Provincials 2015, lucky to be in the results at all!

It's been a bit of a roller coaster of a year; I spent the first part just trying to find my form competing against those who had been down south training all winter, missed some bottle feeds on hot days, then there was the three weeks in bed with sciatic nerve problems, a big trip to Quebec for some big races in which I floundered after the back thing, then a flat tire in the last Ontario Cup! Needless to say, I felt like I would never really get to show the strength that I had built and rebuilt this year. In my last couple of weeks of training I've felt unstoppable -  sprinting my bike up to 64km/h, training huge hours at high power outputs day after day, sleeping early and eating right. I came into provincials thinking that it would take something pretty bad to keep me outside of the top 10.

Lots of nights spent rolling into town late after big rides

I loved the course, except for when I got stung the day before by a wasp! It turns out that I'm quite allergic to wasps now - and I got stung by a yellow jacket riding the course the day before. This time of year they're out of whack, I swear. The rotten fruit falling off trees is fermenting, and they're getting drunk on the juices - and wasps are just mean drunks. That's the only logical explanation for 7 stings in the last 2 weeks right?

does anyone know how to get rid of swelling? Benadryl doesn't work for me

The closest that I'll ever get to looking like Popeye, it's still swelling two days later

Apart from that my day was pretty great, and I got to stay on course in a farm house with a bunch great friends and a great dinner. What could go wrong tomorrow, right?

I got a good warmup before the race, even though I got stung again on the chest (seriously, why do bugs hate me?), I stayed focussed and the race start went according to plan, and I was probably 7th or 8th place going into the first piece of singletrack, and I came through the first lap just outside of the top 10. I  wasn't too fluid through the trails, I was pretty stop and go and guys were catching up to me in the trails that I'd usually use to distance myself from those behind me.

Check out my arm here, all of that fluid stuck in my swollen forearm makes me like Popeye!
Thanks Mary Lynch for the photo and the support over the weekend

Going into the second lap I was still riding strong, but by mid way through the lap I was starting to cramp up in my legs. For some reason my quads were seizing and calves felt like there were being charlie-horsed. No problem, this is why I pack space food, right? I slurped back a CLIF electrolyte gel, and avoided standing and pedaling until it kicked in (usually about 15 minutes, so 2/3 of a lap). By the time I got to the same spot the next lap I was still sitting and spinning my pedals fairly easily though the trails and up the hills. I had chugged all of my drink mix (a special potion of caffeine, electrolyte powder and sometimes beta-alanine), and I was still seizing up - so I slugged back another gel and kept putting in the effort - staying seated and spinning up the hills.

Staying seated through some pretty rocky business, thanks Marta Kocemba for taking the photos! 
It's been great to have you at the last few races.

By about my fourth lap (out of five), I had some flow mojo going in the trails and was getting down the big hill quickly enough to drop some guys. I came to the feed zone at the start of the fifth lap with high hopes of "picking off the zombies", and catching the guys who were really slowing down in their last lap until something happened that made me panic a bit.

Thanks Mary Lynch for getting a photo that shows my late race determination (or desperation). 

As I came into the feed zone for my final lap (fighting persistent and increasingly painful cramps), there was a mixup, and my feeder wasn't there. I went into my last lap with nothing to drink, on a pretty humid day.

All sweaty but still somehow smiling on my fourth lap.
Thanks Hannah Clarke for taking these pictures all season long!

As I came through a steep uphill near the start/finish there were spectators everywhere and I saw Simon (the rock in our team always helping us and keeping us together at the race), I yelled for some water, which turned out to be a pretty bad idea.

The drink that had a lot of repercussions after the race (thanks Marta again)

I survived my final lap without getting passed (or doing any passing unfortunately), and rode into 14th place (my best result at an Ontario cup, and this was provincials). I sat on the ground because my legs were not in the mood to hold me up anymore and was passed some more water which drank and cooled off my swollen arm a bit.

Funny finish line face, confused about what just happened and how I just finished the race I think
(Marta Kocemba photo)

Just happy to cool off my arm a bit. (Marta Kocemba photo)

As I was sitting down nursing my wounds I was approached by the commissaire.

"Did you take some water outside of the feed zone?"

He explained to me that I was disqualified for doing so, and that as an elite racer "I didn't know" or "I wasn't thinking" is not a good enough excuse. I told him that I just wanted to finish the race, and that I was cramping, but at my level of cycling there are rules and we have to stick to them. I tried to find the penalties for breaking these rules when I got home but I couldn't..

Great. DQ'd. It's not allowed for me to receive help outside of the designated feed/tech zone. I went to the commissaires about 15 minutes later to appeal to them, and they informed me that they were wrong. Because it is a provincial championship, it falls under the regulations of any pro championship race, and I would actually be fined $200. For taking a drink less than one minute after I passed through the feed zone. After a bit more talking, they decided to drop my fine to just a warning - for that I really thanked them. But now there is a black mark on my international cycling record that says I like to accept help in the wrong spots I guess. Could be worse, right?

Apparently all of the cramping wasn't a big surprise at all either, with all of my body fluid stuck in my arm there's less to move around to my muscles. I thought that it was pretty weird to cramp like that over nothing, and I'm happy to know that there may be a reason that was outside of my control that caused it. Stupid drunk wasps.

I've still got a couple of chances to keep it together for a great result! The Ontario Marathon Championships and Canadian Marathon Championships are this weekend and the next in Kingston and Horseshoe Valley, respectively. Then it's University Cup races and the Redbull Race the Place race coming up. Still training hard, eating right, stretching, and strengthening with as much motivation as ever!

My Felt Edict 1: Bike Review

A lot of people (even strangers) have been asking me about my new bike; it's a big change that's long in the making: my first full suspension bike. Firstly, bikes these days are amazing. They've engineered them to absorb whatever you are riding over, while still being compliant when you push down on the pedals. Carbon fiber is not limited to the super high end bikes either, and it's much stiffer, stronger, and in many cases lighter than it used to be. Shocks have remotes that turn them on and off, or allow you to flip through different settings that dictate how the bike feels when you're riding it. Drivetrains (the gears and shifters and chains) are lighter, more precise, simpler, and have astounding gear ranges just in the rear cogs. New axels, wider handlebars, and the crazy ranges in tire treads, thicknesses, and rubber compounds have really given mountain bikes a new feel in the past few years.

To me, any rider who can only afford one bike should be riding a full suspension bike, they're super light, super stiff, and offer more traction in any trail than a hardtail. I also knew which bike company that offered full suspension race bikes I wanted: Felt. Ever since working at Muskoka Outfitters in the summer of 2010, I've had my eyes on these bikes. Being an employee at a bike shop gives you the inside scoop on all of the tech that the companies using, and quite frankly Felt really doesn't cut corners. Most companies use different grades of carbon fiber on their bikes, the more you pay, the more high modulus (light/stiff/durable) your bike will be. Felt is a small company <50 employees based out of California that basically got it's momentum as a 3 man company with the idea of making the best bikes, not the most bikes. The fact that most people don't know much about Felt and they they don't currently have any big teams just shows that they are a product driven company as opposed to a marketing-driven company.

My new Felt Edict 1 actually blew me away with how she rides. As a guy who's always raced a hard tail, you expect that a full suspension bike is going to bob every time that you push down on the pedals, that it will be heavy up the hills, and that the pivots will come apart. It took me a week to actually figure out which setting on my rear shock was locked out, the added traction of rear suspension has given me more confidence flying down hills, and even helped me to get up hills faster than before because the rear wheel doesn't bounce at all. Felt engineered the bike to have 100mm of travel in the rear, but kept the whole thing super stiff through the carbon linkage, and by not putting pivots in the rear. Instead the bike is engineered so that it has a certain amount of travel that's given by the rear shock, and once the rear shock is compressed, the frame flexes, resulting in smooth and stiff suspension.

Suddenly having another shock to preload has turned out to be tons of fun too, now I can preload and pivot my back wheel quickly and smoothly. This is a tough trick to do but in the right circumstances it lets me get around a corner without my brakes, it's important to have a bike that's laterally stiff enough to handle this kind of force, which the Edict does wonderfully. I can also preload before my hops now which is smooth, helpful, and fun!

The bike is a 22 inch frame with 29 inch wheels (the largest size bike you can buy really), but it whips around better than any 29er that I've ever ridden. Felt built the bike with a super steep head tube angle, which keeps the wheelbase tight, and the bike twitchy around tight corners. It also lets me lean through my corners better and keep a smaller "footprint" on the trail - letting me pedal around corners that were so tight that on other bikes I would have come to a stop to get through.

It's pretty rare that a bike looks better in person than it does on the internet, but I couldn't stop smiling when I unboxed this beauty. The pictures on the Felt site don't do the bright blue justice, and the Textreme carbon fiber is lighter, stiffer, and prettier than anything else I've seen. I love that checkerboard sheen that my bike has. It's an incredibly thin carbon fiber that is tougher because the wider strands laced at 90 degrees. Felt imports their carbon from Sweden, and though it's a crazy expensive carbon layup, you can get it on $6000 mountain bikes.

They kept the price very competitive on the bike by using the less expensive parts where it makes sense; wheels, shifter, and lockouts for the front and rear. All things considered however, this bike was 24. pounds with my pedals out of the box. The extra 2 pounds would cost around $4000 to lose, and since I got the bike I've put carbon wheels on it, and changed the stock mechanical lockout (which was warrantied anyways). Racers typically have two sets of wheels anyways (I know that I always have), and with such a stiff rear end I haven't found the need to put a remote lockout version of the shock on. I've raced everything from super technical courses like the Pan American course, to the fast and hilly Ontario courses like Albion Hills. I've found a new and reliable sidekick in all of my bike adventures, and am riding with more confidence and control than I have in the past.

Baie St. Paul Canada Cup, travels through the Quebec countryside

We're coming up on a week into our trip to Baie St Paul and St-Félicien for a Canada Cup and National Championships and I've been to a lot of cool places and done cool things! I'd love to be publishing some sort of hero post about how I was magically fit again, back problems didn't slow me down for long, and how I'm going to crush it at Nationals because I'm back to my regular season fitness. But things don't work out that way for me usually, so I just keep pushing through and enjoying the places that I get to be!

Baie St. Paul was a very tough course; it wasn't so technical that I was worried about any particular section, but the entire course was either uphill or downhill (nothing flat), and it was all very gnarly rooty, rocky. A super fun course that keeps you on your toes, but if you falter and lose focus - it was very hard to regain your momentum. The day was above 30 degrees and we were racing at 3:15, which is almost 2 hours later than my usual races.

The following is a video of basically the same course a few years ago, flip through it to see some of what we ride!

I honestly fell off the pace right from the start, unable to keep the pace going even in the uphill single track, I tried to push the negative thoughts out of my head, thinking that surely nobody could keep this pace in this weather on this course; unfortunately I don't think that I could either. It became a game of attrition, just trying to keep grinding at it until other riders wore down to the point that I could catch them. I was confused about where I was on course, messing up my lines through the technical sections, and even so weak that I couldn't shift my gears at points! But I finished. There was only 1 finisher behind me, but 5 guys didn't finish (that's a pretty large amount for the pro field in a Canada Cup that we all traveled a long way to get to), so I'm proud of just finishing given my health and recent setbacks!

Trying to maintain composure in this race was tough (thanks Scott Lynch for the photo)

The days following the race were spent watching other spectacular races like the Mountain Bike Criterium, which is mayhem! It's a lap that takes about 2 minutes to do, raced for 20 minutes or so with big groups. My favourite was watching the small kids ripping the course.

My buddy Dylan and I were making bets on these guys - I could totally be a bookie

We headed off to Mt. St. Anne that day, and I got some great riding alone in the forest, not worrying about race courses, or stopping for other riders, or where I was in the world. Turns out you can find some pretty neat places.

Not my usual worn out race face :)

I also love camping, which is how we got by from Thursday till Monday.

Our site at Mt. St. Anne was right by the trails (thanks Scott for the photo again)

Road tripping through the Quebec countryside has been fun, I'm bilingual so it's nice to have a chance to practice my french, and now we're in St-Félicien, Nationals is in two days, and I'm hoping to have my fitness back to how it was before my back disk/nerve issues. I'm loving the courses in Quebec, and the break from university, so good results would just be a bonus I guess!

Road tripping through Quebec and watching out for the bears that we saw

Some of the coldest water I've swam in in the summer (Scott Lynch photo)

On hot days, I don't discriminate where I get my water (Scott Lynch photo)

Canada cup number one and Ontario Cup 2

The first Canada cup of the year always happens on the May 24 long weekend, and it’s generally an awesome time to see everyone again, live in condos for the weekend, and catch up after a long winter. I had the pleasure of road tripping up with a cray half Canadian half New-Hampshirese person (not to be confused with the shire, New Hampshire is VERY different). Catherine was her name and it was her first race back after doing some serious damage to her spine in a bike race in Tennessee. It was awesome to be around someone who while being nervous, was confident and well collected – especially since she raced both the Canada Cup Cross Country and Downhill events. We had a great crew living in the (tightly packed) condo, and the course was pretty different than in previous years. There was one big change for the race as well – I was on a different bike. Rob from Mountain Bike Kingston lent me his sweet Pivot Mach 429SL. This is a very coveted front and rear suspension bike, though it’s not the lightest, raciest bike out there it certainly is a really fun ride, especially on the down portions of the Canada Cup course.

A seriously fun bike! Thanks Rob for the trust and support!

This course went up a gravel access road up the mountain, then essentially rode through really rocky tight trails down the mountain, and then straight back up again. 6 times. The field was elite pretty deep, with a range of riders from around Canada, and even US Olympian Sam Shultz who I met and joked around with on the start line without even knowing who he was, mountain biking seems to attract some great down to earth people! Unfortunately I ended up starting as the last guy (I guess that I wasn’t pushy enough in the corral), which is a dangerous place to be. Everything is magnified the further back you are, if a guy further up the field touches his brake a little bit, and you’re 10 guys back you’re slamming on your brakes. This causes unpredictable riding to happen around you, and of course crashes and bottlenecks.

Awesome album from Canadian Cyclist here

I stayed calm and rode assertively though the first few very bunched up minutes of the race, but by the time that I could really set my pace and go fast up the hill, the leaders already were a minute up the road or so. Additionally, no matter how hard I tried to go, I found myself gasping for a very slow speed up the hill – this was not the pace that I thought I could set. The race was a 6 lap race, with around 60 starters and the 80% rule in effect; those who did not come within 80% of the leader’s time (keep in mind that there are Olympians racing in my category), would be pulled off the course. No questions asked. I had a great time riding the downhill on the new full suspension bike, taking crazy and aggressive lines that I wouldn’t have otherwise been comfortable with on my hardtail, but in retrospect I don’t think that this was in my favour. Instead of taking the fastest lines down the trail I was taking the crazy lines, which though they were fast – they weren’t the fastest. Lesson learned. I was pulled after 3 laps, but had a great time watching the rest of the race – it’s almost surreal that I get to compete at this level, so when I’m pulled out of the race I can still at least watch my friends compete in a crazy course.

Hannah Clarke is becoming my unofficial blog photo supplier, thanks!

The rest of the weekend was spent eating, hiking, and celebrating with friends, though the race didn’t go so well, I was a step closer to feeling my legs under me and sure that Ontario Cup number 2 at Kelso in a week’s time.

See you next time Catherine!

Kelso would be a bittersweet day; the last ride my sweet sweet Trek Superfly (affectionately named My Sherona). It would be a great course to send her off on too, hilly and smooth – or so I thought. The course was awesome, fast and flowy, but with some pretty insane rocky features in the elite course. I was extra delicate on these because I had super thin tires on (with very little grip), but at least that means that I was less likely to hurt myself too! It was a beautiful, windy, but very hot day, and the course had some sections that were exposed to big headwinds, as well as sunny sections (notably the climb up the escarpment!), but I was feeling confident and fairly well rested. Big shout out to the Lynch family for hosting me and giving me a place nearby to crash before the race, it was pretty sweet to be able to hot tub and relax Saturday night!

I'll miss my her, but she's being well taken care of now

I started dead last in the corral as usual (I swear that I’m going to get there earlier next time), but made some progress through the pack throughout the first lap; it was a fast course and riding in groups was advantageous in order to hide from the wind, so I was quite happy to ride with these guys and see how the race unfolded. Unfortunately for me, my second lap pretty much decided the rest of my race, as I went through the feed zone looking for the wrong guy, and then didn’t have anything to drink for the next lap. I think had my chain drop and got passed by like 6 guys, though I normally could have gone and caught them back, I was trying to preserve my energy because a lap at that heat with nothing to drink is something that you pay for later in the race.

Hans solo took this one of me shooting the quick line

I rode a solid tempo for a lap and a half and then ramped it up a bit more for my last two laps. I was fighting off cramps a bit, but all things considered I paced pretty well (this is not to be confused with pLacing well). Apart from the one mishap with my bottle feed, support for the race was amazing! I had friends from university in the crowd which was nice, Matt F as event MC, and the Progressive Nutrition girls were set up giving out snacks and electrolyte drinks – I love it!

I live for Simon's race support

So I’ve pushed through another two races, each time feeling a little bit stronger, and now I’m ready for the upcoming two weekends of Canada Cup racing at Horseshoe Valley and Hardwood Hills respectively. I’ve got a new bike, ready for a mid-season fresh start! Thanks Muskoka Outfitters http://www.muskokaoutfitters.com/for the support with the new ride!

 

Big thigs!  A sweet full suspension, race ready out of the box. Love my new Felt Edict 1