to include this technique in the next Olympics. I'm still waiting for a response but modern pentathlon better watch out.

It's all ok though, just a few more days in the Great White North and I'm home free. I do have a bunch of stuff left to do, notably packing, but more importantly racking up a bunch of ping-pong matches in the Riggs family world series. Ping-pong is one of two things that my sister has a hope of beating me at, the other being Wii duck hunt. In all fairness I'm not that bad of a ping-pong player and duck hunt is impossible to win. Just ask Joey Veloce about my basement game skills as I led Team Canada(me) to a dominating 5-0 record versus Team Italy(him) in the inaugural basement game olympics, a test of athleticism and skill as tough as hard as any Olympic sport, and definately harder than sailing or ice dancing. I'll be sure to keep you up to date on the world series standings, and if anyone has ideas on avoiding cavity searches at airports please fill me in.

Happy Festivus

2009-12-27T10:21:00.002-05:00

Merry Christmas to everyone, hope Santa was good to you and the reindeer kept it upright this year. This past week was a super busy one for me, not only Christmas but also moving out and today is my Dad's birthday. There's a tradition in our family that we always do Christmas Eve with to other families that are really close family friends that we're known forever. This year unfortunately one of the clan was holed up in the hospital with a bad ruptured appendix/peritonitis so we all moved into CHEO and played Whovillopoly there!! It was a (hopefully) once in a lifetime thing, but one that put things into perspective.

Christmas day was really nice, we had family dinner here and I think everyone really enjoyed it. The only bad thing was the freezing rain that started that evening, resulting in the 2 inches of ice that currently are covering everything. This has been super rough for me as it means that riding is out of the question, but also that skiing has been made inpossible. It's all a little ridiculous, yesterday I went out to get the newspaper andstarted sliding down our walkway before starting the Bugs Bunny sprint back towards the door and away from my imminent crash down the stairs. This has meant so serious trainer time, but I'm confident that by tomorrow it should be alright and a ski or ride outdoors will be had.

Currently my mom is making scones for dad's biurthday and I wa strying to do the 750 word holiday crossword. Got about 40 done and mailed it in for the day. Watched Canada dismember Latvia yesterday, the forst 9 goals were good but the last 7 I started to feel bad for the Latvians. What do you expect when the whole country has 1500 hockey players. Manotick probably has 1500 hockey players. I do know for a fact that we have more indoor rinks that all of Mongolia. Not bad eh.

New Post

2009-12-19T16:33:00.005-05:00

The last couple days have been pretty busy, but really a lot of fun! After getting (mostly) moved out I went biking for a while, then had beer or two for good measure with the guys and gals. Could be the last time for a while I see many of them, but we had an awesome evening. Friday I went Christmas shopping at the mall, which for me is just about the most painful thing possible. Five hours on the bike is fine, just don't make me fight the teeny boppers in American Eagle for the last whatever-it-is. People are insane, shopping just kills me. Today I went riding with Maggi, really good 5 hours with an unreal latte at the cafe at the end. Four shots of espresso later I'm pretty jittery right now and watching the Ironman world champs and skiing simultaneously is getting me pumped up again.

Going to see the Olympic flame come through Hamilton tonight. Should be a blast. Then I guess I should study, one zammer left then I have to pray the weather is ok for the big drive home in Paddy the Caddy.

Camping on the inside

2009-12-17T10:59:00.002-05:00

It's a somewhat sad day today, and also kind of exciting. My mom and I just got finished moving the majority of my stuff out and into her truck for the drive back to Ottawa. All I have left is a desk and a chair, one bag of clothes and the books I need for the last exam. My bed is still here to but someone is coming to get that later for their 6 year old to use. Just to prove my hardness I will probably be sleeping on the floor, unless I can steal all the cushions off the couch without the guys noticing. This is sad becuase it signals the last couple days in the Darryl household, but exciting because it means I'm doing cool stuff next semester!!

One exam left, english, which is easy, and then home for Christmas. More later.

"If you end a ride in the rain you're tough. If you leave for a ride in the rain, you're stupid"

2009-12-13T13:16:00.002-05:00

Guess which one I did today? It wasn't exactly raining, more like sleeting, just straddling that o degree mark that makes all the difference. I've rarely been colder or more sketched out on a bike, coming around one corner off a main road onto a side street both Hazzard and I bailed on the glare ice covered road. At least we were going slow and the ice decreased fiction to a minimum, limiting the damge to just our pride. Pretty soon after that we decided to call it a day and head home after seeing a couple cars facing the wrong way in the ditch. Still frozen to the core and trying to study in the fetal position to retain body heat.

One exam is done, three to go and I've been deep in my study-hovel pounding out the hours. Pounding out the hours in training too, just gettin'r done. One other strange observation...by this day last year I had been home for two days already, this year I have over a week to go and three exams left!! Crazy.

Getting Stuck In

2009-12-08T22:27:00.002-05:00

Just given'r since 1989

Stuck in the library. Exams are back, making one of two dreaded appearences per year. Everyone seems to lose it just a bit around this time, between stress of exams, stress of Christmas, lack of sleep and often crap weather it can all get to be a bit much. Plus this year I have moving out of a house and organizing training camps to add in to that!! Luckily my schedule isn't so bad, everything is nicely spread out leaving enough time to train. And sleep. And attend to personal grooming isuues.

Speaking of grooming you see some bizarre things during exams. I have knoen people who have not changed out of sweat pants for weeks on end, who gave themselves medial epicondylitis from leaning on their elbows reading (not a joke), who decided not to shave nor wash there hair for the entire time (it was first year ok), and those who don't eat, binge eat or subsist entirely on coffee. Some people get a bit too stressed I think, after all it's not like med school exams or lawyer exams (i'm assuming).

Did some fitness testing. I am moderately fit in general, pretty ok fit for December. Hazzard continues to dominate rides (not sprints though), while I continue to dominate life. I can't wait until WJC. Best part of Christmas holidays. Anywho that's pretty much it.

Gym Class Fail

2009-11-30T10:30:00.003-05:00

After two solid weeks of frantic school work it now seems like we finished everything a week early!! My neuro class finished Friday with our presentations, and my last nutrition class was (thankfully) on Thursday night. So that leaves this wek with only three days of class. This morning was the last sports injuries lab, and since all our practical exams are done they decided to do a dynamic warm up class. Dynamic warm ups are all those bizarre exercises you see athletes doing before games, meant to warm up the systems, activate the neural system and stretch out the muscles. So after all this was done, about half the class stayed and we played pick-up basketball for an hour. I was pretty much completely useless, putting in a shameful peformance from behind the arc, seems like the more I ride the worse I get at every other sport!! Hopefully my hockey skills haven't eroded to much to get in some good ODR (Outdoor rink league) puck when I go home for Christmas.

For now riding and strength training continues to plod along, lately myslef and Hazzard have been killing it for the sign sprints. The first couple weeks he crushed me, but through secret Rocky training and many raw eggs eaten I have clawed my way back up and we're now almost even. Although he would never tell you this.

Lastly, attended an ugly sweater party on Friday in a beauty vintage sweater and some sweet grade 4 slush pants. Best night in a while with everyone looking stellar and rocking the pure Canadian hoser look. All is as it should be.

The Greatest Show on Earth

2009-11-23T22:21:00.002-05:00

Super tired right now, had a really fun but jam packed weekend and last week. I'll do a better post soon, right now I'm just thinking about how fun innertube waterpolo is. We don't play until Wednesday and I'm pumped all ready!

Take me home for a rest

2009-11-16T17:03:00.002-05:00

This weekend just past I took a friend of mine up on her offer of drive back home and spent a couple days at home. I worked really hard last week to put in good training and get tons of work done so I took the weekend tranquilo, just going on a hike with the family and smashing sticks against trees. Saturdya night a bunch of us went downtown to Pier 21, there were at least 10 of the South Carleton & SEC crew there, and a couple of people who came down from Mac. Speaking of Mac, he was nice enought to let me sleep on his couch, his place is really nice, big, and clean!! It was really good to see him, and I'm pumped already for Christmas break...

This week brings my last midterm (#10-Ya buddy!!), a formal Friday, OCA banquet and ride Saturday and then mad studying for a practical exam Monday. Sports Injuries is unreal, this weekend I used my family as test dummies for my taping. I have to say sorry to my sister for nearly amputating her foot with an ankle taping. Gotta work on that.

Unbelievably Euro

2009-11-10T13:46:00.003-05:00

Just killing it up Twiss..

Hazzard pretending he's popular...

Did a ridiculously 'Euro' ride on Sunday. Euro is supposed to mean cool, pro, and generally bad-ass. All these boxes were definately checked on Sunday. K-Fed and I drove down to Jetfuel in the morning, pounded a couple of macchiatos, hid our valuables in the car, and then took off with a bunch of the T.O cycling mafia. It was unreal, wearing Jetfuel kit in Toronto makes you a celebrity, all the old Italian dudes love it. At one point as I was white knuckling the bars hopping street car tracks Randell went no hands and sent a text message. All I could think is 'man I'm a pansy'...

Once we got out of the city we met Giuliano who was out putting in the miles and he told me he's going to crush me next spring. Cool. Stopped at a coffee shop halfway through met Mike Barry Sr. who was out for a ride. That was cool too. Then on the way back we had to squeeze around some fire trucks putting out a fire in the engine of a car in the ditch. It was an eventful ride to say the least. Once back at Jetfuel we consumed yet more coffee (it is honestly the best coffee you will ever have) and even got some fresh baked scones!!! Hazzard and I were losing are minds, and then determined we have to step up our search efforts for females willing to bake us scones. It truly was the best.

The weather has been really good lately, so did another 3 yesterday on the same route I did with devo on Saturday. Smashed it at the gym this morning, sweated a big puccle onto the floor under the leg press much to the disgust of the chick doing crunches next to it. Now going to pedal a bit more.

Oh and I was going crazy over the weekend writing an essay I thought was due yesterday. Turns out it's due in two weeks, becuase of the T.A strike. And had a really nice dinner with my Dad on the weekend who was down in Oshawa, ate some massive beef ribs while the planes flying into Pearson buzzed the restaurants.

2009-11-06T16:13:00.002-05:00

Ramsden has stepped it up, and while I can't compete with stories of eating cake in my sports bra, I will tell you that right now I am wearing my dinosaur bowers and my $3.99 Value Village cardigan. And nothing else. Ooh lala, I can feel my readership going up by the second. So last week me and my trusted Italian training advisor decided that real training should start November 1. It started really nice, with a good ride Sunday and then a rest day as day two of the training plan. I stepped up my gym workouts this week two, I keep telling myself a quote from the Magi of Hardness himself...Dan Maggi. Last year he told me that if you can walk out of the gym normally once you're done you didn't go hard enough. So that's the training plan. Walking=soft, stumbling out like a retard=hard.

This morning I was in the gym just shredding it, but once again looking like a retard. The bad part about doing lots of reps isthat you have to use less weight, so you look like a pansy squatting with one plate on each side. The worst is when ann attractive group of females happens by when you're on rep #30, slobbering all over yourself to puch 150lbs up. Especially when the tool beside you has 10 plates on doing 'shrugs', lifting the bar about 2 inches each time and grunting loudly from under his 3 Hollister polos. All with collars popped.

Now a video someone snapped of me sculpting the pythons this am....

Halloween

2009-11-03T15:48:00.003-05:00

Finished up my 9th midterm of the semester this morning, only one to go! Amazing how somehow 5 classes=10 midterms. Next one in two weeks, but until then there are a multitude of assignments due. Some of you know I am taking my mandatory once-in-four-years english course, and it is proving to me even more that all that stuff is pure BS. It's amazing how the prof and humanities department tries to pretend like it's a science or something, whcih makes it completely laughable to anyone who is actually in science. Anyways there is an essay in this class, something I haven't done in 2 years. I'm trying to find 1000 words to write about how Lotto tickets are culturally relevant, but looks like there's going to have to be quite a bit of 'fluff' added to pump that word count up.

On to Halloween. I mentioned last time that the lads of the DARRYL household decided to dress up as the Village People, and to take those costumes and make them as flamboyant as possible. As you can see, I think we succeeded. Let's just say the costumes were ideal for house parties with 200 people in the house, not so much for being outside!!

That's all for now...

Stevie is Tired

2009-10-31T11:09:00.002-04:00

Waiting for Steve to wake up so we can go ride bikes. It's ok since it's raining and hurricane-winding outside right now. This week was pretty busy for me, seemed busier because I've been feeling a bit off. I really hope it's not the swine, and I'm pretty confident it's not. Checked it all out on WebMD. Just in case though I've been killing OJ and saltines, clinically proven to ward off illness.

I had ANOTHER midterm this week, neurophysiology, whcih sounds complictaed but isn't that hard. Two more left now, which when added to the 8 I've ridden makes it a nice round 10. Wednesday was a big day too, our season opener of innertube waterpolo. We laid down a dominating performance on the C division (Turtle pond), winning 12-4 and posting a shut-out in the second half. I think we're allowed to be in C division though, nobody on our team knew any rules, nor how to get into the tubes. This proved to be the most difficult part of the whole thing.

Halloween tonight, the DARRYL household have come up with the beautiful idea of going as the Village People. One quick Value Village run and we're ready to go. I'll post some pictures once a)Halloween is over, and b)I can find the camera cord. Speaking of pictures I've been making a point to take more, since I've been told that I don't take enough. So now I have a bunch of pictures of nothing, and about 10 of Hazzard, Steve, and myself eating cinnamon buns. In Paris.

He's still not awake.

New Colour

2009-10-24T16:56:00.001-04:00

Why? Guess...

What I do in the offseason.

2009-10-19T16:00:00.001-04:00

"There is no offseason"-Some hardcore triathlete

Well there definately is an offseason, actually two offseasons. The first is when you sit on the couch, have some pops and some chips and do all the stuff you can't during the season. Like super aggressive road hockey and staying up playing foosball until 2am, eating 50 sushi rolls in one session (oh wait I did do that) or ordering a burger on the side of your Big Mac meal. That last one only happened once ina moment of extreme weakness. Promise. The second bit is when you start training for next year, slowly at first and then building up to some serious miles.

I'm thorugh the first bit, which was thoroughly enjoyed. But at the moment it's still time to chillax, but with a bit more physical activity. Running is a big one, one week I got carried away and did almost 60k, as well as the ever popular inner tube water polo. Don't knock it until you try it. I tell ya, my pecs are gonna be shredded next year!! To be honest I'm glad I got myself off the couch, I was just getting more and more tired but now that I'm moving again I feel great!

Other than that, I have had 3 Thanksgiving dinners this year, a new record, and they were all great. Rode to the cottage with my 2 uncles and cousin in a howling headwind. They killed it though and we got there just in time to roast hot dogs and 4 year old marshmallows. Went to go watch the UCI Cross race in T.O Saturday with Mundy which was cool. Wrote a bunch of tests. Procrastinating for a bunch more. And today I learned how to take an ankle for in/eversion sprains!! It was awesome.

It's tough at the top...

2009-10-03T13:27:00.000-04:00

A dump truck of ice cream

2009-09-21T11:16:00.000-04:00

You like ice cream right? I do too, but how would you feel if the only way you could have ice cream was to eat a whole dump truck full? Probably wouldn't like ice cream anymore. It's sort of the same with bike practicing, there is only so much one can take. For me the trick is to stop taking biking serious before the ice cream makes me barf, if you catch my drift.

Summary, last race was Saturday and I felt a small amount of ice cream making its way back up my esophagus. So now I am not eating anymore ice cream. So not training. There is a difference between training and riding a bike though, indeed I rode for nearly 5 hours yesterday, but it wasn't training. More like a tan line development session.

It's the offy, next time I'll fill you in on what a cyclist does in the off season, that critical period between the end of racing and actually training for next year. But for now I'm going to eat some ice cream. The real stuff.

Lazy

2009-09-01T15:44:00.000-04:00

So what's up? I've been back home for the last week or so, putting in good training and catching up a bit with family. Green Mountain starts Friday, with none other than Evan Mundy arriving tomorrow to make the drive down the next day. It's alwyas been a really fun race, and hopefully after the big post-CSG week I put in the form will be coming around. Either way it'll be a good time.

On another note, the amount of construction that seems to be going on around Ottawa right now is ridiculous. I rode to the gatineaus the yesterday and every single road I was on had some sort of construction going on. Not to mention that the whole 'downtown' Manotick is torn to pieces, but thats a whole other cluster. I guess it's like they say about there being 4 seasons in Ottawa: winter, winter, winter and road construction. And now some CSG pics (note some are stolen from various sources)...

In the break in the crit...
Ontario walking in at opening ceremonies...

Laughing at what was apparently a hilarious joke...

Rooms in the athlete's village were, um, tight....

Most of the Ontario men's team, minus Jette but plus Mike G

Almost Done?

2009-08-24T09:18:00.000-04:00

Games are over. Summed up...absolutely incredible experience. I didn't realize it as much before we left, but the games are a huge deal! The best young athletes from across the country all together made for some impressive performances and hilarious memories. I'll do a better recap and put some photos later when I'm less brain dead.

Now to get ready for Green Mounatain and Univest GP with a solid sushi feed post-ride today.

Lastly, props to our roommates at CSG, the beach volleyball guys came through and ran show in the tournament, not even losing a set on the way to gold. And can't forget the rugby guys, who pulled off a bit of an upset to beat BC in the finals. Wicked game to watch!

Canada Summer Games- Day 1

2009-08-14T20:42:00.001-04:00

Canada Games 2009. The 300 athletes and coaches of Team Ontario for week 1 met at 7am near the airport this morning to the flight to Summerside, PEI. We got on buses and went right out onto the tarmac to board the plane, straight rocker style. No check-in, no security, nothin. It was beautiful. The short flight ended landing at the airstrip at the old Summerside forces base, thats now part of a college out here. We walked off the plane, through health screenings and accredidation and then to the athlete's village.

The six of us are rooming with Ontario's male beach volleyball team. Super cool guys, and we've definately got the edge should a fight ever arise with these two on our side. Nothin big has gone on so far, we went for a preview on the road course, did some photos/interviews/video promo for the province and for The Weather Network. They're doing a spot or something, so tune in and check it out! Other than that meals have been an adventure, with 2000 people eating in the cavernous dining hall, and tomorrow we have opening ceremonies. That's on TSN2, look fof the guy in black shorts and white Ontario hoodie. There's only 300 of us! ha

Yikes

2009-07-27T20:51:00.000-04:00

Golf....
The gongshow that was TDQ
Rding around on Obama's front lawn
Crystal City Cup in Washington D.C
Nationals...check those JetFuel socks!! Damn

Since its been so long, I'll just start at the last place I can remember. Which would be Tour de Beauce. Found out I was doing this one really late, like Sunday morning before the Tuesday start late. Anyways after a lot of last minute figuring out I made it to Beauce. I was lucky enough to get a spot on the National Team, and had some unreal teammates. Without any ideas what to expect, I came out happy with my first experience. Contrary to the results, I did finish, but my group was OTL on the last stage, too bad. It was a tough race, but I was up in the front group on some hard stages and got a taste of the Beauce style of racing. Overall I came out stronger, and knowing that I'm just a couple %s off contending for stages, and a couple more for the GC.

Nationals was next, the TT was nothing special, but I helped force the winning break only 15k into the 180k race in the RR. Gave it everything, including a perhaps ill-advised attack with 20k to go, its hard to be patient when that red and white jersey is on the line!! In the end I cracked a bit and came in 5th U23, and just caught on the line by the freight train that was Roth/Meier to end up 9th overall.

Since then, there has been Tour de Quebec, the OBC GP, Provincial crit and Provinicial RR. TDQ was a shock to the system after a bit of post-Nats R&R, but it was a good ol' road trip with the lads nonetheless. All I can say is if you are male and single, go to Quebec City!! Try and avoid having to race while there too...OBC GP was just ok, it poured rain, I missed the break but attacked on the last hill and ended up 8th. The crit was terrible. Provincial RR was a toughie, I had my best legs since Nats and tried (maybe too hard) to split up the race to no avail. Alas, the move went and I was too casual seeing a teammate up there. That move stuck to the end and I had to ride in around 15th, 8th U23 I believe.

All in all, I've started training hard again and the form has definately been on the rise. What else? Well been to the cottage for a couple days, played not enough golf and now back in the Hammer discussing plans for a road hockey league to debut in September.

And next on the docket, Montreal-Quebec, CSG, Green Mountain then Univest. Basically, 250k of French flatness, a trip to pick potatoes, a little hemp smoking and then some delicious Philly cooking....just kidding, I'm pumped. Got a bone to pick with Univest.

If she can do it, so can I

2009-07-23T17:22:00.000-04:00

Can't be upstaged by the prodigy herself, so as long as Denise is blogging I will to. Plus people have told me blogs are good for various things...

Headed off to the chiro right now to get all straightened out, but I promise to write later.

Dry Spell

2009-05-01T10:57:00.000-04:00

Been a bit of a dry period in racing terms since Battenkill, for some reason the calender is completely empty! Oh well, this weekend is Springbank, the first CSG qualifier, and a race I've never done before. Training has been good, ripped some motorpacing yesterday, felt a bit sluggish at the end and got caught in a torrential rain storm at the end but it was all good. Last Saturday myself and Hazzrd did a big climbing ride, 5100ft in under 5 hours, maybe not much in an absolute sense, but for Ontario thats pretty good. Hazz proceeded to bail on me and drive to Gila to race up Mount Everest with Armstrong and Leipheimer.

Thats alright too though, since Kyle Fry and superstart Denise Ramsden have just moved into the palace, its just like living with Joe and Steve, except they both have blond hair, both ride more than occasionally and one is a girl. I'll let you decide which.

Gotta get back to my recovery day now, its pretty warm so the coffee shop is beckoning.

Battenkill

2009-04-22T09:08:00.000-04:00

Without a doubt one of the coolest races I've ever done. The course consisted of a 100km lap with about 25k of gravel roads and a few signigficant gravel climbs. Saturday was the Pro-Am race, with myself and Kevin Hazzard representing Jetfuel. A large break with all the big teams represented went away early, and despite some valiant bridging attempts we missed the break. It ended up okay, as we got to preview the course and try something out in the sprint at the end.

Sunday was the big show, the 200k Pro Invitational with all the best teams in North America, including a flying BMC squad fresh off of Paris-Roubaix and the Scheldpris. Two guys got away early, including the eventual winner (dude's a machine) and I was sitting comfortably in the peleton waiting for the counter attacks as the break got reeled in. Unfortunately at kilometer 80 I got what would be the first of three punctures on the day. I managed to chase back up to right behind the peleton after the first two, but when I got the third one I ended up waiting 15 minutes for a neutral service. So that was my race over, but I am already pumped for next year, I think the course is perfect for someone with my style and plus its just a cool race in general.

The drive home was another story, and a long one at that, but I'll just say I got home 21 hours after we left the race. The drive took us 7 hours on the way down.

Today I feel like I'm recovered from the racing and crazy drive, so I'll knock out a bit of studying and watch Fleche-Wallone and see if it doesn't warm up a bit for my ride...

Tell me you dont want to try this...

2009-04-14T20:37:00.001-04:00

Watch this...

Got introduced to this video this morning in the library and shortly thereafter had a small army of people all watching it. Then got asked to move. It was worth losing a prime study spot for...

It's exam time again, so the blogging frequency should pick up as boredom levels increase. I'll try and remember to post any more classic stuff, I have a good source. All she does is YouTube and still eats exams for breakfast.

Good Friday RR-The Resurrection

2009-04-13T15:39:00.001-04:00

Now that its race season I should actually have some interesting stuff to write about, and seeing as how it's Easter ressurecting the blog seemed appropriate...

The Good Friday race is the traditional Ontario opener, and turned out to be a mix of positives and negatives. On the positive side I felt string, riding the all day break and doing as much as I could in the finale to set up teammates for a result. On the negative side I didn't race with a lot of tactical sense, and wasted to many matches too early in the race. All in all a good day though, just under 170km in 5hours, and it just gives me more motivation for this weekend's Battenkill-Roubaix races. These promise to be awesome races, 120k Saturday and 200k Sunday, all with significant dirt sections and strong fields (including former Tour winner*** Floyd Landis).

I'll leave you with some pictures from Good Friday...I'm wearing a red JetFuel jersey, black shorts and white knee and arm warmers. And I'm not as fat as I look, I was instructed to wear 2 jersays and a vest UNDER my outer jersey to stay warm. Hence the sumo appearence.

http://www.canadiancyclist.com/races09/ON/GFRR/parttwo/index.htm

Training Camp- Week 1

2009-02-20T19:15:00.001-05:00

This one will be short and sweet, I'm pretty tired and dinner is starting to smell really good!! Been down in Walhalla, South Carolina for 6 days now and I can feel my form improving by the day. Which is good I guess since I'll be doing my first races of the season this weekend!! Two races with the new team, we'll see what we can do. The races are part of the Greenville Spring Training series put on by George Hincapies company and draw a decent field including some domestic pros down here training. Our boy Kevin Hazzard took second in one of them last weekend so we'll do our best to back that up this weekend.

Training has been really consistent, good miles, good hours and lots of climbing! In 6 days I've done around 28 hours and nearly 900k and I have to say I've never felt better in February. Every ride has been in decent weather, pretty chilly some days, but mostly good. All except for the TTT workout which was carried out mostly in pouring rain and 4 degrees!

One final note, I've been told of the benefits of cold water immersion many times, so I've been icing my legs in the 40 degree F lake behind oour house after every ride. It feels horrible at the time but my legs are recovering really nicely between rides so something must be working...

I'll do my best to get some pics this week and if I remember I'll do an update after these first races!

Check Ca

2009-02-10T20:18:00.000-05:00

Two more days and one long haul in the van and then its nothin but boiled peanuts, roasted squirrel and friendly yokels in South Carolina! With one midterm duly smashed this morning and only one more on Thursday, school is now pretty much on autopilot for a few weeks. I've put in 5 really quality days of training since my little rest, aided by the unbelievable weather....a high of 9 today, apparenty 14 tomorrow. Incredible how it turns around so fast!!

But here's what you should check out...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/sports/othersports/08cycling.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&ref=sports

The New York Times did an amazing profile on Svein Tuft, certified Canadian bad-ass. Veloce read it and said to me after "wow, no wonder that guy's your hero, that's the hardest thing I've ever read!!" It's true, the guy is incredible, and by all accounts one of the nicest riders in the peleton. And having had the chance to ride with him at nationals, I can attest to the fact that the guy has absolute cannons for legs.

http://www.sportingnews.com/blog/the_sporting_blog/entry/view/17134/a-rod_took_roids;_svein_tuft_is_a_steroid

This is a pretty cool response....just read it. Its funny.

One last biking thing...

http://vimeo.com/2805838

Ryder Hesjedal is another one of my idols, him and Michael Barry are pretty much the models of how I want to live my life. Plus he rips on a bike.

And finally, Fry introduced me to this video, and I can't wait to see the whole movie. Really cool...

All for now, watch this space for updates leading up to and from SC.

Getting Ahead or Catching Up?

2009-02-04T19:29:00.000-05:00

During the last 3 weeks, my training has steadily increased in both volume and intensity, and with that came a steadily increasing sense of fatigue! Certain things got pushed to the side a bit to make a little more time to recover and get ready for the next session. Now that I have an easier couple of days before the next cycle begins, I'm trying to catch up, and if I'm lucky get ahead!! With one midterm down and two more to go before training camp my goal is to be pretty close to done studying for them before I really get back on it on Friday. As well as school I've been trying figure out everything that I can do to get ready for my trip, from buying bike parts and getting the ride all shined up to making sure all my paperwork is taken care of. I hope this will reduce a bit of stress in the next week....

Of course there is always time for a bit of fun too, with what seems like a fairly large number of birthdays within these 2 weeks there should be no shortage of cake hanging around! Dont worry Latts, only joking big guy. Back to studying, almost caught up, now time to get ahead!

Just a Thought

2009-01-28T13:38:00.001-05:00

So this post is probably going to be long, and probably completely incoherent as well, but that's OK. Its my blog. It's going to be about why I believe Canada isn't as good at biking as we could be, but not in a blame-it-on-the-government kind of way, in a more personal way. Let me first say that I'm not trying to make anyone angry or take the value away from anything anyone is doing. Also, don't take me writing this to mean I think I have it figured out, or even that I'm doing anything write. Indeed, I'm not a very good bike racer (yet), so this is mostly coming from reading a great deal. Let me say also that I do believe I have read more on this sort of stuff than most other people, I have an irrational interest in training, nutrition, and what it might take to get good. Not only because I chose to study it intensively for 4 years at school, but also because I think its really cool!!

Now Canadians have enjoyed much success in the past, Bauer, Stieda, Fraser, and more recently Barry, Hesjedal and Tuft have all done great things. So why dont we have more riders like this? Guys consistently placing in Protour level events? I really think it comes down to attitude, single-mindedness, and a different perspctive on training. To get that good takes an extreme, almost inconceivable amount of work. Why do you think Lance was so dominant? (we'll neglect certain other possible confounders for now) Because he worked harder than anyone else. Floyd Landis said in an interview, "The one who trains the hardest, the most, wins. Its that simple." And so they worked harder than anyone else.

Which brings up the next point. Countless studies have shown there is a "magic" number of hours someone has to doing something to acheive true mastery. This has been looked at not only in sports, but in other domains as well, even things like computer programming or assembly line tasks. That number is 10,000 hours, and is pretty much non-negotiable. Not to say that if you did 10,000 hours you automatically win the Tour or start the next Microsoft, many other factors are necessary as well. Its just that this number is a pre-requisite, you might still lose if you acheive it, but you can't win without it.

Put into practice this has pretty serious implications, namely the question of overtraining. If you want to win the Tour, you need a minimum of 10,000 hours of riding. Now do the math, thats 10 consecutive 1000 hour training years, which is a ton, but not unheard of. The great skier, Bjorn Daehle, commented that he put in 10, 1000 hour years racking up 150,000km on skis, before his breakout wins in Lillehammer. If we take the rumours of Armstrongs 1500 hour training years to be true and assume he did this for each year he won the Tour, thats 10500 hours in 7 years, and he had been riding professionally for 7 years before he won the Tour!! Incredibly the biggest volume year ever documented in the literature is 1600 hours, racked up by the Bulgarian weightlifting team. And they got pretty strong as a result! So how do we think anyone is going to get good doing 500 hours a year? That's 20 years, by which point you wouldn't be worried about winning the Tour, but worried about taking your Metamucil every morning!

My point is it takes a great deal of work to get to the top levels, and that currently the training climate doesn't favor this sort of attitude. Everyone it seems is worried to death about "overtraining" and its dire consequences. My views on this condition are formed after doing a great deal of research into what it actually means, indeed a big portion of my course work last semester dealt with it. There is very, very limited evidence of actual physiological breakdown resulting from overtraining, the biggest being the German triathlon team, who's coach insisted on repeated 40 hour weeks-which then lead to there heart's inability to crack 100bpm!! So unless your heart refuses to beat faster, your not really overtrained. More likely is phsychological burnout, which is again affected by a persons attitudes towards training. Two years ago as a junior, if I saw a 20 hour week on the training plan it was guaranteed I'd be exhausted by the end, regardless of how hard I actually rode. Now the situation has changed somewhat, I've been averaging 20 hours a week for a month, and I dont get to worried with a mid-20s week. I'm not trying to say anything about me personally, just about how your perception of work and what you take to be hard can change so much. "You'll learn that 3 hours isn't that long of a ride..." This was told to me by a training partner last year as I was getting ready for my first year in senior, and its so true!!

"If your overtrained, it means you didnt train enough to handle that load in the first place. So you were actually undertrained to begin with. Again it comes back to who trains the hardest" -Floyd Landis

So basically, to raise our standing in cycling and produce more Bauer's, Hesjedals, Barrys and Tufts, we need more athletes and the cycling community in general to change their focus. From avoiding the dreaded overtraining, to putting in the work to get really good! Of course, one still has to eat right, work on your skills and pick your parents well, but to have a shot you need to change your perception of training. Naturally, resting is equally important, and resting as hard as you train should be a priority, maybe this is the key, we're not overtrained, but under-rested...

In the words of National Triathlon coach Joel Filliol, you dont create Olympic champions by training safe!

I apologize for the length, and would like to say once again that me writing this is just putting what I've been thinking about down in words. It for sure doesn't mean I'm doing it right, but I am working hard to change my attitude towards what hard training means, and hope that with the right guidance I can get faster and prove to myself what hard work can do.

Cold

2009-01-23T17:45:00.001-05:00

This update comin at you from My Dog Joe coffee shop in Westdale, 2 minutes from my house in Hamilton. Why? Because we went over our internet quota again and Cogeco cut us off. Oops. Anyways this place is great, if your down here check it out for sure. The coffee is top notch.

Been riding a lot lately, I'm in the middle of a 3 week build phase, the biggest volume of any 3 weeks so far in my life! Its good though, I can feel myself getting stronger and more efficient, but it would be a lot more fun if it wasnt freezing cold every day. Kyle will probably give me crap for this but I think its been to cold to do anything useful. Let me tell you SC cant come quick enough!

All for now, peace.

Revival

2009-01-19T19:03:00.000-05:00

Well Christmas break is long over and gone with it is my excuse for slacking on this thing. Christmas was really nice, but by far the best part of Christmas break was getting the chance to go see 5 World Junior games, including the finals. The atmosphere was beyond anything I've ever experienced before and anything I probably will ever experience. It was quite inspiring as well, watching guys my age acheive their dreams and propel themselves to greatness was special to watch. That motivation held me through the break and now into January, but now the thing keeping me on the bike through the snow is definately thoughts of South Carolina. Two weeks of sun and warm(er) weather are only 23 days away!

And I'll leave you with my cycling predictions...Fry is finished.

CX Worlds: Boom wins, Albert 2nd, Nys 4th.

Milan-San Remo: Cavendish gets it by a bike length.

Tour of Flanders: Fabian takes it solo, Boonen takes the sprint for second with his mouth closed.

Paris Roubaix: Ballan puts on a clinic and wins with his rainbow bands covered in mud.

Amstel: Frank Schleck wins, but Andy is the star.

Fleche: Rebellin 1st, Andy Schleck 2nd, Robert gesink 3rd.

LBL: Armstrong dummies the field to take the shocker. Cunego 2nd.

Giro: Basso wins, Garzelli 2nd, Lance wins a TT and takes 5th.

Tour de France: Contador wins it in the mountains, Lance is pissed in 2nd switches teams in the offseason and wins in 2010. 3rd is Andy Schleck (he's good) and Sastre goes back into 4th where he belongs. Menchov 5th. Hesjedal takes a mountain stage, Tuft top 3 in a TT.

Vuelta: Who cares? But I'll go with Kloden. Why not.

TT Worlds: Svein by 2 seconds from Cancellara.

RR Worlds: Valverde saves his season, Italians 2nd and 3rd.

Tour of Lombardy: Cunego just beaten by Sammy Sanchez.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-25T22:28:00.000-05:00

2008-12-23T23:16:00.001-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_IVvwcAx8s

this one is good

2008-12-12T13:21:00.001-05:00

2008-12-10T10:01:00.001-05:00

2008-12-09T17:27:00.000-05:00

2008-12-08T17:43:00.000-05:00

good times

2008-12-03T11:43:00.000-05:00

Books own me at the moment. 3 exams in 36 hours starting tomorrow morning, and then 2 more before I go home next Wednesday. good times

Met some crazy people in McDonalds last night, they had a scavenger hunt sent to then from God and called Lehman and butterfly. God apparently also sent then a $10 Pioneer gift card which they gave to Riley because he had a black car. And Schwinner has some undiscovered talent apparently. wow

Well back into my spider hole (just like Saddam used to!!!)...if you don't see me for the next week, just assume I'm alive and asleep in the library.

And Steve has been officially declared the second girl in the Darryl family. A burger on wing night? come on big guy...

Rollin Along

2008-11-20T15:50:00.001-05:00

Not so much of great interest has been goin on lately. Midterms finally finished, 8 weeks of constant stress was a bit much for me! Just a couple fo assignments left to finish up and then straight into finals. Actually its just under two weeks until my first one, and I have all 5 in only 6 days, so its going to be pretty intense for a while! On the bike I've been doing steady hours and hitting the gym pretty hard. I've only been going twice a week but I think that only doing two makes each session a lot higher quality than they would be if I were doing 3. Every time I go in I can bang out a really good workout, and I always come out feeling pretty wiped.

Oh and we found a way better wings place than Kelseys...Crabby Joes is sick. Tuesday is 29 cent wing night, the other day I got 30 wings and a drink and it only cost me 12 bucks. They're pretty good wings too, not as good as Gar-Par at winld Wing, but not bad nonetheless. The OCA banquet is coming up this weekend, and Veloce and I will be repping the Darryl household, and we were hoping to hit some clubs in T.O too but thats looking pretty shaky at the moment...take'r easy

BC

2008-11-16T00:15:00.000-05:00

So, I'm racing track in BC right now racing Friday to Sunday, and then training camp from Monday to Wednesday. The racing has been okay so far, I won one race last night (after being awake for 21 hours), and today Daniele Defrancesci and Mark Macdonald showed up so the racing got quite a bit faster. Mark, Daniele, Cody Cambell and I are taking the top 4 positions in most races. Tomorrow will have a Madison, and that is going to be FAST.

I am staying with friends of the family who I have never met before, an old couple. The old man is a classic grumpy old man. When I showed up at the door, he didn't introduce himself, he just pointed to my bedroom downstairs and said "you know where to go". His wife is the classic grandma. She over fed me for breakfast, and packed me a HUGE lunch for the track with 2 turkey sandwiches, and is letting me borrow her car (oldsmobile) for the week!

Thats about it for now, I'm sure I will post out of extreme boredom later.

Get on that...

2008-11-12T21:41:00.001-05:00

Just a quick post from Second Cup where I am studying for my LAST midterm!!! Finally!! But after this week we only have two weeks until finals...wow.

Anyways, I think certain contributors to this blog have been severely slacking....it seems myself and latts have been holdin down the fort. Get on that.

Remember

2008-11-11T13:59:00.000-05:00

November 11, Rememberance Day. Please make sure you take a few moments and consider the incredible sacrifices our Canadian troops made for us in the past, and continue to make every day around the world. The courage and strength of these men and women is truly incredible, there is nothing most of us will ever experience to that will even come close to rivalling what our troops go through. For me I am keeping one person forefront in my mind today, my Papa, who served in World War II, and who was an immensely proud and honourable man. I think of him and the thousands just like him, and I think about how much each and every one of us owes these men. I wish I could show my gratitude to each one of them, but can only hope that they realize how much their country appreciates what they did. Never forget

Working A Ton

2008-11-09T00:08:00.001-05:00

So I recently got a job at sears. I'm a sales associate in the Hardware department. And so anyway, I worked 27 hours this week along with trying to go to school at the same time so I was a little busy and didn't ride wed, thurs, or Fri but managed to get on the bike on Sat for 30 minutes lol. Shit testing is coming up gotta get in shape

New posts with tons of riding coming soon : )

2008-11-08T19:59:00.000-05:00

On Fire

2008-11-04T21:43:00.000-05:00

So...this mornin I was down in the gym, gettin jacked. I had just finished blasting my delts and was about to begin sculpting my pecs when the power went out. You see I had just finished a killer set and was checkin myself out in the mirror when I notice these two girls on the elliptical machines who were also checkin me out. Naturally I shot the "how you doin" lady killer glare there way and then proceded to flex my rippling biceps again. Pretty sure this is what caused the power outage, McMaster just can't handle that much power in one place......its true I swear.

If you like to listen to good music check this out...www.clintonsparks.com

rode again tonight

2008-11-04T20:45:00.000-05:00

lol big 1.5 hour ride with a speed/spinning drill. Got the legs rolling and getting anxious to go to the track. I just need a bike!

In other news, here's a video just to keep you informed about my thoughts on the 2008 presidential election

YA HEARD!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3erEqfFxTlE

Mundys first post

2008-11-02T17:03:00.000-05:00

Well this is my first time writing on this blog. I have always thought blogs were a little retarted but since riggs has convinced me to write on this one by signing me to a 2 million dollar per contract i couldnt resist. I was just reading the last post by jamie about the "athletes lifestyle". I totally agree with this but as it turns out my birthday is in the beginning of november and this being the year i turn 19 i think my getting back into training will be delayed a little bit.

O ya my halloween was sick also

Into November...

2008-11-02T15:35:00.000-05:00

October has come and gone, for me it was filled up with a ton of midterms, some easy rides, a little gym work and some running and other cross training. Of course October is also the perfect time of year to let go of the "athlete's lifestyle" for a little bit. Basically, eat stuff you wouldn't normally, stay up and late and generally party more than usual. At the start of November its the time to start training a bit more seriusly, by the end of the month you're back into training full on. On that note, I rode about 3 and a half hours this morning with the MCCH (Maggi Cycling Centre Hamilton)crew, and plan on being more consistent with my riding a strength work in the coming weeks.

Oh and Halloween was sick...

Steveo's first blog- Devil's night

2008-10-30T22:09:00.000-04:00

Soo... it's devil's night, and I am sitting in my room catching up on math. I've written 5 midterms now, I've got a week and a half off, and then I've got 4 more midterms.

I just found out a few days ago that I will be racing and going to a camp in BC in 2.5 weeks, so my training has changed from weights, some running, and easy base miles to speed and riding until my legs can't spin anymore.

We carved a pumpkin tonight called Darryl the Drunken Pumpkin, I will upload a picture once I figure out how to.

Riding Bicycles Again

2008-10-29T21:11:00.000-04:00

Yo this is latts checkin in. Just embarked on my very first ride in about 6 weeks. It was solid to say the least, things were a little rusty at the beginning...I fell off the rollers a couple times and forgot how to clip into my pedals but other than that I was goin 60 + km/h for an hour with no resistance.

To sum it up, it was a solid ride ; )

Lattimore

Cribs....

2008-10-29T13:46:00.000-04:00

A little Chappelle I'm laughin at wasting time between classes....warning-its not quite Family Channel material. Just sayin.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

2008-10-28T21:29:00.001-04:00

Test...

The Return

2008-10-28T20:40:00.000-04:00

I've been faithfully checking the Giro di Keir since it came out, and today I noticed I got taken off the blogroll!!! Guess its not really a suprise since I haven't posted in close to a year....

But I'm back now, hopefully for good. School is back in session, hard to believe a couple more weeks and I'll be 3/8 of the way through my undergrad studies! The cycling season was good, and long, so I took a couple weeks right off the bike, something I have never done before. It was pretty weird but I feel awesome now, been riding for a while now and I know I'm in much better shape now than I was this time last year...

Also, I have been hooked up with a new team for this year, but I can't give everything away in the first post now can I

Examinations and Bike Meets

2008-04-14T21:56:00.001-04:00

Here's whats been goin on...train, eat(the cheapest stuff possible since I have no money), caffeinate heavily, study for what feels like days, and then race. I have had one exam so far and my first race last weekend. The exam was Anatomy & Physiology, which I dusted since I spent literally days studying for it. The race was the Westover-Strabane Classic, and it was my first race with the Senior 1/2 field. I feel it went well, not super, not bad, but good. I was unsure of my form coming in, and tried to make the early break, but missed it, and then with 10 guys of the same team controlling the break and the race it was done. I ended with the peleton, tired and mildly content.

Next up, more exams, much more caffeine, and more races. Also on the docket, moving out of rez, into our house, and then back home!! jea

Back

2008-02-26T13:49:00.001-05:00

Hey everyone, I've just returned from my first traing camp of the year in South Carolina, where I was able to put down many good miles with a really good group of people. I feel like I gained strength during the week, and so I was quite depressed to have to come back to reality last night. Back in the snow and back in school will be my life for the next little while, while I do my best to try and train as much as I can ahead of the first races. This camp gave me a good chance to look at what might be possible for me if I could focus solely on training and getting better. It is definately possible to train to a high level while in school, many really good cyclists have done it, but to go to the highest levels you really can't have anything else getting in the way. Oh well, nothing I can do this year about that except to do my absolute best, but perhaps in the coming years I will take some time to focus exclusively on my riding. Only 6 weeks of school left, and then a few weeks of exams before I can ride exclusively. Speaking of this, anyone have any ideas ofwhat I could do for $$ that will let me train like crazy??? Let me know any good ones...peace

All-American boys vs. Those Leg Shaving Euro Pansies

2008-02-14T14:18:00.000-05:00

February 13, 2008, a day of doping one might say. On this Valentine’s day it really makes me angry and sad to be writing something like this, and normally I don’t really care about doping that much. Usually it’s just something that comes up on a website, some guy doped, gets kicked out, court cases ensue and the whole thing eventually fades away. Until I am competing at a level where people are cheating (hopefully by the time I’m at this point there will be many less) it doesn’t really concern me when some hoser from Belgium or Italy or anywhere else was caught centrifuging his own blood. But this is different, this is about one sport doing something to improve themselves, and another displaying blatant idol worship and effectively doing nothing of any substance to improve their sport. I’m talking of course about cycling and baseball.

Admittedly I am biased in one direction, but I really believe that yesterday’s events make this contradiction crystal clear. Let’s just get it straight, I am not saying that one sport has more doping than another, I am not saying that one is better or harder than another, I am just saying what I saw. Yesterday of course was the Roger Clemens/Brian McNamee congressional hearing. It was also the day where the ASO (organizers of Le Tour and Paris-Nice, among other races) announced that Team Astana was not welcome at their races. I don’t plan on judging whether this was the right thing to do, indeed this would take a whole other essay, but just use it as one example of how things are changing in cycling. For those of you who don’t know, Astana is the team of Alberto Contador, winner of last year’s Tour and Paris-Nice, Levi Leipheimer, last year’s 3rd place Tour finisher, and Andreas Kloden, a former 2nd place Tour finisher. By not inviting Astana these three are now not able to defend their positions. The reason for their exclusion is that last year during the Tour Astana’s two biggest riders were busted for blood doping and the whole team was kicked out of the race. This year the team is completely revamped, just the sponsor remains, and yet they are still not invited, and extraordinary step on the part of the ASO.

Hear is the contradiction, the congressional hearing yesterday showed ridiculous levels of bias on the part of supposedly unbiased elected officials. Some of the congressmen were exceptionally good, such as Elijah Cummings, who openly admitted to being a Clemens fan but remained unbiased and asked him tough questions. Others were simply beyond belief such as Dan Burton, who laughed at McNamee, called him a drug dealer and openly accused him of lying, when McNamee has two statements taken under oath from other players confirming their drug use, and one saying Clemens had told him he used HGH. Another Lacy Clay, even took the time to ask which uniform the pitcher would wear into the Hall of Fame, during a congressional hearing where this pitcher was accused of doping!!! All this sets the stage for the reactions of baseball’s insiders. Joe Torre, manager of the LA Dodgers, said “It’s just sad. I’d just like to see baseball move on right now.” Lou Pinella, manager of the Chicago Cubs- I think you learn from the past but you just can’t keep revisiting the past,” he said. “I don’t know who’s done what. But I do know that the quicker that this problem gets cleaned up and rectified, the better for everybody. So we don’t have to talk about it anymore. And it’s unfortunate that we are talking about this. Here we are getting ready for the start of a new major league season and we’re talking about things that happened five or six, seven years ago.”(msnbc.com) Here we have two of the most respected managers in baseball, effectively asking for people to forget about this, let’s just play ball.

Now cycling, not only did ASO exclude the team of the Tour winner, but teams such as Slipstream, Highroad and CSC are spending money from their own (exceptionally modest compared to baseball) budgets to try and make sure that their teams are clean. The UCI is spending 6.5 million dollars on drug testing this year to try and catch the cheats. And it is becoming ever more common that when one rider gets busted, their entire team gets kicked out of the race (see Astana, Cofidis at the 2007 Tour). Now how much do you think the other riders care when one idiot costs them a potential paycheck. Riders caught cheating are publicly scorned by officials and media alike. So here it is, on one side the All-American sport, with congressmen asking about uniforms and no notable anti-doping efforts, and on the other is cycling, spending literally millions on anti-doping and criminal charges being pressed against dirty riders and doctors alike. But which one still receives the scorn of the media as being the dirty, dope filled sport? Cycling of course. I can only hope that baseball goes through the same thing that cycling is dealing with right now, because as they say, it has to get worse before it gets better. Both sports will survive, in the end I know that at least one of them will be cleaner.

2 days to go

2008-02-12T13:01:00.000-05:00

In two short days I will (finally) be off to SC. I have neither fixed my bike nor started packing yet, but neither of these things bother me as much as the doubts I have about my ability to ride a bike. It was the same way before camp last year and it's the same before every race, I have trained more, if differently, this winter compared to last year at this time but I still have serious self doubt. Basically I need Dr. Phil right now.

Between now and my impending ass whooping however, lay two midterms, and so I was quite happy to take today as my day off for the week to attempt to cram as much into my brain as is possible. Lastly, check this out...jea

Me n' my homies recorded this a few years back, I'm the short fat one with the chains.

Cold

2008-02-10T09:37:00.001-05:00

After checking The Weather Network last night to determine when to ride today, I decided that all day sounded good.

Enter, this morning. Wake up, turn alarm off, fall asleep again, wake up finally, look out window.....sweet sunny, wicked, check computer, -16, WTF?????, wait, add in windchill, -28, NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!. Put on pants and run downstairs to check if it's true. Step outside and nearly go into lift off from a gust of wind. Turn around swearing and slowly crawl back upstairs, passing a very concerned and slightly afraid couple dropping their daughter off.

And that brings us to now, writing this, about to go ride those godforsaken spin bikes because we have no trainers. If anyone out there is religious, pray for my sanity and for it to warm up in the next couple of hours so I don't shoot myself in the head on those silly bikes.

Global warming if you're listening, feel free to kick in anytime, no worries.

Let's try this again

2008-02-08T13:07:00.001-05:00

So I've decided that this will be my last blogging attempt, if I can't find the motivationb to write about myself anymore after a little while, this thing is comin down. If I can figure out how. As you can see I've put in a new format and tons of new links, check'em out, tons of good stuff.

What's new and interesting? Well, school is back in, learning tons of cool stuff and having a good time as well. I've been training well, aside from a slight cold which derailled me for a few days, I have been pretty consistent with riding and strength work and am starting to feel quite good on a bike again. We're now in the final week before training cmap in South Carolina, which I am unbeleivably excited about. The riding here isn't bad, but yesterday I had to stop and few times and break the ice off my bike with a rock before I could keep going. Not exactly idela training conditions!! In other news our team is still waiting on word about our bikes for next season, I have been hearing some pretty freakin nice brands being thrown around, so hopefully soon we'll know for sure.

Stay tuned for a special SC edition of That's What's Up, bringing you the most exclusive coverage of the 2008 team Ontario training camp!! Trust me you don't want to miss this.

yay

2007-12-16T18:11:00.000-05:00

Wow, thats all I can say. We got so much snow today (you all probably already know this, but gotta keep the international audience happy you know) that they closed the entire university!!! So riding outside was out, and now the room with the computrainers is off limits too, and with no trainer, nor the space to use it, in our room, training was looking slim. Hiking seemed like a good idea until I saw the amount of snow and realized all I had were my stunnin shoes, not so good for the hiking. So instead we went house shopping today, scoping out a few prime locations for next year, and getting Riley's car thoroughly stuck in the snow. A couple of these spots are pretty sweet, good location, and our own bedrooms!!! Sweet.

Anyways I decided on doing a bit of commando stuff for a workout, wall sits, jumping lunges and squats and some ab stuff. Not only did Steve get a good laugh out of this, but my legs now feel like two chunks of dung. Those wall sits are hard, so I think it was making the best of bad situation. I guess that's it for now, one more exam on hump day, Research Methodologies and Data Analysis in Kinesiology, yay.

A manyana

Jamie

Finished!!!!!!

2007-12-13T10:55:00.000-05:00

Well not quite, but close enough for me. Just toasted my anatomy exam, and decided on a little update before starting in epidemiology. So this last week was a good one, got a lot of stuff figured out for next year, inlcuding teams. I will be riding with Team Ultralink, and I'm pretty pumped for this squad. Some really experienced and good guys and a bucnh of espoirs should make for a good mix. Training has been going well, getting in consistent hours and strength work.

Anyways, two more exams, then home for Christmas!!! I can't wait. I mean, I love being here, but during exams it sucks pretty hard, everyone is in a terrible mood/hibernating in their rooms. Really not much fun at all. Plus, I here we have mad snow at home, and skiing/loads of pond hockey are looking really good right now!

Ciao

Cross Provincials

2007-11-25T19:43:00.000-05:00

Bonjourno, so today was 'cross provincials. And they did not go well. Not like this was a hure goal for the season or anything, but even still, it was bad. A pretty stupid chain problem and then a few crashes ended my hopes for the day, but no excuses. Both were things I could have and should have taken care off, adjusting the bike better, and adjusting my body to cross better, working a my skills. Until the chain issue I felt good riding up with another espoir,m by no means at the head of the field, but actually racing against someone. Then I lost a solid bunch of minutes fixing the chain (due to to my prior stupidity and laziness). After riding hard trying to get back up something went wrong with my head. I just said screw it, and gave up racing, deciding to use the rest of the race to work on my extremely poor technical skills. This led to a bunch more crashes, but also some pretty feakin slow riding. Looking at my geart rate profile it is ridiculous, I go from 185-195 in the first 2 laps, really going hard, down to the 160 and mid 170s for the rest, basically an easy tempo day. I feel I did work on my cornering, but it was really no use, I wasn't gaining anything, and from today I guess I can take away the time I spent with mom, some dirty ass clothes, and some good food after the race. Better than trying to push poo up a hill with a pointed stick I guess.

What now? Now I just want to train, a lot, like Lance amounts of training. The picture above is one of my favorites, Lance training in crappy weather in the mountains, for 6 or 7 hours, every damn day!!! And that is how you win a bike race. So thats what I need to do, guided of course by GOD, oh sorry, I meant DK, hahaha, I am funny. Not. Peace until next time

Down to business

2007-11-22T15:39:00.001-05:00

This is what I'm missing right now, rippin it with my bros!!
And this shit is just funny!! I mean, how can you not laugh.(below)

Its that time of year now I guess, exams are getting close, and its time to start training a bit more seriously. I have (in my mind at least) been training quite well for the last while, doing some decent gym and road work, and now I just need to bring it up a couple dozen notches. To try and get sufficient stoke to go train, I sometimes watch races on the interweb, or look at pictures of my races, or any other race for that matter. Doing this I realize that I really miss racing, miss being on the road with my teammates, chilling in crappy hotels and just riding.

This last weekend I went to the track in London for the first races of the winter. Now I had bought a track bike, but unfortunately it didn't come in on time, so I was stuck with a crappy rental bike. Rode a dismally slow pursuit, and suffered in a bunch of other races, with all the easy riding and conciously trying not to go too hard, it was tough to go full gas again. Plans are now in th eworks for the next weekend at the track, this time no racing, just a hardcore training camp with loads of pursuit and team pursuit training for the enduros, and a crap load of stuff for the sprinter guys(I dont actually have any idea what they do, mostly eat cake I think).

Otherwise it is also coming to the time where I have to make the final decision on who I want to ride with next year, I have given myself until Monday to decide, I really just want to forget about the whole teams thing.

Exams are aslo coming fast, starting in about a week and a half, but Ill write about those later when Im trying to put off studying:) This weekend my mom is coming down to visit, we're going to the OCA cycling celebration Saturday night, then to 'Cross provincials on Sunday.

I guess thats all for now, its snowing pretty bad outside right now, so tonight I have some strength work to do and then a bit of a spin inside I guess...I love riding inside!!!!

Jamie

Gettin Schooled

2007-10-28T22:24:00.000-04:00

School...normally I find school pretty easy, and up until now that has been true for me even here. Until now. Anatomy is not hard, just ssoooooooo much stuff, do you know the nerve that innervates the cochlea in your ear? I do. And th enerve that innervates almost every other conceivable body part, along with the process of athlerosclerosis, along with many other useful tidbits. Good stuff. So thats that with school, not actually hard, I actually have to read now though, so that isn't so good, but hey , what you gonna do?

I also got schooled in a different way on Saturday, my second cross race of the year. I wok euo in the morning with not nearly enough sleep and no desire to eat, along with no food, so I just managed to firce down some dry mini wheats and juice, and then took off onb the cross bike to the race. 1:30 later I got there, tired, cause it was really windy, and hungry , cause I had no food. NO FOOD!!!! I asked eveyone I knew but nithin, so I tried to suck it up and race, started, proceded to ride around in last for a while before I pulled the plug. There was this huge hill every lap, and iot took EVERYTHING i had for me to get up there, so after 35 minutes I was done. I was really angry at myself for being an idiot, this was only my 2nd DNF of the year, the first one being planned in order to save myself for another race, and I dont like DNFs. On the other hand I learned a lesson in biking, and also burned thru half the fat in my body. Oh but wait, I still had to ride home, so I got Scotty to drive me to Timmy's, ate some donuts and a pepsi, then he drove me a couple K and dropped me off at the gas station. By time it slike 4 o clock, pissing rain, freezing cold, so I booked it home at a good pace, ate a giant waffle and then passed out for 4 hours. yay Thats all for now, went out for some halloween/general funness activities this weekend, and also rode 3.5 hours with Maggi and Zach today, then learned about innervation!!!

See ya

Best Line Ever

2007-10-23T17:48:00.000-04:00

"You should try O.Ding on Viagra, you know, see what it feels like"- Abdar Tettrazzini

bahahahahaha

2007-10-21T21:16:00.001-04:00

A quick note to all my loyal readers today, seeing as I have a psych midterm tomorrow, I should probably be reading about neurons and synapses right now. So I forget when the last time I wrote was, so I'll just start on the weekend. Friday night a couple of people went to check out Harder, Better, Faster, Mcmaster down at Quarters, the campus bar. Apparently the 2 dj's are pretty well known, at least according to that Gino god Joe Veloce, and it turned out they weren't half bad. On a side note, being 18 and all, to get in to the place they write huge black Xs on both yer hands, and strap on two fugly wristbands, then hijack yer student card until you come back and prove taht yer not tanked. This seemed a little excessive to me, I mean, a little beer never hurt anyone, and I have always beliveved that 19 was a stupid age to become legal at anyways.

So the next mornin after not enough sleep we went for the Maggi base ride, 3.5 hours in the rain/cold/sun/wind/hot. Unfortunately our perfect ride got hijacked by some other group and turned into a bit of a gongshow, but most of the crew showed restraint and get to the base pace. Saturday evening was more mellow than Friday, chilled with some peepettes (yes, I just said that), and then decided Wendy's sounded good at 1 in the morning. Unfortunately only the drive thru is open that late, and having no car this presented somewhat of a problem. Not to worry, we convinced a very bored looking cabbie to take us thru, and he even drove us home. Awesomne, so I got my cholesterol fix, and reduced my energy expenditure for the day significantly. This would get me shot by my epidemiology prof, as I most likely just increased my risk of any number of horrible chronic diseases tenfold. Oh well.

Sunday I slept till noon (heaven), woke up , rode 2 hours, then still had energy and went for a hine in Cootes paradise. i may have poison ivy now but it was definately worth it. Too bad this hike did nothing to dull my urge to go on an adventure, so I have started to look for cool places I could go around here, do something cool like rock climbing or paragliding, that would be sick.

I think this has gone long enough now, so I'll leave you with an only slightly vulgar joke, courtesy my epi prof: "How do you make a hormone????....Refuse to pay her!!!"

Bahahaha, good one eh? And next time yer on yer on youtube, search flatland BMX, fo'shizzle, its the dizzle...

Out

Midterms 'n Beards

2007-10-15T21:38:00.000-04:00

So I just got back from the most painful, mind numbing 3 hours of my life. What was this horrible ordeal you ask? IntroPsych BIG review for our midterm next Monday. Stupidest thing ever. We already learned this crap, now they tell it to us again in a slightly different way just to confuse us. Perrrrrffffeeecccccctttttt. Otherwise, I have 1 midterm this week, Research Methods or somethinbg like that, whatever cant be that hard.

This past weekend I did some solid group rides with some of the guys in Hamilton, they were perfect for me. Easy base-building pace, which on my own I can't seem to be able to do. I either go ridiculously slow (usually only for 15-20minutes, then I get bored and go hard), or stupidly hard. So these rides should help me a lot then.

So other than that I have been feeling very adventurous lately, meaning I have this great urge to go on some adventure to somewhere cool, but seeign as how I am stuck here in Ontario with no mountains or other such cool things, I have decided to grow a beard to release my adventurous spirit. Plus I think it will make me look more badass, kind of a mountain man thing goin on. I'll keep you updated on the progress.

And now in our ongoing interview series, world famous sprinter Abdar "Tetrazzini" Veloce-

JR: What are your thoughts on cross breeding animals?

Veloce: I personally think that any animal should be free to mate with any animal they choose, although the coolest would be the Giarky, a giraffe and a monkey...

JR: Are you on crack?

V: Nope.....yes!!!!!!

JR: How does it feel to have the coolest name in the peleton? (Note: He has never ridden in a peleton)

V: Peleton? I need some crack!!!!!

JR: Once were done Veloce...once were done.

V: I run New York!!!!

JR: What would it take for you to bite the head off a bunny?

V: You mean like money? I'd say $20 would do it.

JR: Alright thanks brorape... go take a shower or something you smell like garlic...

This weeks Youtube picks- Gino the Ginny, C-Walk

What am I listening to? I Get Money, Jamie-Lee, Stand-Up for the Champions, Ben Harper.

Belie dat

Riggsy

Quickie

2007-10-03T22:30:00.000-04:00

Not too much to say aujourd'hui...

...been takin'er real easy on the, only riding when I really feel like it, training will commence next week...so check back soon.

...going home tomorrow night for 4 days, pretty psyched, should be an awesome, and busy, visit.

...KP and I are racin the madison 'crosss race this Sunday, so gotta pull the cross rig out of the dungeon and swap basically all the parts. No worries, I got 2 days. Also gotta find some pimp booties and as much euro steeze as possible, although challenging the belgian prodigy is going to be tough.

...and school? Not much doin. Read, class, read, repeat, until thursday, then the schedule changes significantly:) On a side note anatmoy is ballin, today we watched a video of the birth process and examined an actual human fetus. Last week it was an arm and lungs (have I already posted this??? who cares, its the best class ever)

And now for an interview with wunderkid Steve Meyer...

JR: Hows life?

SM: Straight pimpin G, the eng is ballin and ive been wheelin mad girls lately.

JR: Whats up wityh ur stupid Salvador Dali, and Van Gogh posters?

SM: This room needed class (ed. Not to worry,the posters will be torn down and burned shortly)

MIKE JONES!!!

who?

MIKE JONES

Rigger

Best Race of the Season

2007-09-29T17:33:00.001-04:00

So today, we actually got to leave campus and do something none school related, and although it was a bit of a drive, it was totally worth it. Today was the Tour de University Heights, a race for completely mew cyclists held in downtown Toronto at Jane and Finch. I couldn't believe the tourn out, over 100 kids showed up, all decked out with new bikes, helmets and bells, and rode the 2km time trial and 6 km road race. Team Ontario memebers were asked to come down to help out with various things and I'm so glad I did. Th ekids ranged in age from 9-18, and ran the full spectrum of fitness. The first guy I rode with in the TT was completely nuts, he lasted out the start of, and then did a full tripod turn through the first corner, dragging his inside foot on the ground to stay upl. I asked him after whether he had been riding lots, and he went in to tell me how he hadn't been riding much, but planned to start. A little later on there was the celebrity race, with fire fighters, politicians, and EMS, along with us of course. The mayor showed up and started the race, the first lap being a parade lap. The next 2 laps were the race, and the O Team train got'er goin on the frint to put the politicians in the hurt locker, actually we just rode off and sprinted at the end, but whatever it was still fun.

All in all a really good experience, and I hope that this type of race will happen again in the future.

One last thing, check this out:http://www.pedalmag.com/index.php?module=Section&action=viewdetail&item_id=11739

Braaaaappppppppp!!!!!

Take this Keir

2007-09-19T22:41:00.001-04:00

So I've been taking som eheat from Keir for apparently being a lazy blogger. Despite the fact that I haven't posted for two months and the last three posts were all pictures I still believe that I am committed to my loyal fans. Its just I've been too busy to post anything...ya we'll go with that. So whats happened? A lot. 'Nuff said, raced a bunch, didn't win anything, and then moved to uni in Hamilton. I haven't been riding too much, just here and there, hopefully soon I'll have a new CX bike to rip around some parks'n stuff on, but until then just going out exploring new roads. McMaster is sick, cool people, and the classes are actually interesting (except calculus, which is in fact the reason I am writing right now, avoiding calc homework) and pretty decent riding. Frosh week may or may not have gotten slightly out of hand, but trust me when I say that as of now I am fully committed to academic excellence:) After I finish this post and facebook for a while of course.

So whats the plan for the next little while? Well tommorow we're gonna go hit up Quarters before heading to London on Friday. Should be a good time, with the possibility of a get together at Western, and then some racing on the track Saturday evening before another small get together at Stevie's. I believe we will be playing chess or some other such intellectual game. I will try and update this a bit more now (note-try) and I'll find some pics of our dorm for your viewing pleasure. On that note, we have a sweet setup, espresso machine right in the room, and a life size cut out of Ivan Basso on the door. Perfect. Alrighty, I actually have to do some math now, so stop distracting me and let m work. Peace

2007-07-24T17:27:00.000-04:00

On the line for the start of the Team Pursuit finals
On the podium after the Team Pursuit
Full gas in the individual pursuit
On the line for the Team Sprint finals

2007-07-24T17:19:00.000-04:00

On Lattimore's wheel in the Team Pursuit
Our room at Abitibi aka. Camp Fantastico
In the peleton at Road Nationals
On the front in the nationals Points Race
Bridging up to the break after my crash in Nationals crit

Few Words, Just Pics

2007-07-24T17:10:00.001-04:00

Given'er gas in the Tour de L'Abitibi
Warming up for Nationals Criterium
Junior Men Team Ontario 2007
Start of the Team Time Trial at Tour de L'Abitibi
On the podium for the Team Sprint at Track Nationals

Nationals and Looking Forward

2007-07-09T19:42:00.000-04:00

So Nationals have been and left, and I wish they would come back again sooner than next year!! My first race was the time trial, 20 km on a tough course. Up and into the wind on the way out then downhill with a tailwind on the way in. The first 1km was super technical, with 3 90 degree turns downhill, it was sketchu to say the least. Anyways, I went as hard as I could, but I definately was not on a good day, and some pacing errors cost me serious time. I finished in 36th/70 for Junior men, with an average speed just under 40km/hr. The very next day was the crit, and I was instructed by the Team Ontario coaches to pull out after 5 laps, my big chance was the road race after all. This plan sorta went out the window on the first lap, I got a lousy calll up, but some useful friendships with the guys in the first row let me get right up into the first line for the crucial start. My only objective here was to go as hard as possible off the start and cause as much pain and suffering for the other teams as I could. Hopefully by doing this I would be able to help out my team and give the guys with some ambitions for this race a hand. So to the front I went, and gunned it from the gun. MAybe a bit too hard as it turned out. Down the back straight I went so hard I forgot to slow down a little for the thrid corner and went head first into the (luckily water filled) ditch. There was actually aboout a foot of water in the ditch and although I wasn't hurt at all I was soaked. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on the point of view) the National team coach was standing right there and helped me out and got my bike ready. He told me to go take my free lap and get back in the next time around, which I did. Once they let me out of the pits and back into the race I bridged up to the 2 man break containing the race favorite and one of my teammates. I actually thought this one would work, but no dice, and we were pulled back in 3 more laps. So in the end I stayed in for 11 laps and then pulled the plug.

After one rest day it was the road race, 120 km, 6laps of 20k on a rolling up and down circuit. Today was the day to rip the E-brake, as m'boy Latts would say. The plan was ofr myself and Evan, the team "leaders" to sit in and go with the second break that bridged up to the leaders. Alrighty. So I sat in, and with my teammate Devon attacking again and again, the race got pretty hard (not to mention Latty destroying the field!!) No breaks stuck until one just sort of flotaed off the front on the last downhill into the finsih. With this gone the race for top 3 was over, 4th was my only hope. So at 1k form the line I gave'er up the right hand side, and got a gap of about 50 metres really quickly. Unfortunately, I couldn't hold a raging pack off all by myself and got swallowed up with 300m to go, losing serious spots in the sprint to finish a dissapointing 26th.

Team Ontario had some awesome results, including 1 new National Champion, numerous top placings and tons of examples of guys and girls riding completely out their skin. All in all it was seriously impressive. For myself, I am dissapinted with myself, my goal of going to Road World championships is over, but on the same note the race will be there next year, and this gives me serious motivation to absolutely destroy myself training for next year, after a little break of course:)

So next up is track nationals, I leave in 2 days, only 1 full day at home, but whatever. If I can somehow lose my mind and ride a 3:35 pursuit I could still go to Worlds, so I have not lost all hope. Just most of it. After that is Tour of Abitibi, I rode well enough at Nationals to get picked for Ontario to go there, so another chance to show myself. This is a world cup race, and stage wins or high GC places are definatley a good way to get noticed for a bigger team next year. Gotta go eat now, peace.

I'm Back

2007-06-21T15:56:00.000-04:00

So, I'm back. Sorry about the serious lack of postage happening, but I've been kinda busy lately. Below is the report that I sent in to my team about the euro trip. It was an absolutely incredible experience, very hard work, but a trip that I would love to repeat in the future (maybe with some results next time!!). Since I have been home, I have been to the Ontario road and track team training cmaps down south fo rsome good training, and then this week has been all recovery and trying to study for my last exams. Well I'm done today so back to the training, only 16 days till the nationals road race, and it feels like there is so much to do. argh. Peace for now.

Eurotrip

June has been the most incredible month in recent memory for me. After receiving my invitation to race on the Junior National Team development project in France and Germany, and endless travel arrangements, I finally arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, amazingly with all of my bags and bikes!!! Here myself and my travel partner (Garrett Mcleod from Nova Scotia) were met by our directeur sportif for the project, Jacky Hardy, and the two Quebec riders(Guillaume Boivin and Guillaume Blais-Dufour) who had already arrived. Jacky drove us the hour and a half from Paris to Conches, the CCA’s base of operations in France. The house we stayed at was owned by an extremely helpful french couple who have been putting up visiting canadian cyclists for some years. Their son was a former pro, and finished 16th at Paris- Roubaix, so they know what a cyclist needs!!
Our first race was two days after arrival, the Grand Prix de la Ville de Lillebonne, a D-1-2-3 race of 135km a few hours from where we were staying. D-1-2-3 means everyone from just retired pros, to the best U23s to juniors like us race together, only one race here, no crazy category splits!! The main challenge in this race was the 3.5km climb that we faced 12 times, it was tough. After riding in the pack for the first lap, I started to get a bit bored on the second lap, and went to the front to dive the field over the climb. What a mistake!! When the attacks came near the top, I was finsished, and although I hung in for 2 more laps, I was eventually pulled with 40km to go. Only one Canadian finished, so we all had some serious motivation fo r the next days race.
Race #2 was a 5 minute ride from our house, and this time only a D-2-3 race, no pros here. It was 104km, and really hot. A pretty uneventful race in all, I finshed in the peleton, and learned valuable lessons about how to save energy. Next up we had two recovery days before heading to Gersheim, Germany to begin our major objective, the Trofeo Karlsberg. This is a 4 day, 5 stage UCI Junior World Cup race, an excellent introduction to world class junior racing. With the national teams of 17 countries racing, it was sure to be tough. We checked into our hotel the night before the first stage, and rode the TT course as well, boy was it fast! The hotel on the other hand was interesting, we were three to a room, and although we all had single beds, all the beds touched each other. Sweet.
Stage one started at the Saarbrucken Airport, and after the team presentation (very cool, inside the airport with tons of people in attendance) and trying out our german skills on the podium/bike holder girls, we got under way for 5 extremely sketchy neutral laps, and then the 97 km race. The biggest challenge in this stage was the cobbled wall that came at us only 20k in. It was 1.5 km long, with multiple sections of 23%, on cobbles, narrow roads, with tons of people. It was insane to say the least. Guys were going everywhere trying to stay ahead. Personally, I ended up going through some tables of a sidewalk café to try and gain an advantage. I stayed in contact with the first group for the first climb, but the second time up I was gapped with about half of the field. We rode together to the finishing ciruits, where we had 5, 6km laps to do, with a 2km climb each lap. At this point most were in survival mode, so we rode steady to the finsh, eventually losing 7 minutes to the stage winner, although in hindsight it wasn’t that bad, quite a few lost over 20 minutes!

Stage 2 was 110km, and much flatter than Stage 1, although there were still some nice inclines. This was the easiest stgae of the tour, and so the biggest challenge was avoiding crashing, the Kazaks, Swedes and Norweigens seemed particularly prone to it. (We saw one Norweigen crash into a parked car while riding the TT course, hilarious!!!) I got caught in the split on the last climb, and lost a minute to the winner, but our flying Quebecois rider Guillaume Boivin picked up an excellent 3rd place. Not bad.
Stage 3a, the individual TT was only 8.6 km long, but really hard. The course wound thorugh a few small towns, and multiple hills and a killer headwind made this a tough test. No recovery day here!! I thought I rode quite well, averaged about 44km/h, and finished in the top 40. The winner was unbveleivable, 50km/h average, wow, those Germans do know how to TT. By this point in the race, everyone was pretty tried, and tired of eating the same thing every day. The race provided meals for us, basically, muesli for breakfast, meat and something for lunch, then pasta, with the same sauce and vanilla custard for dinner. Mmm, mmm good.
Stage 3b was the shortest stage of the race, and for me probably the hardest. We started with a neutral start out of an industrial sector, dodging traffic circles and bumps, and even a huge crash during the neutral start(crazy Kazaks). We arrived onto the race circuit for 3 laps of a very tough course. 3 very steep, and shortish climbs made this race the most painful yet. I ended up finishing just behind the peleton, as I had been gapped on the final climb, but still finshed half way through the field. After this one we got back to the hotel as soon as possible for some massgaes, and then onto strategy for the next days “Queen” stage.
Stage 4 was 135 km, 7 laps with a brutal climb every lap. At about 4km long, and averaging maybe 6% it was sure to sort out the field. This stage saw tons of DNFs, and I was really pleased when I finished with the first group, only a few seconds behind the winner. And with the end of that stage, my european racing experience was finshed for a little while (although hopefully not for too long!) I ended up 69th/120 on GC,a nd learned and improved more than I had the rest of the season leading up to the trip. It was an amazing experience, not at all easy, but one that I’m sure will help me a great deal in advance of the National Championships and my other season goals. I gained not only improved fitness, but also improved skills and the knowledge of what it is going ot take to get to the world class level.
Lastly I would like to give a huge thanks to the club for supporting me, both financially and otherwise, in all this. Without the OBC, and the help of Don Moxley and Michael Dekelver I would not be at the level I am today. Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you on the road!!

Almost Time

2007-06-07T04:41:00.000-04:00

Hello from Germany, the land of the mullet apparently. We arrived yesterday around 3pm, after a fairly uneventful drive from Conches. We went out riding for 45 minutes or something, and discovered that German drivers hate cyclists more than Canadian ones. Nearly every car that passed honked at us, and not a nice little beep, beep but a F%^& YOU!!! beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. Ya it was not that fun. The hotel we are staying at is pretty tiny, it is 3 guys per room, and althoigh we all have single beds, they are all touching each other!!! Our mecano and soigneur met us at the hotel, and it is great to have that kind of support. We come down, our bikes are completely ready, clean and functioning perfectly. Our bottles are filled and in the bottle cages, all we have to do is get on and go. When we come back we get an awesome 40 minute massage, you smell like a pine forest by the end, but it is great for the legs. The food here has been great so far, lots of it and cooked well.

This morning we went to preview the TT course, and man is it ever fast!!! Early predictions are that the winner wil average more than 50km/hr, no joke. We have also started seeing all the other teams that are staying here. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, the Kazaks, and the German road and track teams are here. Most of them are set up similar to ours, 6 riders picked for this race, and 2 or 3 staff. Most, except the Germans. They have seperate roaqd and track programs and there riders stay and train together all year round. They arrived with 6 vehicles, and about 20 support staff!!! It is amazing, I saw 5 DS, 5 mecanos, and then 10 soigneurs. The stage today is 91km, and starts at 4pm, so we have a bit of time to relax now. I'll let you know how it goes!!!!

Resting

2007-06-05T16:43:00.000-04:00

Thats pretty much summed up the last two days. Rest. Its harder than it sounds. We get up, eat, ride for an hour or two, then chill for the rest of the day. Today we went fishing and played with the horse that lives here, it is a retired racing horse, so it got pretty aggressive at some points!!! Our other adventure today was into Conches, we went into a few shops and visited the Supermarket to get some food we have been missing! Speaking of food, it has been interesting lately. Yesterday we ate massive plates of steamed spinach, then more blue-rare steak. Today, this excellent spinach/carrot/potato soup, and then some chicken, with a cherry flan made with the cherries we picked yesterday.

The team is all raring to get going, we drive to Germany tomorrow morning, and will ride some of the course tomorrow afternoon. The truck is packed with 10 bikes, 25 sets of wheels, and then a full bike shops worth of repair stuff, along with a few hundred bottles. The team car has 3 more spare bikes and a few sets of wheels on top, and then all our crap in the back. Its going to be a tight ride!! Check back soon for the first update from the land-o-schnitzel.

Learning

2007-06-04T13:53:00.000-04:00

Its not hard to learn here, where everyone has been in the cycling world for many years. We listen to Jacky's stories of how to train, what equipment to use, how to race. Jacky was a pro, rode thye tour, and then worked 12 more. Franck Pencole, the son of our hosts, was a pro until 3 or 4 years ago, and a good one at that. He raced for Credit Agricole, and then for Francaise des Jeux after that. He did many Paris-Roubaix, and all the other classics, finishing 16th one year the queen of the classics. Another year he was 5th in the GP Waregem, a belgian semi-classic that often foretells success in de Ronde, the hardest of classics. After an extremely easy ride this morning and lounging today, we just discovered the huge collection of race videos under the TV. There are about 50 tapes, we are watching the 2000 Paris-Roubaix right now, and after we are going to watch some of the tapes of Francks victories. Ginette also showed us all of the old "Franck fan club" stuff. There were about 50 members, and they would take a bus around europe to watch him race. Jacky was of course Franck's coach, and it is impressive to watch how much he is a part of the family. Here, the coach is much more a part of everyday life, more like a mentor or father figure. That is what Jacky is like with us. He doesn't really tell us what to do, more like suggestions and the way things should be done.

The highlight of today was definately going over to the Pencole's friends just before dinner to pick cherries. They have 2 huge cherry trees, an apple tree, and an incredible garden. They have lettuce, potatoes, onions, and even artichokes. Did you know that artichokes grow of bush type things? I didn't. The best part was after we were finished picking, they brought out the beer, Perrier, and this type of alchohol that is a specialty of this region in France, made of apples. Thats right, we are in a National team project, and we were drinking. I had a Perrier, and half a beer, along with a small glass of the apple stuff. Everyone else was about the same, they wanted us to have more, but that is probably not such a good idea 2 days before a our first World Cup race.

So our first recovery day over, one more tommorrow, then Germany!!

Peace out

GP de la ville de Lillebonne and GP de la ville de Conches

2007-06-03T14:37:00.000-04:00

My first two euro races are now over, and it was quite an experience, to put it lightly. The first was the GP de la ville de Lillebonne, a 120km circuit race, with one climb of 3km each of the 12 laps. This race was a D123 race, meaing that everyone from ex and future pros, to tank amaturs ride together with the juniors. In fact the guy won was a pro for 10 years, and 2nd place was French national pursuit champion a couple of times.

Before the start, the announcer called us to the line first, and introduced us as Team Canada, followed by an interview with Jacky, he is form Lillebonne and so everyone knew him and was asking how the new canadiens were. The race got underway, neutralised until the top of the first climb. It opened up after this and the first descent was at about 75km/h, all the way into town before we turned and hit the climb again. It was here that I was stupid, I went to the front and drove up the climb, but then near the top all these attacks started to go, and I couldn't go with them. It was so different from North American racing, where everyone goes hard at the bottom, here it is easy at the bottom, and unbeleivably hard coming over the top. So anyways, I stayed in for 2 more laps until my legs exploded, I got dropped and rode with a small group until 4 to go, when Jacky pulled me out, enough for one day he said. Only one of 5 canadians finished, with Guillaume pulling out the great finish, almost taking the sprint for the second group. I was quite disappointed with myself, and determined to do better in the next race.

Sunday was the GP de la ville de Conches, a D23 (no pros this time) race that started only 2 km form our house. This one was 104km, with 2 climbs per lap, and really narrow roads. Only 3 or 4 bikes could fit side by side on most of the course. The race started hard, and only settled down after 2 laps once the break had gone away. Guillaume was in this one, and so I rolled along trying to save energy. One lap later I tried to bridge up to them with one other rider, but we could only get within 10 seconds and then I just exploded. Back to the peleton for me. I tried a few more bridging attempts, but nothing worked, so I rode in the peleton for the remainder, and finished in about 35-40th place. Much better this time. Guillaume ended up 5th, and 3 of 5 canadians finished.

Now we have 2 rest days, and then the drive to Germany to start the Trofeo Karlsberg, our big objective for this project. And now for photos...yay!!!

Our bikes and the side of the team car before Lillebonne.
The finish of Lillebonne, right after this it goes UP, way up!!
A castle, and lense smudge, oops.
Le Titan, the bar where we signed in for Lillebonne, I think all the fans go there for a smoke and a beer before the race, we could barely see through the smoke.

Sorry about the lack of pictures from Conches, we rode to the race(it was only 2k away don;t forget) so no camera for me.

2007-06-01T13:29:00.000-04:00

It was pretty sweet today when Jacky handed out our kits. I mean, I had them at my house for a week, but to actually get them was cool. They are pretty cool all around, and it is even better to have them in my suitcase!!!!

So another update on what's goin on. As you may be able to tell, there is really not much to do here other than ride, eat and sleep. When there are no races to do you pretty much just have to sit around and recover, we have even started using the elevator instead of walking, even though it goes painfully slow. We just finished eating, for dinner tonight, beet salad, blue steak and ride with some sauce. Then yoghurt for desert. Not bad. This afternoon, after seemingly endless hours of MTV and its terrible frnch music videos, the Giro finally came on TV. It was really cool to watch cycling on actual TV rather than a computer screen or checking for updates on the web. Apparently tomorrow there is coverage all day of the TT.

Speaking of those music videos, apparently there are only about 6 popular songs in France, and they get played over and over again. The funniest was "J'aime trop ton boule" by Fatal Bazooka. Apparently he is a belgian comedian, and this video was pretty much a bunco of scantily clad men dancing with each other. Weird, but hilarious.

The highlight of the afternoon was definately when Ginettes son came by in his Maserati. We checke dthe speedo and the thing goes up to 340!!!!! He said that the highest he had ever been was 300, and watching that car fly up the hill out of here, I beleive him. He said that he would take us for a ride, but only if we won the race tomorrow. The guy is pretty cool, he was wearing a shirt that says Nico Mattan (a semi-famous pro racer) on the back, so that makes him alright by me. Tonight team meeting before tomorrows race, gonna be a big one!!

Salut!!

2007-06-01T07:23:00.000-04:00

Our (Garrett and Me) room, awesome, we even have our own bathroom.
The view out our window.
Getting rady to ride outside the house.
Riding down some sweet country lanes, this is actually a two lane road, don't ask me how you pass.
The unbeleivable house we are staying in.

So here I am, France finally!! After a very uneventful flight through Toronto and then to Paris, I was picked up at De Gaulle airport by Monsieur Jacky. Jacky is our DS for this trip and drove the four of us who had arrived that day the 1 and a bit from Paris to Conches-en-Ouches. We drove this massive eurovan, and saw the top of the Eiffel tower through a space between some buildings as we drove along the highway. The house we are staying at is incredible, I can see why the national team always chooses this place to stay. Ginette and her husband are the owners, and Ginette cook sus awesome meals for breakfast lunch and dinner. The cultural differences are definately visible in the food though. Every meal is accompanied by this delicious baguette (I looked in the kitchen, there were like 6 loaves on the counter), and water, only water, to drink. We are eating a real cyclists diet, no sugars and very low fat. For instance for lunch we just ate grated carrots (a massive bowl), scrambled eggs and plain noodles. A bit different then home but it is all good!!!

We haven;t been riding too much, an hour yesterday and two today, jsut steady rides around the country side. The roads are soooooooooooo sweet, really narrow and twisty, and you come to some new little town ever kilometre. Of course this means lots of town sign sprints, and some sketchy riding as cars come through town, you basicalyy just have to sqeeze between them and the parked cars on the side. Today while out riding we got pretty lost and stopped this older couple who were riding along ot ask directions. The couple was dressed in full out pro kit, with matching helmets and bikes, and ome of there first questions was "Vous etes les canadiens?" They knew who we were!! Crazy. They also said that they were marshals for the race we are doing Sunday in Conches. Aparently the fields are not so big, just around 80. 80!!! Holy crap.

We are just resting this afternoon, we race tomorrow so we need to conserve energy. So far it is myself, Garrett, Neal and the Guillaumes who are here, Neal just arrived late last night and was still asleep when we came in at noon from our ride. So despite having never met the guy Guillaume decided we should wake him up with shaving cream, which we promptly did, using up the precious cream. We only have one small bottle to last all of us 12 days. Yikes, should be some good looking guys coming home.

This morning Ginette's son came by, from what I understand he was a pro for 8 years, Jacky was his coach, and so he came over to ask Jacky about this condo he is buying. He then peeled out in his new Maserati!!! Nice. Apparently the mechanic and soigneur are supposed to come here sometime, we are leaving Wednesday to go to Germany, so hopefully they come by then!!

Finally some photos...Never mind they're at the top, I don't know how to make them go to the bottom.

Package

2007-05-29T21:09:00.000-04:00

So t-minus less than 24 hours, craziness. My day today was taken up with a final solid interval ride, tons-o-bike cleaning and then packing, all after a wee bit of school. As you can see, it looks like a lot of stuff, and I was freaking out a bit thinking about how to get it into a suitcase. But in the end it was actually pretty easy, not as much stuff as I had thought, and then the packing up the bike was way simpler than I imagined. The case I was able to borrow is super sweet, huge thanks to Allison, my team manager Michael's finance, who loaned it to me for the trip. Another huge thanks to Sandy, for hooking me up with these awesome Rudy project glasses, they are awesome!! The euros won't even know what hit'em.

The nerves are definately starting to appear now too, I am ready to race, but know that it is definately not going to be easy. I know too that a successful project will be a huge hepl to me in securing some sort of a contract for next year, not to mention being an important step towards my goal of qualifying for Junior Worlds. Lots to ride for!!!

With all this said, I think of my new motto, What would Jens do? I just discovered this picture the other day, and love everything about what it says. Jens is my personal favorite rider, he is super aggressive, never thinks about what could happen if he fails, and rides on pure courage. Basically he is awesome!!! My next update will be from the land of the baguette, just one 8 hour plane ride away, so until next time, peace out.

Nice

2007-05-27T20:40:00.000-04:00

This post is the first from a brand new HP laptop that is now in my possesion, thanks to the generosity of my parents. My graduation present is unbeleivably sweet, super fast, and looks damn cool. A huge thank you to my mom and dad, trust me this machine will serve me well for years to come.

On the biking side, we are now less than 3 days away from leaving for France, I have my tickets, bike box, tuned up and pimped out bike and the other day I went down to the CCA office to pick up the National team kits. Cool. I have about 15 full Team Canada kits sitting in my living room right now waiting to be packed. I refuse to take them out of the package to look at them, that would be awful luck, and would probably mean my swift demise upon arriving in Euroland:) Theres some good eurologic for ya. Another one I love is the strict prohibition on melted cheese, it apparently contains twice as much calories as melted cheese. Figure that one out.

Yesterday I did some hard intervals with Don in the park, and then a moderate endurance ride after. Today was a 3 hour steady session, in the pouring rain. Oh well, gotta get tough!!!!!

Thats all for now, the packing should start soon, only 2 more sleeps!!!

You won't beleive it

2007-05-24T21:54:00.001-04:00

Holy crap!! So after the TT tonight (which was alright 21:19, felt pretty good) myself and KP are driving home, chatting away. We reach the opening of the garage door and start to pull in when CRASH, holy s*&%!!! Keirs bike was on the roof and I drove into the garage!!! You can't even beleive how bad I feel right now, luckily though it seems that it was just cosmetic scratches (although big ones) to the brake levers. Thank god. All this after we spent most of the drive laughing at/lamenting the guy who ran over his Lightweight in the parking lot tonight. Ouch. Poor guy. Anyways, I'm going to get his bike checked out, just to be safe, and suck up for ages so he doesn't murder me in the middle of some 6 hour death ride in backwoods hicksville.

My no good, very bad day

2007-05-24T15:22:00.000-04:00

First some pictures form the Niagara trip...

Adjusting the helmet, gotta look good for all those fans:)
Not looking quite so good after the race...
The night before the race, we stayed at our cousin's place, this is Jenn and Jeff's wee man Sage, he is pretty much the coolest baby I have ever met, although he was a bit grumpy when we saw him. Thats cool though, babies are allowed to be grumpy.
Ya gotta tilt your head on this one, but if you look you can see the crazy hotel lobby where we stayed. The "Great Wolf Lodge" with the spirit of the backwoods (apparently the backwoods is populated entirely by plastic animals and talking mooses). it was still fun though, giant waterlslides are never a bad thing.
Right after the finish of Effingham, almost ran into this crazy official standing in the middle of the road, and ya it hurt.

Now onto this week...

Tuesday was not good, not good at all. Keir and myself rode down to the A loop training ride in the park, rod ethe loop, and then rode home. It did not go well. We hammered decently hard on the way down, and then the group was going pretty hard right off the start. My legs seemed to have gone on vacation for that particular hour, and I was soon popped off the back of the group. I was suffering a lot, but the power was just not there. I returned back to the parking lot extremely worried, how could I be going so good two days ago, and then absolute crap in a ride that I had done well in the week before? Do I really suck this bad? Luckily Don was there to calm me down, he said don't worry, it was just the weekend catching up to me.

With his words in mind I did an easy day yesterday, drank lots and ate tons of carbs. I feel much better now, but tonights TT should show me exactly how well I've recovered. With less than 7 days until the plane takes off, it is time to get rested and ready for the crazy euroness I am about to endure.

Check these links out too, some cool pictures and article featuring yours truly and my man KP.

http://www.ontariocycling.org/web_pages/news1/newslisting.php?id=1190

http://www.ontariocycling.org/web_pages/news1/newslisting.php?id=1191

Peace out from the Tick