Monday, March 29, 2010

Ronde van Cowtown

Elevation profile of an in-town ride!


Google maps ride route, and just in case the map disappears, here's a png:

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Two for two!

Had another great race, even after a night of fashion, breaking b-boys, rapping and funk. It was another intra-club race, this time two loops of the Prairie-Roubaix course. I'd write a report, but Trev already put up a hilarious post on the ST blog. Again, Trev handicapped himself, this time by towing a combine harvester for a couple of hundred metres each lap (show off! ;) ), and he still managed to pull alongside me before the final descent to the finish.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Calgary is awesome



I'm impressed that someone got the domain name calgaryisawesome.com...definitely catchier than calgaryishohum.com. But taking a look through all the recent posts, wow, I think Calgary DOES have it going on! Sometimes it's just hard to find out about these things, unless you're in The (appropriate sub-) Scene, be it dance, music, theatre, fashion, comedy, etc etc. For instance, I always seem to randomly find out that High Performance Rodeo is on, making me think I'll completely miss it one of these years.

Anyway, check out the blog.

calgaryisawesome.com

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Cycling training articles

Found some interesting cycling training articles. Tim, I think you'll agree with much of them, particularly the "anti-machine, pro-free-weights" one! :) Even a couple on sports psychology in there.

Peaks Coaching Group articles

One for one

So I might as well take this fleeting opportunity to boast about my current win to races entered ratio...one for one!

The Speed Theory cycling team, being the team-focused, energized, generally awesome team that it is, hosted a little club race, a 20km TT, last Saturday. We scored some wicked weather (I'd say "lucked-out" if I had a purely Canadian audience, but the alternative translation of said phrase being the exact opposite, I'll resist), and had a solid turnout of 23. We did a couple of laps as a group to get familiar with the course. Basic directions are "turn right at every intersection, not including driveways" (since the 15,000 sq ft houses in the area have significant driveways). Rolly, twisty, gravelly, with the odd horse and even a horse-drawn carriage...I think the term is "technical".

Description of the race itself: I pedalled really hard for 20km.

Admittedly, I was on a TT bike while other, stronger guys rocked their road bikes (you know who you are (<cough> Trev)), but still, gotta celebrate the small victories! :)

http://speedtheorycyclingteam.blogspot.com/2010/03/club-rave-20-km-tt-results.html

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Battle Abbey

It's been far too long since my trip to Battle Abbey to still not have a post about it. I'm reconsidering my approach to this, and I'm using the reasoning that Rome wasn't built in a day... Not that this post should be compared to Rome.

An interesting prelude to the trip was finding someone to come along. And then when someone did decide to come, not buying their flight until 90 minutes before the flight left Toronto! Nigel, you are setting a bad precedent for procrastinators everywhere! :)

Nigel made it to Calgary, and so Sat morning we drove to meet the chopper in Golden, BC, and fly 150 km south from, well, anything, into the mountains to the hut, with 10 (12?) other skiers, 3 guides and one and a half chefs (two chopper trips) (the second chef was in training, and had recently broken both ankles). Pretty wicked flight - I remember thinking about 30 seconds in that it would take at least 4 hours to cover that ground on skis. Then for the rest of the week, we were skiing from the hut. We had to skin up every bit that we skied down...multiple 1,500foot (about as long at top-to-bottom Mt Buller or maybe half of Lake Louise) runs of untouched powder (we were the first group of the year), racking up something around 32,000 feet of elevation gain for the week. Exhausting but great.

In the mayhem of finding a new abode in the week before the trip, and moving into said abode two days before leaving, I neglected to bring a battery charger for my camera...or a charged battery. I got 6 photos I think, before it died. Moot point though, since I can't find my card reader. Until I find a few select pics to post, here is the group's combined haul:

http://picasaweb.google.com/battleabbey2010/