5 Fingers

(Halloween last year)

Today is the Canadian Road Nationals. I had a pretty good race there last year, and honestly thinking about this day was what pulled me through the long lonely hours in Tucson. Unfortunatly I had different ideas of how it would go at the time. In the TT a couple days ago there were some surprises. Some guys road great, but in the end the big guy Svein took the win again. It was good to see, as he's had a tough year this year. Christian surprised everyone with a 2nd in the TT....those little legs have the power.

Anyone of my buddies on the island knows I've been having a tough 3 weeks. Whatever I have took hold in a bad way and I had a lot of trouble simply functioning for the past while. I became so weak and sick I had a hard time getting out of bed some days. Along with horrible stomach pain, difficulty breathing, incredible weakness and dizzy-ness, some days I felt like I was about to die.

For three weeks I felt this, going from doctor to doctor with no satisfying answers, and all negative blood tests. Then, it seems the sickness started to subside. I was strong enough to go for a walk one day, then went to the park with my friend and her little boy the next day. The day after that I went for a mountain bike ride, then yesterday I went for a road ride.

I'm feeling ok now. Some symptoms I've looked at as single possible things. A doctor suggested I have an ulcer, which I then started a med for I feel much better in that area, after a week on it. In another area I started an allergy medication, which seems to be helping the breathing problems quite a bit. As far as the crazy sickness, I think it may have been a long long bought with mono(It felt like the mono I had when I was younger, apparently you can get it again?).

Anyway, I think I'm starting to feel like my old self.

PS. I love this guy....he's like a bull! I read a forum about how Bert Grabsch hasn't really been heard of until last year when he won the World TT championships. Of course many people pointed to the dope, then one guy said...."Have you ever thought that maybe these are the guys who would win(Bert, Svein) normally if everyone else wasnt on dope" His chest is like an oil drum.

New Ground

Most fresh cut trails need a good year or so of use to get broken in to the point where the ride feels natural. Well, with the upcoming Canada Games in a month, the new trail needed a little bit of speed cleaning and fast breaking in.

I headed out with the crew to put my efforts into raking and stomping down the fresh cut trail to try to get some flow out of the dirt. To my surprise everyone else on PEI who rides a bike seemed to think the same, and headed out to Brookvale to do their part. In total there was probably about 50 people out to either rake, chop, or stomp the new trail. Some crew simply rode, which in this case is what was needed.

Being out the woods working on trail brought back a lot of memories. When your riding you seldom take the time to simply smell the fresh pine, or the fresh dirt. Despite the horrible bugs, it created an inch in me to build some trail. I have been guilty of not making any new trail in many years, but maybe it something that I will have to take up again. It is something that only takes a few afternoons, but proves to pay off over years and years. Like a good tattoo.

I just finished "We Might As well Win" by Lance's DS Johan Bruyneel. It just came out on paperback, which brings the price down quite a bit. Picking up the book, I could tell the gist of it would be about Lance's tours. I dont mind reading that stuff, but any cyclist in North America gets pummelled with literature and movies about those seven years, so I didn't rush into reading it.

As expected most of the book is about Johans relationship with Lance, and his seven year run. Anyone who has an interest in cycling pretty much knows those years in detail as its hard to find anything else related to cycling unless you get an obscure book from amazon.com.

The book also speaks about Johan's own professional career throughout the 90's. Its funny how he continually says he was nothing special despite wearing the yellow jersey and winning two stages of the Tour.

Toward the end he talks about his time with Alberto Contrador, which was what I was really interested in. It offers a glimpse into the stressful life of a director sportif, but was written for the layman of the sport. Don't get me wrong it was very interesting, especially providing the mirror view of the sport which most people and racing cyclists never see, but it didn't get into the nitty gritty which what really interested me.

The book only lightly touched on the training habits of himself, Lance, and the other many great cyclists he's worked with. He would mention the training plans, but wouldn't talk numbers or anything in specific detail which was what I was hoping the book would go through.

Overall "We Might As well Win" is definitely worth reading. Cycling books to me are like candy, they usually read really easy, and fly by as my mind is usually in that head space for most of the day anyway.

One thing Johan did touch on that was interesting are racing tactics that get overlooked in our North American society. It seems that as I was growing up most riders in NA are concerned with the numbers, the training, and how 'strong' a rider is. Johan talked a lot about the strategy of the race. Predicting how it would play out and who was riding well simply by noticing small things about the way they ride. Anyone who has been in a bike race knows that when race day comes usually the guy who can read the pack the best, and play the one correct card when needed is the guy who wins.

Its during the race that the numbers usually go out the window. I think the difference between Europe and NA, is that in Europe there has always been the old guy who tells you how the race will play out. The guy who has been there 40 years before and knows who is riding well, and who isn't simply based on seeing how they sit on the saddle. Its the guy like that who teaches the younger generations, and it seems those guys are few and far between in our society. I guess that makes it more valuable when you finally do encounter a 'Johan Bruyneel'

Into the Clouds

Life has been moving pretty slow as of late. I raced the PEI Canada Games warm up last weekend, and netted a 3rd overall. The courses were super nice, especially the road race. There was a ton of climbing and wind, but super nice views. I'm glad I drove the course beforehand because while bike racing you don't really notice anything else but the race itself. Stuart Write and Justin from NB are riding really strong as Nationals and Canada Games are approaching. They will both make really strong showings.

Directly after the race and until later in the week I caught some sort of flu or bug that knocked me out solid. I pretty much just stayed in bed for a couple days. It was really odd how you can loose all strength all of a sudden. I think some of it is still lingering, although I'm feeling better.

The Tour De PEI happened all this week as well. Its pretty neat how how there is a World Cup bike race in your backyard. PEI is the perfect place for an event like this with a great mixture of solid roads, nice riding, interesting loops, but its something that is slow to catch on here on old PEI.

Its funny how something like a U15 Regional Hockey championship would net gossip for a month after the event and be all over the papers, the news and the coffee shops, but when you have WORLD CUP bike race, with riders from all over the world, everyone complains that they had to close the roads for a couple hours.

In other news......There has been an influx of bikes that people donated to be fixed up and re-distributed to anyone who would want a bike that otherwise wouldn't have been used. Well, I took the liberty of looking over the pile and found an old rusty gem that has been missed from all the other scavengers. The old girl is in rough shape but has quite a bit of history.

Its an old Bartali, which was hand made in Italy in the early 50's. Its mostly Campagnolo Record and it was the brand made by Gino Bartali, who won the Tour in 1952(I think). He was Coppi's number 1 rival, and there is now a race named after the both of them in Italy(Won by Damian Cunego this year I think).

(Bartali and Coppi, they say he was built more for manual labor or playing rugby, instead of cycling. Sounds like someone else I know)

Someone did a god-awful job of re-paining it, so it looks like crap, but after some work I think it should still have some life left in it. I've been looking for a bike like this for a couple years now, and until now haven't had any luck. I knew with bikes like this, they find you....not the other way around. After measurement, it should fit me like a glove.

The plan is to get it going before the Cape Breton ride in October. Which is a 300+km 3 day loop with camping and bonfires and the like. I'd like to rock the wool the whole time and ride solely on wine and baguettes. Its gonna be sweet.

The Red Dirt

I decided to head back to the Island last minute. I booked the ticket at midnight, and was on the plane 14 hours later to head East. There were many reason to come back to the Red Dirt, mainly that there might be some happenings in the works for me, and I would need to do some specific training....which was hard to do in the city of Montreal.

Whatever the next few weeks hold for me, I would have come back anyway for a few weeks, so I decided not to waste any time. I was spending too much money in the big city too.

Its nice to sleep in your own bed for a change too.

Life has been good the past few days. I've been making a point of not saying I'll be anywhere, and letting the day play out as it will. The weather has been great and I had a killer 4 hour hard ride yesterday over the hills of Kinkora.

Coach Luc perscribed some 1 minute/power intervals a few days ago. I thought to myself I could probably do them on the singlespeed. Seeing as how I haven't had a single speed ride(and only 2 MTB rides) this year, I thought it would be good to get on the old girl. When all of the complications of gadgets are taken away sometimes it gives you the opportunity to simply pedal.

(WT(Dad) let me borrow the truck for a couple days. The thing is the sickest ride around, and because its diesel will drive from one coast of Canada and back on a tank of gas)

The Surly Single Speed is by far my favorite bike of all time. If I had any bike for the rest of my life it would be a rigid Surly. No Question.

Before the ride I hopped out of the truck and quickly learned I had forgotten my insoles for my MTB shoes(I have 1 set of orthopedics). This really sucks as the trail is like half hour away from home, and MTB shoes have 2 bolts to hold the cleat into the shoe. Without insoles the bolts quickly make your feel hurt from having 2 bolt screws driving into your feet.

No MATTER! The day was beautiful, I was out on the trail, I was rocking the MTB....it was a good day!

I rode half the trail before coming out to one of my favorite traditional hill climbs to do the 1 minute intervals on. I got a couple in before BAM........folded a chain ring. This seems to happen to me every now and then. I think I need to run downhill specific chainrings from now on.

At least the power seems to be coming back.

So I was walking.....Luckily Luke(who lives 8 minutes away) picked me up and took me back to the truck.

(ahhh well, cant beat the view)

Dont forget the Pepper

My time in Montreal is comming to an end soon. I havnt booked any tickets or made any travel plans but its time to head out soon I think.

The main reason for me coming to Quebec to was to do the GP Charlevoux race in Baie St Paul. Luckily I hopped in with Stephen Keeping's BluBeri team and got a ride to the Baie and managed to stay with them in a cool old french house.

I haven't really seen Stephen since Canada Games in 2005, and to tell you the truth, I didn't really know the guy. Well, living in a house that exclusively speaks french tends to draw the two English speakers a bit closer. He's a pretty cool guy if you ask me. Its funny how some of our expressions are similar being from the Maritimes. Hearing a phase I would say kind of makes me laugh when everyone else in the room doesn't understand it.

The race went decent and terrible at the same time. I went into the time trial pretty old school in that I didn't have any aero gear, no race wheels, and simply a bike with 32spoked training wheels with a powertap without even the meager clip-on aero bars. Eddy Merckx style as one would say.

Over the time trial I lost 2 minutes to the winner, which put me in 41st place(of 68). With no TT gear it wasn't a bad result, and I was happy with it. A TT bike, and disc wheel does make quite a bit of difference.

The Crit was a sketchy as shit. It was a 1.1km, 4 corner course that went through the European style french town of Baie St Paul, and even gave us a tour of the sketchy church parking lot complete with hay bails and barricades that suddenly popped out into the path of the race.

The race was super fast, averaging 42km hour, which is pretty quick for a 4 corner short course. It hurt a lot more than last weeks crit only being 30 minutes long and showed that this guy needs some more crit time, both for the handling aspects, and fitness aspects. There was a crash on the 3rd last corner so it split the field and I came in about 10 seconds back.

All in all I was pretty happy. Really happy actually, I was sitting in 36th, only a couple minutes back going into the main event. The insanely hilly road race.

This was where my luck went down again. The first 10km I got a flat. No big deal, you get flats all the time. I grabbed the neutral wheel, and discovered it was the definition of a training wheel complete with 25c tire, and actually weighed more than a 32 spoke powertap wheel(which I flatted) No matter, and I popped it in the frame and took off for the pack.

Well, another thing I discovered was that Shimano Cassettes and old Sram chains don't work great together, so I had to fight this for the rest of the day as well.

I chased the pack for about 10 minutes where they approached the first climb. I got to about 20 ft from the pack, when I shifted into the 39 to climb the hill.

Of course I lost my chain.

So, in the end I ended up having to get off in the middle of the hill and put my chain back on. Anyone who this has happened to knows its hard to start a climb from a dead stop while chasing a pack, that you almost caught seconds earlier.

I chased and chased and chased but I simply couldn't re-group. So I was off the back.

Needless to say I was really really frustrated and had burned many matches trying to get back on. From here I rode the course for 70km, before being so frustrated with the chain/cassette combo I pulled out. Pullin out is one thing that I really really hate doing, and yes, there IS shame in it. But, at that point I didn't care at all.

This is how the season has been going. You question how far down you can be pushed before you simply don't have anything left to give, then all of a sudden a bright spot, which then is followed by more bad luck and bad happenings.

After the race I was pretty down. At the end of day I'm more mentally drained than anything else. This year has been pretty tough on the head that's for sure.

Today as I'm looking at the Powertap files, the numbers maybe don't seem that bad. The mood turned positive again today. I just have to plan my next move from here on out.

With that, here are random pictures from Montreal.

(killer bike paths)

(Progressive City: community bikes, $5 for 24 hours)

(John Lennon's bed....I guess Yoko's too)

(Famous Montreal Bagels)

(24 Hours a day, making bagels)