As you can see, trying to wheely across the finish line when your rear brake doesn’t work and while being clipped in doesn’t work out the best…
Archives For Biking
As we all know after reading my previous post, sleep is important, but there are things that are preventing sleep. Mainly technology. I admit to reading my emails before I get out of bed in the morning. Which are you guilty of?
I recently had to turn down a grassroots sponsorship offer from Cove Bike Shop due to the wheelbase on their DH bike being shorter than I need. Because I’m tall, it is hard to find bikes that have a long enough wheelbase, even in Large sizes. Unfortunately, the wheel base of the of the Cove Shocker is 37mm shorter than my Commencal.
I’m pretty disappointed because it’s a pretty neat bike and that I won’t be riding for our local bike shop. Cove have been building excellent bikes on the North Shore for a long time and have a lot of cool people working in the shop which I think I could have benefited from. Hopefully there will be more opportunities in the future!
My dad shared this info graph with me this morning and I found it quite interesting. I never knew that athletes got THAT much sleep (with the exception of Tiger Woods). This info graph shows the importance of sleep, but unfortunately it doesn’t explain HOW one could get that much sleep. I don’t know I could go to bed at 6:00 or 7:00 PM and expect to fall asleep within a few minutes…
I just got home from a weekend in Whistler/Pemberton training with Todd Schumlick, the owner and director of PerformX Racing. We spent time learning workouts in the gym, talked about the mental aspect of racing, and talked about nutrition. I had a great time and learned a lot.
The main things that I took away from this weekend are:
- I need to do it on my own.
- Nobody can get stronger or faster but myself.
- I need to put the time and effort into training.
In nine weeks I’m getting back together with Todd to update some of the workouts and plan for the race season.
We’ve had quite a bit of rain falling here in North Vancouver so getting out to ride has become a little bit of a hard thing to do considering I have a brother who doesn’t like to ride in the rain for fear of getting wet. I’ve never been able to figure that one out… Yesterday was no different and it was actually raining quite hard so even I was contemplating doing a workout rather than hit the trails. I soon realized that I shouldn’t even be considering training over riding a bike after not riding for a week, so we picked up a friend and went out to Cypress to get some wet weather riding in. After getting to the top, I was glad to say that it wasn’t raining. It was snowing… It all went downhill from there (pun intended) all three of us had some pretty good crashes and got very very wet and cold.
My two companions contemplating ditching me and taking the warm truck ride home.
Although we could wring water out of our gloves and our bikes were 10 pounds heavier with mud, it was a good day.
We went for a ride on Seymour after the week of cold and snow thinking that it might be good to ride. When we got to the top, however, this is what we saw…
It was still winter up top with plenty of snow, but that didn’t stop us.
And look, it’s spring at the bottom! That shows how a little elevation change can make a huge difference. Even with all of the snow on the top, none of it was actually on the trail. I guess the North Shore trail gnomes were doing their job of keeping the trails clean and clear for us to ride!
We went to spend time with family for Christmas in Chilliwack/Abbotsford. I decided that while we were in Chilliwack to ride Vedder Mountain, one of my favorite shuttling places to ride. My brother didn’t want to get wet, so I was on my own. Surprisingly enough, I wasn’t the only one riding there. There were a few other guys skipping turkey to shred some trails. I guess I’m not the only weirdo who like to ride his bike no matter what day it is…
Dreamin’ of a white Christmas?
This is what our living room looks like. We have no garage or any other place to set up our “bike shop”, so my mom has let us take over the living room in our rental house. In my opinion, it looks a lot better than a regular living room anyways. What kind of mother would allow this? A mother who wants her children to follow their dreams and is willing to make sacrifices. We moved to another province just so that my brother and I could ride our bikes more often and be closer to the major spots. Sure it helps that BC is a beautiful, we don’t have to shovel snow every day in the winter, and we have lots of family close to us, but that’s still a major commitment.
Just this morning, my dad I talked about my plans after high school and he wanted to make sure that he wasn’t “pushing” me to follow my dreams of racing instead of going to university after high school. Who would ever want to go to university if they could ride their bike for a living? I realize that the journey to the World Cup won’t always be easy or comfortable and there will be times, probably while I’m sleeping on somebody’s couch, where I think that university would be the easier path. In those moments, I’ll just think of myself sitting behind a desk in a hot stuffy room with 300 other youngsters listening to a teacher in the perfect riding conditions and that should kick me back into the right way of mind. Reminding me of that just shows how much my parents care and how much they’re supporting me on my journey.
After a short downhill ride on Seymour, my dad, brother, and I went exploring for road biking trails that we could ride. I was finding that riding on the roads with all the vehicles wasn’t really my thing and that I wasn’t going about it the right way. I didn’t like the vehicles flying past me and the roads around our house aren’t the flattest. There are quite a few hills which isn’t good for what I want to do now, which is build a base endurance. I will achieve that by going for long “easy” rides on relatively flat terrain for long periods of time. Later on in the spring I’ll go riding on the hills and also do some sprint training.
We heard that there was a good road biking/walking path literally right behind our house, so after a short drive, we thought we found where it started. After we got home, I washed my DH bike, changed from my downhill gear to my road bike gear, and went out to try and see if it was what we were looking for. It was perfect. The trail is 10 kilometers long with only 2 or 3 minor climbs and I can do the full 20 kilometers (there and back) in under 50 minutes which means I can keep my average speed 23-24 Km/h. I am working up to being able to ride 50-60 kilometers in one ride, so this trail is the perfect road bike training ground. It is also a very beautiful ride which helps distract me from how cold it is.
