AZ brevet

I was back down in Tucson this past weekend for another dose of long-distance suffering. Randonneurs are long distance cyclists, brevets is what the event is called. I'd say "those people", except that since I'm two for two on the Arizona rando circuit so far this year, I'm in danger of being required to say "we"!!

Anyway, this event was a 300km - the same one I did two years ago, and again I was put up at a little piece of paradise owned by the esteemed Mr Kenny Phd (suffering) (...we always kid that he has a Phd in suffering. I'm pretty sure he has a few business degrees, but they aren't quite as intimidating on big rides/climbs).

Started out in darkness at 6am, in very chilly conditions. It wasn't REALLY cold, since I was escaping -17 degrees in Calgary by being in Arizona, but when you expect it to get up to 25 or so, and so you hope to pack all your cold-weather clothing in pockets and saddlebags designed to hold a powerbar or multi-tool, you dress just warm enough to not freeze. Since it was dark as we set out, it only got colder over the next couple of hours until the sun rose! Brr!

After the first checkpoint, the glorious sun was up and the temp came up a highly appreciated 10 degrees right quick. Our blinky lights seemed quite unnecessary by now, so while I was last in line, I leant down to turn off my blinky on my rear fork. I slipped, and OW! I had a millisecond to realize what might be happening, before I saw that I'd snatched my hand out the rear spokes, fingers intact. With a smarting finger, from what turned out to be a nice gash, as a reminder, I had the next 200km to think about how close I'd come to losing a finger in order to save the batteries in a $3 blinky light...

Now past the 100km mark, we were willing to start digging a little deeper on our pulls. Our lead group of 12 or so was making good progress, and I was feeling pretty good after the sugar-cocktail of my last energy bar, so I got a bit over-enthusiastic on a pull up a hill, where the young dude in our group, Taylor, took over and hammered the rest of the way. By the top, Stephen was calling out for us to "ease up there, young punks" because we'd lost everyone else. Oops.

We made good progress on the next 60km or so through to Sweetwater Rd, which, if you can see in this terrible photo taken by my iphone the day before, has a super-fun/brutal set of rollers, leading to the big climb of the day up through Gates Pass. I was still feeling great, thanks to the training and nutrition plan from super-coach Trev (and advice of unrelated super-physio Dave Holmes), and couldn't help but lay it down. Entirely un-nice/un-rando of me, and by Gates Pass, it was again just the three of us chugging up the front side and then clocking 70kmh on the descent and into the second and final checkpoint.

I've been finding on these long rides that it's the last third that really wears on you. Last year I bonked and recovered and bonked about seven times between this checkpoint and the end, so I was pretty stoked that we camped out for a few minutes to relax and refuel. We rolled out with a good group of 5 or so.

Without the break-neck speed start from last year, and no Trev drilling it, we were a little behind last year's schedule, and so it seemed that instead of having an hour of tailwind, we turned back north at just the right time to have it be pretty consistently head-wind for the entire ride. Fortunately the wind was very light, but it's still kinda like being up hill both ways!

Frontage Rd is a mind-numbingly straight, sanity-testing road that runs between a railway and interstate for about 40 km, but everyone was taking good pulls and didn't complain (until later). Taylor and I launch a couple of attacks to keep things entertaining, but Stephen wasn't buying it and just rolled us up with his unreleting rando pace after maybe a minute each time. Wim was considerate enough to flat just as we missed crossing the tracks before a mile-long cargo train passed, so we really lost no time we wouldn't have anyway.

By the time we were pulling through the bustling metropolis of Eloy (pop. 200), I was definitely in need of sustenance, but could not bring myself to eat yet another chocolate powerbar. I started trying to barter with the other riders, but Russ insisted on just giving me (apparently I wasn't doing a great job promoting my power bar) a pistachio, almond, honey, etc etc little piece of heaven, that saved me from bonking right into the ditch within spitting distance of the finish.

Well, it seemed like spitting distance. Around then, I saw a sign that said 17 miles to Casa Grande, our destination, but who knows where they measure that from, and those friggen mile things...gah! We'd all run out of water by this point (I was thirsty and I could see everyone else was out, so I didn't bother asking) and we just had to grind out that last bit to the finish.

All in all, though, I felt pretty amazing for having done another ludicrously long ride, and not even cowering in the peleton, either. I definitely got my money's worth at the all-you-can-eat sushi that night!

Herbal remedies

Had a really fun Christmas, visiting a bunch of friends and their families. Unfortunately I also ended up getting really sick...I guess all that socializing doesn't come at a cost mid-winter. It was pretty bad, at one point I went 6 days without talking to anyone face-to-face, other than the grocery store checkout chick. Once I started getting a little better, but still not well enough to train, and I was going out of my mind, I looked up natural remedies for my ailment on the net. Then I went to the store and bought all of them.

The first one I had was a teaspoon of turmeric in milk. I decided they could be categorized by effect/effectiveness, and this one fit into my first category of remedies: preventative. As in, so awful, I'll be more careful to not get sick again, so I don't have to take it again. :)

The next remedy was sliced onion, drizzled with honey. It wasn't very specific about how to do it, but I figured cooked onion couldn't have any magical properties, or I'd be better already (onion, pepper and salt go into nearly everything I cook).

So I cut a slice off an onion, cut that in quarters, and drizzled the honey. In hindsight, I shouldn't have used my organic onion, because I find they have quite a bit more kick to them. Regular raw onion has enough kick.

For the first five seconds, I thought, hey, this is pretty good. The honey really tones down the onion. Then the burning started. First my throat started burning, then my lungs felt like they'd been lit on fire. Not unlike having waaay too much wasabi on your california roll.

So that remedy went into the 'quite possibly works' pile. The way I look at it, if the bugs can handle that sort of treatment, I'm pulling out the guest bed for 'em.

Next up was eucalyptus oil. I have fond memories of eucalyptus from the homeland, both the light fragrance of bush-walking, and the slightly more potent vapours from salves and such. The directions told me to boil some water, add 15 mL of eucalyptus oil, and inhale the fumes. I did as directed. Holy smokes! Did I accidentally make napalm?! Or, more contemporarily but no more politically correct, had I just unleashed chemical warfare on myself? My eyes stung, my throat burned...category two remedy, for sure. And then a few seconds later, it was over...no more vapours or smell. Interesting. Let me try that again...

Paint on a speaker, on camera

Biathlon

Tried biathlon last week. Pretty damn cool!

Quick overview: the two sports are skiing and shooting. The skiing component uses the skate skiing style of cross-country skiing, which is way faster than classic. You ski with a 3.5 kg rifle on your back, then stop, try to get your breathing and heart rate under control, shoot 5 times at 5 targets 50 metres away, and ski a short penalty loop for each miss. I believe a race usually has half the shooting from standing, at a target 10cm diameter, and half prone (lying down) at a target half the size. We were practicing standing the night I went.

I felt a little bit like one of the commandos in a James Bond flick, skiing around with a bad-ass gun on my back. :) We used the same targets as the ones used by the Olympic dudes, but I still hit a few, so that was neat. Unfortunately being a crack shot doesn't help me ride up hills really fast...shame.

Oh, the observant might notice the lobster claw glove. I brought them for warmth, but true to form, couldn't one of my 5-fingered gloves on the night (turns out it was down beside the seat) and used that one instead...luckily it was the left!!

Sweeeet spots

MEC's annual Sweetspots video competition has come up with a very worthy winner!

Movember

With the month of Movember nearly done, my 'stache has gotten to a respectable - some may even say visible! state. So I decided to do a couple of self-portraits...

Still accepting donations for Prostate Cancer Canada at my Movember Mo Space.

Trail running fun

http://www.calgaryroadrunners.com/result.php?item=210

Scroll down...further...further... Ok, now don't look at the ages... ;)

The fast dudes in the long race were FLYING.

Trev ran as well, but post-flu. He has totally dialed in his video-making skillz:

Edworthy XC Nov 13th 2010 from thedoctrine.ca on Vimeo.

I made an appearance at 16:30, but I lucky for me I wasn't doing that hill again!

More trials craziness...

As Mr Pearson said, Danny MacAskill kicks the ever-loving crap out of physics. Again.

Very cool. I couldn't help but think that the wipeouts must be huge. :)

Trail report: bare patches at 1st St and 5th Ave downtown

Last night the forecast was for 10-15cm of snow. And that was after last night being so warm, I walked home carrying my jacket! This morning the warning was still in effect:


So I decided to ski in! Even though I got up 4 hours earlier than Monday morning, I still didn't beat the traffic...people go to work really early here! Or...yeah, I get to work not so early. :)




The bike path along the river was already plowed, but the greenspace between Memorial Drive and the river was perfect, and once I crossed over, there was a good wide strip that had not yet been plowed. Downtown was a little wind-swept, but it was only three blocks to the office.

Turns out skiing in to work is a better conversation-starter than walking a puppy! Women were literally coming up to me to congratulate me on a great idea and ask where I'd skied from...I guess I don't look intimidating in spandex tights.

Train with Trev

Us cyclists are a bit weird. This Saturday, I went to hang out at my buddy Trev's place, and the next thing I know, I'm doing a full race-pace 20km TT! Super fun though...Trev had four computrainers hooked up to a computer, displaying real-time data on a big LCD tv. The guys that had just raced were in our faces cheering the whole time - it was awesome! Trev absolutely crushed it/me, even given the fact that I'm coming out of "off-season", so much so that he was wondering if he'd calibrated correctly. I say his spin classes have just turned him into a friggen machine. I'll see if I can get some video of it posted.

How not to dismount a from cross bike

Shortest cross seasons ever!

What should have been a total non-event, hopping a curb onto the grass at a park, resulted in me hitting the curb, flipping over the handlr bars, and landing on my shoulder.

The images shows the outer-most part of the collar bone (i.e. clavicle), a floating bone fragment trying to push through my skin, and then the other half of my collar bone.

Hasn't actually hurt so much this time around. The worst has been the agonizing hour or so at the hospital, deciding whether to go with surgery (a plate and screws), and the second-guessing since then. I went with the (two) surgeon's advice and did not request surgery. Maybe next time...haha?

Tis the season

Riding home at dusk, it was getting hard to talk to my buddy because my lips were going numb.

I had a waterbottle in the back pocket of my jersey because I'd removed my bike's bottle cages.

Once I got home, I briefly contemplated cleaning my filthy bike, but decided getting in the shower before I started shivering was a far more attractive option.

Sounds like it's 'cross season!

Gran Fondo Whistler

Gran Fondo Whistler is a 120km ride/race from Vancouver to Whistler, with a total of 2400m of ascent - yeeha!


I left after work on Thursday with team mate Charles, and we gunned it all the way to Kamloops, where we stopped in a random, dodgy, highway-side hotel. Next morning, we had the beats cranked as we made our way through at least 19 bouts of rain and fog...no wonder it's so green!..and got to Van by noon.

Once in town, we hit up a great bakery, Uprising Breads, and we met up with buddy Sean, who is now well and truly the high-rolling lawyer type, complete with massive, 300 sq ft, downtown Van condo. Did a short ride out to Kits' Beach and the UBC campus. That evening we walked to registration, and saw the beginnings of usual Friday night mayhem on Robson & Granville streets.

Ok, it's Saturday morning we're up insanely early, and riding the city streets, silently joined by other cyclists, converging on the start. Wild atmosphere...as the sun came up, 4000+ people have ammassed for an early rendition of the national anthem. A blast of the air-horn and the 150 Giro riders (the Gran Fondo's race group) clip in and accelerate toward Stanley Park and the Lion's Gate Bridge. It's pretty sketchy riding...the course is set up for a fun ride, so typical race course logic, like avoiding the use of pylons, was out the window. There is a strong cat 1/2/3 field in the hunt for a share of the $12,000 prize money, so pack-ninja skills are paramount. Right after the bridge, all 150 of us fill the sweeping exit ramp and try to maintain a good line to avoid crashes, all at around 50km/h - everyone's trying to look a few riders ahead to be aware, when suddenly there's a police motorcycle parked on the side! The pack is gutter to gutter, so no chance of swerving - luckily I was in the middle of the pack, and sailed past it unharmed, but I heard tyres lock up, followed by a thuds and crunches of bodies and bikes hitting a large stationary object. Ouch. Charles said he was one of them, but after sliding in sideways and a quick hip-check to the motorbike, he bounced back to straight and kept going!! Others were not so fortunate.

Next is a right turn onto Taylor Way and a hammer up the hill. Another crash, but this time low speed. Then we are on the highway. I understand the view is quite nice, but to maintain position in the pack, avoid unaligned pylons, and wheels of riders doing the same, and keep up the pace, I honestly could be riding in a tunnel. The pace is good through the rolling terrain, until we hit Furry Creek: go time! The pro boys are leading the charge up the hill, others that were at the front are going backwards; it's the general panic of selection #1. I can't quite hang with the leaders, but cresting the hill, I'm quickly joined by a dozen or so motivated dudes, and we quickly start a rolling paceline. A few kilometres of hard work and we catch the leaders as we come into Squamish, the half-way point, and we're joined by another large chase group soon after. Not long to recover: another major hill and hammer time!

Time to hurt...this time I feel better, but I can't sit on a wheel...gaps are opening ahead. I work my way forward, but I can see a major gap ahead. The yellow jersey of Gord Jewett pulls past me and he bridges. C'mon, I tell myself! Embrace the pain! I'm behind just one wheel, but I see a gap open ahead, and can't summon the energy for the sprint to make the gap. As we came up on the plateau, the 15 leaders are already ramping their speed and losing us. A group of about 10 assembles with me...paceline time! No, the group is spent. The leaders are still just a up the road. Ian Auld of Top Gear launches an attack to bridge. I also hit it, catch up, and we do some motivation-assisting two-man pacing up the hill, hurting like hell. But we aren't making ground on the leaders, and the group behind us eventually starts gaining, so we shut 'er down and assimilate back into the chase group.

There are motorbikes coming by, giving us the splits for the leaders and chase groups - cool! But we're down by 4 mintues now. I try a couple of times to get a good paceline going, but any time I raise the tempo, I'm off the front, and the four or so Trek Red Truck riders are pulling, content to let me dangle but not put time into them, so I eventually settle in with the group.

Where's Lockie? (I'm #51)
Photo: tesseract33

10km to go: a young lad from Picci attacks, joined by a Trek Red Truck rider. They get about 100 metres out, and another TRT rider attacks, joined by a 4th. I'm boxed in on the gutter. From then on, we know that this is the race. 5km to go...attacks are going, but no one can bridge to the breakaway. It is keeping our pace very high though, and we catch the break.

1km to go: The Welcome to Whistler sign suddenly appears. Nearly done! With so many TRT riders, one of them must be saving themselves. Plus there's probably fresh legs amongst the slackers in the group. There's a right and left turn just before the finish, so I attack. I hit the corner at speed and get a small break...but I'm hurting and there's a short downhill right after, so the group gets in my draft. We're strung out. There are hundreds of spectators, and I'm shocked at how loud the cheering crowd is. I lead around the last corner. But the finish is still quite a ways...I'm blowing up as the group swarms with 100 to go...I roll through in 24th.

How to do a lead out for the competition, by Lachlan. Starting 40seconds in.


What a fun race! Chatting with riders later, I hear Tyler Trace of TRT took our field sprint for 15th, and Andrew Pinfold of US pro team United Healthcare took the overall.

Sean came up that arvo and we stayed to party in Whistler Sat night, then knocked off the drive back to Calgary in one shot on Sunday.

Bow 80 pre-ride and aftermath

I've been hearing great things about the Bow 80, an 80km MTB race that links up a bunch of awesome Kananaskis trails, so I was pumped to join Stappie, Bunnin, McNeil, Baylee, Bakke and a couple of other hard men for a pre-ride this past weekend.

We left via Station Flats, and everything was going great for about the first 45 minutes, which is when I did a bit of a superman down some rock-strewn single-track. My left side took a bit a beating, but I was able to keep going. No problem...only 6 and a bit hours to go.

I managed to pull myself together for Powderface, but after a bit of gravel, got introduced to real MTB climbing...instead of the usual 100-metre steep spin-up, it was an hour of so of pretty consistent switching-backing as we worked up Jumping Pound Ridge and Cox Hill. I blew to bits.

I eventually caught up to Bakke in time for the thunder, lightening, rain, and reaching the exposed mountain top. Nothing like a few 3-million-volt bolts of lightening to keep you from dilly-dallying. We made it to the descent without incident, and Bakke then got to put on a bit of descending school - when he was in sight, that is. But he waited at regular intervals, while I bumped, crashed and careened down the hill side in typical fashion. No other major injuries, but every little fall involved another body-shot, charlie horse, or corked calf, which was taking its toll!


Note the interesting seat angle...thanks to a ditch seen a little late

Eventually we reach the bottom, at Dawson Creek, and had only 30 or so km of foot-deep mud to negotiate until we got on the Tom Snow double-track to get back to the car park. The others looked fresh and clean, I guess they'd had half an hour to kill while they'd waited. Took almost 7 hours on the nose.


Props to Bakke for the well-timed pants change

As a little post-script, I continued the fine tradition of education-by-injury: turns out the canteloupe-sized rock I took to the kidney did a number on my obliques and/or psoas, which is worst when I try to sit up in bed...like I needed another reason to stay lying down!

Tour de Bowness

Tour de Bowness has been one of my favourite races since I started racing: well-supported, local stage race, no pesky time trial, and the provincial criterium championship. Last year it was my first cat 1/2 race ever, and I ended up coming 4th last in the hill climb, and I DNF-ed (Did Not Finish, meaning I was lapped) the crit and DNF-ed the road race. Ouch! I was planning to do a lot bette this time around.

We started on Saturday with the road race. I nearly missed it, with my cat having a little fit and showing signs of UTI - I had a little panic, deciding whether I was totally neglectful to leave him for a couple of couple (couple? I'm so unrealistic!) Thankfully my neighbour is a cat-lover and gave me kitty drugs and some advice, and I left Sherman.

Since the RR was only 80km, it's generally a hammer-fest from the get-go - this year the attacks started before the first corner 500m into the race. Godfrey was again my super-star feeder with the rock-solid delivery - eternal gratitude, bro! The top of the one decent hill in the circuit was usually time for someone to attack, but it generally came back together in the following flats through the start-finish. By mid-race, a break of around 8 got away. In subsequent laps, a couple of guys got away to try to bridge. The chase group didn't work too badly together though, and we kept them within sight...with 3 laps to go, we had them just 20 seconds away. No need to bridge, right? Well, that was as close as we came...they hit it around then, and we basically never saw them again. Too bad, I felt pretty good at the end and took the field sprint for 11th.

That night I was at the vet until midnight, to find out my cat was just having a little attention-deficit. Great! But time for bed. The next morning I was up at three, to follow triathlon natural Trev as he did his swim leg of the half-ironman, in a kayak, videoing with a hero-cam (video looks great!). Back to bed for a nap, then time for the COP (Canada Olympic Park) hill climb. Pretty straight foward...hammer for a couple of minutes on the road, while the downhill kids were hooting and hollering on their way down through the trees. This hill climb is a three-up, so we started in groups of three. I had some great companions in Gideon, TT specialist of H&R, and Manuel the hill-climbing pocket rocket. They pulled away by the end, but I got an amazing PB for the hill, 3:38, 20 seconds faster than last year, when we had a hurricane tail-wind. Suhweet. Good enough to 16th.

Monday was the big one - the provincial criterium championship. Thankfully they did away with the ridiculous "neutral lap" of last year, which is often done at 50km/h..neutral? Pfff! It would be 45 laps of pure pain and tight-pack, nutso- cornering and awesome-sprinting craziness. I got in a break after a few laps in, and the next 20 laps were super intense. We managed to drop most of the pack, but a couple of guys bridged up, so there were about 10-12 of us in the group. Semi-pro teams Trek Red Truck and H&R had a few guys in the break, but Bailey, Jesse and I took our fair share of pulls. On one, I pulled around to take my pull, meaning the usual ramp up to max heart rate for a lap...and going through the start-finish, I hear Dallas (who, with Godfrey, were way up in the pimp Oakley commentators booth...think a tent on top of a Greyhound bus!) say "...and Lockie is going on a flyer!..." I look back and the group is 50 metres back. Oops, that wasn't the plan! haha I slowed up - no chance of holding them off solo for 15 laps!

With 6 laps to go, H&R Dustin attacked off the front, and every lap, put a couple of seconds on us. With 2 laps to go, Jesse and I got on the front and drilled it (read, I took a pull for 10 seconds, before Jesse the steam-train took over) and in that lap, we were back together. Out of province pro Jamie Sparling attacked with a lap to go, but he's a marked man...he wasn't able to get away. It was coming down to a sprint. An RMCC guy, who I had no idea was with us, I guess he was lurking at the back that whole time, came around me. After rounding the last corner, it was a drag race. RMCC guy blew everyone away, and I held off a couple of dudes to get 7th. Awesome, I'm stoked with that!

Montana road trip

Last month, I did a solo drive down to Bozeman, Montana, to ride in an amazing stage race, which I blogged about on the Speed Theory team blog. In the interests of brevity, and keeping it mostly cycling-focused, I skipped mentioning a few details...

First, I had a slight money debacle. I currently don't have a credit card, because after I lost it back in May, I didn't want to tell the bank and have to memorize another number (I have the memory of goldfish). I stopped in at the Speed Theory store before I left Calgary, and half an hour out of town I got a call from Speed Theory saying I'd left my debit card at the store. Crap! I was running a bit late (who, me?) so I didn't turn around, but hey, no problem - I had a bunch of cash in my wallet...

It wasn't until I got to the border that I realised I was forgetting a little detail about the whole different currency thing. I had to exchange $10 with some other travellers just to get my visa-waiver to enter the States. With the $4 change from that, I bought a gallon of gas, which was enough to get to Bozeman Fri night, and then to the TT Sat morning. After the TT, I couldn't rely on my winnings (having come last), but thankfully I met a French Canadian expat, who exchanged my remaining $60. I had enough to get another tank of gas, buy half a pizza Sat night, and after my host bought a couple of tubes off me, I had enough to get back to Calgary!!

I realized/learned/was told back when I was a
stingythrifty rock-climber, that communities are much happier to see you if you spend money while you're there, so I always make an effort to fill up with gas and buy food in whatever town I stay in/near. Obviously I couldn't do that this time around. Instead, I subsisted mostly on canned beans and canned fish, which I brought as a backup, for the road-side bivvy I expected to need on the way back on Sunday.


Surprisingly, the combination of garbanzo, black and lima beans didn't make me more farty than usual...it's possible my body was in a state of shock that weekend at the treatment it was receiving.

Driving down, I was pretty amazed by the Montana scenery that unfolded before me, even just what was visible from the highway. Wanting to do the trip in a reasonable amount of time (ended up being 9:30 hours there, and just 8:15 on the way back), I didn't stop to take photos, so here are a few of the pics I shot from my car, generally while straddling a couple of lanes...

Nationals photos

Some shameless cross-posting of photos from Nationals

New wheels! Got these bad boys on Thursday, in time for Nationals. 404 front, 808 rear. Ride like a dream, which is clearly what I'm thinking in this photo :) Actually, it's at the top of the steepest hill on the nationals circuit, so now a hairpin corner, a sprint to get up to 40kmh again....and then recover!!!!


Staging, before the start, with Trev beside me, my super feeders Mike and Darcy at the fence, and Svein Tuft (Garmin) in front.


Spending a little time in the winning break (before being spat back into the peleton).

Canadian Road National Championships

Oh my god, I just had the ride of my life! As I said on the Speed Theory blog, I was pumped just to be lining up with full-on pro's. Then I managed to get in, and do a couple of laps with, the winning break of the day. And not only did I manage to finish, but in a totally awesome, way better than expected, 38th out of 154 guys!

I'm stoked.

Sounds like dinner time

If I wait until I download an app that will rotate this video, my nieces will probably be old enough to do it for me (and tell me I'm an old git with no concept of technology), so here it is! Thanks for uploading, Tim!

And if my translation of baby is correct, it is time for me to go home for my own num-num's.... :)

The girls are walking! from Lachlan Holmes on Vimeo.

The lastest addition to the stable

It's getting a little cramped in my lounge room...