2009 Mt. Seymour Challenge

Oops, I haven't posted in over a month now...since I haven't heard any complaining I think it's safe to assume it hasn't affected anyone's stress levels - ha!

Over the past month, I've slowly been easing back into climbing and slowly been easing out of road riding. I'm still riding semi-regularly however without the intensity that I was prior to the Test of Metal. Despite this I've moved up into the Cat.3 race at the Tuesday night criteriums and last week saw my first success in the new category. Right after the prime sprint about halfway through the race, I attacked and joined one other guy up the road. Slowly and steadily we put time into the pack so that eventually they were out of site, however not quite out of mind.

With two laps to go, and me suffering like a dog up the incline every lap the group had pulled us back within sight. It wasn't to be a day for the sprinters though and on the last lap my breakaway companion attacked me at the top of the climb. I couldn't respond enough to challenge him but I held on for 2nd place which I was really happy with, especially considering my lacklustre training regime as of late.

So now, the Mt. Seymour Challenge. The Wednesday prior to the race I decided to determine if I would enter the race or not by riding Seymour and see how my fitness was, since the Sunday before, for the first time ever I had actually turned around at the 2nd switchback and limped home with my tail tucked between my legs. With this fresh in my mind, I approached the climb with some tredpidation that day. During the climb I knew was definitely going hard but it was difficult to tell how well I was going since I hadn't ridden it strong in a long time and couldn't remember my gearing and I also lacked a speedometer. When I hit the line in 43:15, one minute fifteen seconds faster than my previous best I was shocked to say the least! This did however, serve to prompt me to ride home and register for Sunday's race with a grin on my face.

I should say that in general, I wouldn't consider myself all that competitive of a person, with the exception of bike racing. That is the one thing that has taken over from swimming in highschool in which I desparately want to beat every other person in the race. Also, I find it preferrable to demolish the competition if at all possible...har har har. Unfortunately this doesn't happen too often but here's to trying!

Sunday morning rolled around and we were off to Seymour. The weather was perfect...about 16 and drizzly with really low clouds making for excellent conditions to pretend one was in the Tour de France on one of the famous mountain top finish stages in miserable weather! To top it off, I had a cheering squad of three comprising my ever supportive wife, my best friend Brow who is visiting from Ontario and his girlfriend Leah.

The Cat.4's peeled out of the start gates and the pace was comfortable for me so I relaxed a bit and followed wheels. After about 3 km found that I had worked my way to the front of the group. At that point a fellow I know, Noah, came around me and lifted the pace. I knew he was a strong climber so when I saw that he was content to try and ride the rest of the race by himself off the front, I quickly jumped away after him. I followed his wheel around the first switchback and for another few hundred meters until I saw him downshift one gear. I realized he was probably getting a bit tired holding the pace so I came around him to take up the work.

Without lifting the pace, I looked back and saw that I had gapped him and by the 4 km mark I found again, similar to Cypress a few months before, that I was riding my own race. With the help of Car, Brow and Leah cheering me on, I charged up the rain-soaked slopes of Seymour to post one more win for the 2009 season, and a second personal best within the week at a time of 39:04! I was ecstatic to have broken the 40 minute barrier and won the race at the same time.

Much thanks to Car for driving the psyche-mobile and to Brow and Leah for shooting the great photos and videos below...enjoy.

Warming up in the Specialized/Dizzy Cycles tent before the race.

The pack on the lower slopes of the mountain while the race was still gruppo compato. I'm in 2nd wheel here in the foreground.

Noah setting the pace with me stuck to his wheel like Elmer's school glue a few moments before he dropped off the pace.

On the attack, Jens Voight style with noone in sight anymore.

Pushing hard around the final switchback and zipping up as the temps drop.

Driving the nail into the coffin approaching the finish line.

In the early stages of the race, around km 2.

Noah pacemaking with me on his wheel, shortly before I went solo around km 4.

Off the front and pouring it on...make 'em suffer!

New Whytecliff PB...

Last night I finished work and really felt like pushing out some Watts so I decided to ride out to Whytecliff and see if I could better my avg. speed of 31.3 km/h of my last attempt earlier this year.

I've been feeling a little slow and less fit lately as I haven't been fitting in the higher mileage weeks that I was earlier in the season prior to the Test of Metal race so I wasn't too sure how it would go.

Anyways, I got on my bike and started pedalling out to North Van. I kept the pace high but was spinning quite quickly to limit the energy I was putting into it early in teh ride before I was fully warmed up. Even with this, I could definitely feel my legs weren't feeling great by the time I hit the Lion's Gate bridge.

After about another 10 min. or so of riding though they seemed to be running a bit smoother so I began to add some more coal to the boiler and stoke the fire. I hit Whytecliff Park, rode around the loop and turned around, heading for home.

Coming back over the Lion's Gate bridge into Stanley Park the legs were burnin' but I stomped on the gas until the trip odometer registered 60 km completed. I checked my avg. speed and I had totally demolished my previous best. I ended up clocking in at 33.0 km/h!!! I was super psyched considering I didn't think I really had the fitness that I did 3 weeks ago but perhaps some rest after the Test of Metal has proven beneficial to my body.

The weekly crit was cancelled this week due to bad weather but I'm excited to race again next week and hopefully have it act as my debut with the Cat.3 boys. I'm also aiming to keep my fitness high since I'd like to race well in the Mt. Seymour Hill Climb on August 9th...we'll see though since more and more these days I'm getting really psyched on downhillin gon the Northshore and up at Whistler! Duh duh duuuuh....

The Return of the King

I tried climbing again last weekend to see how my shoulder would respond and it went pretty well. There was no pain the following morning as there had been the previous time about 4 weeks earlier so that was positive.

The one bummer was that I think I managed to strain a tendon in my right hand middle finger in the Whistler Bike Park on the Thursday before. It may have been good though that my finger limited the difficulty of the problems I tried...

Anyways, I'm hoping that this is finally it after 4 months of waiting and cycling like a madman and I can finally return to my favourite sport! Oh and by the way, I don't actually think of myself as the king but I did find the title appealing.

I'll hopefully try to get out at some point this weekend to do some more moderate climbing...keep you posted.

Yaletown Grand Prix Photos

Here are a few photos that were captured of the race...

Yaletown Grand Prix 2009

Hey hey! So I had an absolute blast this past week beginning at about 3:30 on Tuesday afternoon when I left work. The Yaletown Grand Prix was the next day (Canada Day) and it was to be the first downtown crit race of my career!

I actually slept quite well considering that I had placed some weighty goals on myself without knowing anything about how hard it would be or who would be racing. I woke with the usual blend of excitement and pre-race anticipation and decided that the best solution would be a healthy stack of pancakes; a little cyclocross trick I learned from my bro Max.

I rode over to the race at about 11:30 and arrived in time to help our team director set up the tents, trainers and other stuff for the team. I got registered and then began that annoying part of racing...waiting for the start. I must admit though, it wasn't too bad with so much going on and so many people milling around.

At about 1:30 they let us onto the course to do a few warm up laps before sending us out of the gates. I should mention that the start format was kind of cool; they had us ride one neutral lap behind the lead car before firing the gun to actually start the race with a rolling start...it felt like we were at a bonafied pro race even though we were only racing Cat.4...Cool!

From the gun the boys hit the front running whipping up a fast pace that left yours truly gasping and struggling to move up. Although caught off guard with the quick start, I made sure to move up at least 5 wheels along the back straight by shoving my nose into the wind and sprinting up the line. Within about 4 laps I was sitting in a better position in 2nd wheel coming winging through the start/finish gate. Leaning hard into the first righthander, the Escape Velocity rider in front of me took the turn too wide, ran into the curb and went down in a mess of legs, arms and bike sliding into the hand railing for the restaurant. Boom, Yaletown claims its first victim. The next two laps I traded off the front with a few others before the next calamity struck.

Coming around turn #3 into the steep punchy climb, I heard the familiar sound of carbon and metal scraping the asphalt. Not turning around to check out the action we kept riding, and that ended up producing the winning breakaway. A less than ideal way to have a winning move form but I guess that's part of bike racing. I'm not entirely sure how that 2nd crash happened but apparently someone locked bars with someone else to bring down a few racers.

As the laps ticked by, the four of us were working quite well together and after sprinting for few of the primes and collecting myself $75, we had a new joiner bridge up to us. Unfortunately Rider X didn't feel the need to contribute to the effort and ended up sitting on the back well past the time that one might reasonably give someone to recover after a bridging effort.

This is how it was to be though, and I had made up my mind that to win the race, I was going to have to win the 2nd last corner. There wasn't enough space to open a full sprint between the final turn and the finish line and I was pretty sure nobody would risk passing coming into the last corner either.

So there we were firing through the start/finish line getting the one-lap-to-go bell. I pulled through after the chicane and thought perhaps I had moved to the front a touch early but I punched it up the hill and leapt out of my saddle at the top thinking I would drill it down the back straight and try and hold the gap into the final two turns. I looked behind me and I definitely had the gap and was holding it. One more glance sure enough found Rider X with his fresh legs bridging up to me with ease and coming around me into the 2nd last corner.

Unfortunately Rider X wasn't quite preared for the speed that he was carrying into the turn and took a wrong line sending him too wide on the exit and hammering into the rental fence barrier. As this unfolded about 15 feet in front of me while we were doing probably 40 km/h, my brain started sorting through a list of items that needed to be taken care of rather quickly. Firstly don't follow his line, secondly slow it down and thirdly, don't wait for the mangled bike to come flying off the fence into my line of travel before trying to avoid it. Thankfully all 3 got sorted and just as the wrecked bike came unnervingly close to my bike I had veered far enough right to get around it and back on line for the last corner. One more corner was all I knew I needed to take this thing...I came in low and on the exit jumped to my feet and sprinted with anything I had left to realize about 3 meters from the line that noone was coming around me and I had won my first legit bike race!

There was no way I was throwing away an opportunity like this to unleash a fervish victory salute, so like Max taught me, I punched the sky with my fists and celebrated my good fortune.

Although it was a bit scary at times, it was quite an experience and will help serve to launch me into my Cat.3 racing career! I'll post up some photos from the race in a day or two.

Beautiful Biciclettas

A few posts back I mentioned that I had potentially figured out what I want to try regarding a possible career...well here it is: custom bike frame building.

My brother Cam directed my attention to the website of Sacha White who is the framebuilder at Vanilla Bicycles and his work blew my mind, not to mention totally inspired me. I think this would be a cool thing to do for a few reasons...you're not only creating art and would get to be really creative and build literally every idea that pops into your mind, but you're also getting more people on bikes which is encouraging a healthier, fitter population and (hopefully) getting more cars off the road more often.

Check out Sacha's work here and make sure you have a drool bib handy, you'll need it:

http://vanillabicycles.com/

Enjoy and get psyched on bikes!

Crushing Snails

I raced the Cypress Hill Climb today and it was super fun! We got up there pretty early and hung out in the team tent and waited for the Cat ½ boys (Sebastian, Nieves and Steven) to get ready and take off at 10 am.

Martin and Stu dropped by to help me get psyched up and it was much appreciated to see their smilin’ faces before getting warmed up on my trainer. I spun for about 20 min before heading down to the start line.

I had checked the results from last year’s race and one of the stronger guys who I race with on Tuesday nights, Jay Brooks, had actually placed 2^nd; this was cool because he was here today so I was excited to have someone strong to race with.

The lady gave her speech about this was definitely not a road race and it was an individual time trail where it wouldn’t be the first one across the line that won, but rather the best effort. The part I struggled with was that everybody was starting together so I was pretty sure that the first person across the line was definitely going win the race, even if someone else made a bigger effort!

They sent us off and we quickly spun up to about 37 km/h with some jockeying for position going on prior to getting onto the actual climb. We rounded the long corner and then we were into it. I made sure I was in about 5^th wheel in order to cover any surges but also keep my nose out of the wind. As we made our way up to the first switchback we gradually changed order so that by the time we were rounding the corner it was Jay leading with me on his wheel and everyone else lined out behind us.

About a hundred meters up the road I slowly came around Jay riding a quick but still comfortable pace and being the classy guy he is, he told me I was doing a good job. We rode this way until the 2^nd switchback and as we crested the rise I glanced back over my shoulder and noticed that we had ridden everyone else off our wheels! Awesome!!! I love when that happens...when you unintentionally torch your competition.

As we hit the flat on the switchback I dropped it down a few gears and put in a small acceleration just to keep the pace high and as I took one more glance back to assess the damage we’d done, I noticed I had gapped Jay. Taking advantage of the situation I punched it and by the time I swung around onto the next pitch I had a solid 50m gap. From here I rode my own race frequently checking my gap but as it happened I managed to continually increase it all the way to the line!

Final result: 1^st in Men’s Cat.4 in a time of 32 min 50 sec with a gap of 1 min 10 sec on 2^nd place. I was pretty psyched because my time would have won the Cat.3 race too by about 35 sec...Sweet!

Next up, Yaletown Grand Prix on Wednesday...let’s have a race fellas!

Pouring it on at the finish line for the solo victory...perfecto!