The Plague has Come

Things have been happening the past few days. Some good, some bad. I've been grabbing the occasional coffee with teammate Josh, I've also convinced him that the weekly beer and pizza day(Monday) is a good thing.

4 hours on Tuesday, 3.5 on Wednesday, and a hopeful 4 hours today. Well, after much biting of the lip I have decided to take a day or so off.

The rainy ride last week combined with the hot ride the day after has caused a horrible rash. I've been riding through it hoping the plague would die off, but no luck. After much pain with each pedal stroke, and barely being able to walk the night following most rides, I've decided to sit a day out.

On advice from Doc JF, I got about $40 worth of supplies from Walgreens and fingers crossed a couple days of nothing will put the end to this thing. What a nightmare.

On to other things......

Integration is something that is a sign of progress in our world. When things evolve in these times, integration is usually a sign of this. In the bike industry we see integrated headsets, now integrated bottom brackets and shifters.

In the business world, in times of recession we see integrated companies, who streamline all in the name of process and efficiency.

In humans, we see a new trend, integrated people(IE SheMales)

Now, I have seen the future, in the name of integrated footwear. Yes, integrated socks and shoes! All of this evolution for only $5 in the sale bin(from $19.99). I've decided I'm going to pick up the other 5 pairs before someone else sees the future.

This operation is slowly starting to take form. I got the last piece of the puzzle yesterday. Its a healthy protection being SPF 4.

I've decided to move the old tans lines up a bit this year. You've been good to me the past few years tan lines, but its time to move on. Time to go to bigger and better things. Time to show more leg.

The past few rides I've been slowly upping the hours. I did a good 4.5 hour, 135km ride on Saturday, then went onward to the 5 hour on Sunday. Well. the body had different things in mind as it decided it only wanted to do about 3 hours.

I think the combination of travel, former sickness, and adaptation to the climate took its toll. I still put in about a 20 hour week, which is ok for the first week of the year. Under normal circumstances I don't think that would be a problem, but going from nothing(sick) to 20 hours was a little bit too much of a jump.

I've noticed I start to crave 4 things once training starts to ramp up. They are:

Peanut Butter: Man, its soo good. I could eat a whole jar just with a spoon. Its so deadly though.

Coffee Shop Run: There are few things I enjoy more than the coffee shop run. The feeling of being social while not talking to anyone all while enjoying coffee better than home. Oh yeah

Oatmeal: Its something I cant understand, but as soon as the big weeks hit I cant stand to have anything other than oatmeal. I could eat it breakfast, lunch and dinner, everyday of the week. I don't know what it is. The funny thing is that as soon as the season ends, and the structured training stops, I cant get enough eggs. I crave eggs the opposite way. Weird.

Civil War Documentaries. Even Weirder. I often catch myself on rides thinking about watching civil War documentaries. For some reason its all I feel like watching on TV. If they arent on TV I look for them online. I should become a re-enactor or something. I guess I would have to figure out how to grow a mustache before that happens.

New Dance Shoes

New Dance Shoes

Three hours in the pouring rain today....Yuck

Tucson sucks in the rain for 2 reasons. Basically the whole city is a giant crator with mountain ranges all around so water just fills the place. Usually the soil is so dry that it doesnt take any water and the streets get flooded like what happened today. It was like riding in a giant floating ashtray with cigaratte butts everywhere.....ahhh

Dusk

The days continue. I'm starting to get use to this place a little bit more everyday. After three days of not sleeping and laying in bed all night, I finally had a decent sleep last night. Too bad I awoke to some rain this morning. Of all the time I've spent in Tucson, this is the second time I've seen it rain. The clouds seem to be parting though as I write this.

Yesterdays ride was a pretty good way to kick start the season. I went out with the intention of doing about 3 hours. Along the way I ran into Josh and we cruised for a good bit before parting ways. He was doing an assault on Mt Lemmon, which second day on the bike, I was having no part of.

I've been using googlemaps to map out my rides. I can usually get a decent judgement of how long it takes to rip a loop, and for the most part it shows all the decent side roads and connector roads as the main drags of Tucson really suck on a bike.

So it it turns out I horribly misjudged the loop I had planned and instead of doing 3ish hours, I ended up with a solid 4 hours, and just over 110km. That is usually a decent ride, but not for your second time on the bike.

At one point I was bonking about halfway through and I couldn't really figure out why. It was then that I looked at the ride plan on the Garmin and found I had been climbing gradually for over 25km in to a headwind. Ohhhhhh

So I said to myself...."Ryan, your half way through this ride in the middle of the dessert, and you might not make it home as your bonking....."

I decided to give in a get the first emergency Coke of the year. Second ride....pathetic.

After I managed to down the magic juice I had come around and had more energy than a 15 year old guy in a brothel. I managed to slide back home and killed some of Josh's Banana bread.

Don't get me wrong. Four hours was definitely more than I wanted to do yesterday. these types of rides aren't the things that make you fast second time on the bike. I dont think I went into the red, but it was definitely more than the body wanted to do. What can ya do when your out in the middle of the dessert though?

No Telling

Ahhhh Tucson. I arrived in town last night around midnight. I knew the address to my place, and had a rough idea how to get there, but didn't have a map. So after the flight came in I frantically ran around the airport to look for a phone book to rip the map out of. Unfortunately someone had similar ideas and no map was found.

I went to a taxi/shuttle company thinking they would have maps, and they pointed me to the Tucson visitors guide. The guy and gal were super helpful until they found out that I wasn't using their service. At which point they promptly stopped talking to me and said they "cant help me anymore"

I was kinda bummed and angry as it was 4:00ish my time, and I was denied a map. It was then that my new team-mate Josh showed up.He offered me a ride from the airport, and I was never as happy to see a friendly face after about 14 hours of travel.

The guy even made me a loaf of banana bread, HOT out of the oven as he anticipated I wouldn't have any breakfast foods. WHAT A GUY! Ladies I will foreword his number to you.

So I arrived at my new place and promptly went to bed.

When I woke up this morning I puttered around a bit and scoped out the place. Chole and Tom(people I'm staying with) are super nice. Believe me, anyone who has had BAD living arrangements really appreciates when you can get good ones. I have a good feeling so far about this place and we all seem to get along great.

(My shack, where I will be living)

My room/shack is starting to grow on me. Its pretty minimal but that's all I want.

(What I see out the door)

I went out for a quick 65km burn to get the legs going. Its weird because last year I lived in Tucson, on the other side of town. So a lot of the roads are familiar but ...need to be backwards. I got lost on the way home today. I'm about 5km from the base of the legendary MT Lemmon. 27 MILES of up.

At this point I'm just trying to take it easy and get use to the place. Time to hit the hay.

I’m now in Denver….In my travels today I’ve noticed a few things. One is that there seems to be a Cowboy convention in town or something as there are about 250 people with Cowboys hats. Interesting..

One thing that caught my interest was the availability of porn mags in the states in airports. I don’t know about everyone else, but I would feel really uncomfortable sitting next to someone for 4 hours while they read a porn mag. Maybe its just me, Maybe I’m missing out on something great in these airports. Hmmmm

I’m currently enjoying a Fat Tire ale in a wee pub in the Denver airport. The airport here is practically a shopping center, and they have decent pubs here.

To tell you the truth, I forgot how great the beer was in the US. So many Indie breweries and little nice ales. Ahhhhh man its soo good. Not to mention beer is so cheap you might as well drink it than water. Holy Moly.

I thought a fat Tire ale would good measure as I learned it was spawned from a mountain bike trip the brewmaster had. Anything that spawns from a sweet MTB adventure must be good.

On The Road

Here I am sitting in the Charlottetown airport. Once again bad luck has struck me again with flights. Good luck did show its head through briefly. It seems in times like these, expect bad luck when dealing with airlines. The good luck happens when flights go the way they are suppose to go, IE no delays, a bag of free pretzels, luggage arrives, your stuff isn't confiscated,.....this my friends, is good luck.

My flights were delayed due to the rain in Charlottetown. Instead of getting out at 6am, I'm now going out at 1:30....wait...2:15...wait...2:35.....
This calls for a little bit more sleep in time, but which means arriving in Tucson at about 11:30pm or like 3:30 PEI time. Yikes!

I have enough books to read until November and I'm hoping to pick up a new cycling mag as most of the old ones I've all ready flipped though.

I had some great chatting with the boys and the lovely lady last night over some beers. We said our good byes, and despite the fact that leaving one life for another is starting to become routine for me, this time leaving dug a little bit deeper than normal. I'd like to think that my skin is becoming calloused when it comes to good-byes, but this time it seemed to get through the rough spot.

I picked up some compression tights. These things are suppose to promote recovery through compressing the muscle, and also claims to get rid of the jet-leg feeling in the 'ol legs. Well I'm giving them the trail today. When I put them on they felt like regular...tights that were too small, but now as I sit in the airport with them on I can defiantly feel them in the legs. MR. Laliberte swore by them, and Carson, one of my new teammates basically compared them to the second comming of Christ. With that review I decided to spring for them and give em a go.

I'll give a more complete review later.Until then. Adios.

http://www.velonews.com/article/86570/the-coached-corner-tucson-training-camp

Good Article

This and That.

I'm still doing nothing, taking 4 vitamins a day and downing a good smoothie to even things out.

I had a great dinner last night with Mr. Scott Dickieson. That guy leads a great life. The falafal was great as per usual, but the one beer left me feeling pretty tipsy. I'll be the first to tell you I'm an unbelievable lightweight when it comes to the beers, but this was just weird....must be the sickness.


One of the new team family wagons has arrived....It would probably be easier to pick up with this than compared with previous years on a woman's commuter bike. We'll see.

(Last years commuter)

(This years commuter)

Its cold...and I mean cold here on the East Coast of Canada. Its suppose to be -38C tomorrow. That's enough for my grandmother to bring out her snowsuit.

I Need a Witch Doctor

The big day is approaching fast. Unfortunately my body isn't so ready to go. The persistent cold/flu keeps going and coming back. I haven't done a lick of exercise in 2 weeks in an attempt to fight it. I'm starting to go crazy.

Usually when I feel sick I cut back what I'm doing, try to go to bed a little earlier, and get up a bit later or minimalize my day to day activities in hopes of giving my body the rest it needs to fight the sickness.

After 2 weeks of fighting I've dropped everything I've been doing and basically just stay home and sleep/read/do things around the house in an effort to kill whatever is in my body. Yeesh.

With all the down time I've been able to prepare for leaving a little bit earlier than I have in previous years. Tieing up the loose ends is always something I leave to the last minute, but staying at home give me time to get the bikes ready for the big day.

Today's task is to finally build up last years TT bike that has been sitting in a bike box since Guadeluope!

The new Selle San Marco Concors have come in! These saddles are a pleasure to ride, and I was able to grab a couple of the 09 versions right out of the box from Italy through OGC(Thanks Dave!). Finally no seams!

Last night I popped one on the Casati, which will be my big miles bike until the new Orbeas Arrive. Of course that depends if the sickness ever leaves! Ahhhh

Roll Call! 2009 Land Rover-Orbea UCI Continental Team

http://www.trubicon.org/node/165

Life is Good

I'm going on over a week with no exercise as the cold seems to get a little better.....then get worse...then get better....then worse...ahhhhhh its driving me crazy. I have to continually remind myself that its better to hit Tucson with no cold and crappy legs, than it is to try to pedal while sick and hit Tucson in rough shape. Because of this simple problem I'm trying to enjoy some sick days.....but its hard to stay still.

I'm the type of person who gets bogged down by the little things. I tend to dwell on life's small problems that in the long run, tend to work themselves out. For some reason things like this tend to stick in my mind, but once they do eventually clear out, then a new problem always seems to present itself.

I wouldn't say I'm a negative person, its just the way I am I guess. Maybe its from being a perfectionist, or maybe I hold onto things, I don't know why, its just how it is.

Today when I woke up from a solid 10 hours of sickly sleep, I had an epiphany, as I do from time to time. For some reason the words of Harvey Chandler and Billy Doucette struck my mind. Anyone who knows these cats would agree with me that they seem to take the term "Life is Good" as their motto. No matter whats going on. These guys are an inspiration to well-being. In the years I've known both of them, I would say between them both, I wouldn't be able to count on one hand the days they were slightly negative.

While saying this in my head this morning, I analyzed my life. Yeah, its cold as shit outside and I'm sick and I have 14 000 things to do before leaving for the dessert next week, but ya know what,I have a pretty good life.

"Life is Good" I kept saying to myself. Not that I'm going to buy T-shirts from that crappy clothing brand that came out a few years ago, but its something that I told myself to repeat.

I realized that colds tend to go away, I have a great girl, great parents, great friends and the opportunity to follow a dream few people have the resources to run with. Even though training camp is pretty lonely, I have the opportunity to go to the dessert to do nothing but ride a bike in January, on a $10 000 bike, with 3 others on the way, and all the sweet gear I would ever need.

Taking a step back, that is pretty unreal.

Life is Good even without the gear. The bikes, the dessert, the good coach, etc etc etc, dont matter. Life is Good because I have the opportunity to chase a dream that I have been thinking of in my head since I was 12 years old. No matter if its biking, becoming a lawyer, a doctor, a professional clown or whatever.

Life is Good iF you fight for.... and have the opportunity to chase your dream

Thank God these were recalled......what a death trap....eh Zack?

Horas

I've been sick for the past week. Since New Years, I've had a persistent cold that doesn't seem to want to go. I've named it Horas the cold. I've been taking it easy staying off the bike and out of the gym in the hopes that Horas will go, but every time I think I have him on the run, BAM, the bastard comes back.

I went to the doctor today and told her about my relationship with Horas. After a quick check over with the usual pokes and prods, she determined that....yep, Horas is a cold. The whole Island is infected with these lot and she says 10-14 days is usually enough time for the fella to leave town. No exercise for a week leaves me feeling 400lbs. What else can ya do?

I did go to the gym last night and tried to chase out Horas with a couple squats and about 75% of my usual routine, but he still lingers.

Cold as a Witches Tit

Now that the storm of New Years Day has passed, and the dust has settled, some of the riding crew of PEI grabbed their bikes for the annual New Years Day ride(plus 4 days). For me, this is honestly one of my favorite rides of the year. I truly get excited for this event. Not only do you get to ride and suffer in the cold with your buds(many of whom I've known since I was 12) but you also get to eat great food after in the small cabin where everyone meets.

There is usually more food than everyone can eat and its all great quality. This years feast included, salmon sandwiches, buckwheat waffles fresh off the grill, ribs, fresh corn chowder, (almost organic) vegetarian quiche, and perogies....mine and Eric's contribution.

Because of the re-schedule, the turnout wasn't as big as most years, but a good time was still had by all. The wind was pounding fiercely as we were right by the water....and well.... its the middle of winter in Canada. Its funny how PEI's main tourist attraction would probably be the beaches, but for most of the year they are pretty horrible to be around.

The past few days I've been thinking of New Years resolutions. What exactly can I 'give' up or try to improve in my life. With passing thoughts I couldn't really think of anything(other than cigar smoking). I know if I were to ask my friends what I should improve they would probably take a couple days and give me a list.

It was then that I realized that New Years is a day like any other. Why would I pick that specific day to realize something that should be changed, and try to use it as motivation to change it. "Eff it" I thought to myself. Every new day should be reason enough to change something you don't like about your self or whats going on in your life.

Here's to hoping I can keep my resolution.

Break in the New Year

New Years came and went. This year I did something a little different by going to a New Years Gala. I managed to pull together a suit, and the lady and I were treated to a good meal and some great dancing. The liquor was flowing, but I stayed away from most of it. Yup, I had a 80% sober New Years, and it felt great.



Two things awaited me the next day. One was a pretty killer cold that I'm trying to fight off today, and an insane snowstorm that hit the Maritimes. A lot of my buddy's from the Gala had to spend an extra night at the hotel as there was no way to leave. They seem to be stuck with no food in a crazy nice hotel with nothing but fancy dress wear.



I stayed an extra day at the Lady's house, as the car was covered in about 6 feet of snow and the roads were impassable. Eventually I had to hit the trail and started to 2km walk to my place. Unfortunately, I didn't have any clothes other than my fancy suit, so I dressed head to toe in my 5,0" tall girlfriends winter garb. Luckily no one was around and managed to stumble into the house about 45 minutes later.

The DVD Train

While the craziest snowstorm in a few years is hitting the Maritimes, I thought it would be a good time to review some cycling videos I've been watching while my brains fall out of my ears on the trainer.

PRO

A documentary following the US Pro circuit in the states. It has interviews with a few of the main players in the US racing scene. Some are high paid, others are the lowly domestiques. I first saw in it '04 or '05 and its interesting to see what these riders are doing now. Its a great look into the lowly life of a racing cyclist in the US. I find it pretty crazy that I may be doing some of the races this year featured in the video.

The narrator has an interesting touch as he sounds like some sort of gay phone-sex dominatrix guy.....you know what I mean if you watch it.

A Sunday in Hell

Probably the best cycling documentary of all time. It profiles the 1976 Harris Roubaix following many top European Pros of the era including Eddy Merckx. If you get any cycling DVD, get this one.

Its interesting on many levels. Not only does it chronicle the race itself, but its also a snapshot into history. Its interesting because of this, and also you can see the differences between racing a bike then, compared to now. Suttle things have changed since then as well. Such as what riders use to eat before a huge race. Usually most sthletes eat pancakes, oatmeal or pasta, but it shows these hardmen eating huge steaks at 7am thinking it was optimal. Yeesh.

2007 TdeF DVD

When the Tour is on mid summer, the past few years I haven't been able to watch it. Usually because I'm off somewhere without a TV. That year, the only way I was able to see some stages was to sit in a Cowboy bar and sip on a $4 lemonade for 3 hours at a time. Needless to say I missed most of it. The 2007 Tour was pretty crazy, and for me it's great to see a play by play of the most important moments of this scandal ridden race.

Road to Paris

I've been stealing this one off of YouTube. A great way to see Lance's preparation leading up to the Tour de France. It follows him while he puts in his big miles climbing the Alps in March and some of his kooky training practices. Its both a documentary and a journal. Anyone who races a bike should watch the movie as its fascinating.

Hell on Wheels

Probably the Best modern day documentary of contemporary cycling. It follows Eric Zabel and Rolf Aldag in the 2003 Tour de France. It gives an amazingly intimate view into their lives while they ride the incredibly hard race. It is very entertaining watching the interactions of these guys while they suffer together. It shows their strong points of the race, and also their insecurities as they suffer for 3 weeks straight. Probably the best put together DVD of them all.

Erik speaks of his views of the peleton, which is a perspective most would never see. Its funny as he says he will never be a great rider compared to Jan Ullrich, even though hes had some great victories and a very fruitful career compared to any other cycling great.