Quote of the day...

Originally I was having some second thoughts about taking the extra week to be able to participate in this training camp because a lot was happening at work this week. Today proved that I had nothing to worry about and that all of this training is going to pay off big. Things looked a little bleak from hearing what was going on in the office in the first couple of days, but my team pulled together and sorted out the problems that cropped up before the week was through. I should’ve known from the beginning that they would have no problems. As for the training camp, we have seen some incredible gains in a very short period of time. Although the individual skills of a tandem team are very important, putting two strong riders together will not always make a strong team. The team must learn to work together, anticipate the other’s movements, and most of all to trust each other (especially the stoker on the back!).

We have put a lot of time into honing some of the more technical aspects of track racing, such as maintaining a straight and steady line at high speed and doing a standing start. There are two types of starts, a standing start and a flying start. For the standing start, a person (usually a larger individual) stands behind the rider and holds onto his seat or frame and then the rider must start the race without any initial speed. This may not sound overly difficult at first, however you must remember that in track cycling the bike only has one gear and it runs on a fixed up. This means that the rider has to accelerate from 0 to around 55km/h in the same gear!

So, I finally got an itinerary of what the trip to Switzerland is going to look like. Apparently we have almost a week of acclimatization and training where we will be able to ride the track and ride the time trial and road race courses. The time trial course is apparently quite technical and short, neither of which are good for me. I tend to excel in the races where a really high, sustained effort is required because I am good at shutting out the pain and just driving forward. This course will have multiple turns and we will likely end up doing it 3 times meaning several turnarounds in addition to all of the turns on the course. To add to the excitement, they predict that the roads will be muddy and slippery because the locals are in harvest season right now… great. I am going to be playing the clip of Bobby Julich’s Tour de France ending time trial in my head :(

Finally, my quote of the day goes to our coach for the training camp (the guy on the motor bike) “You know what they say… Small headlights Big penis!”

Another successful day at the track. My stoker and I were consistently pushing lap times that would give us a track record at the Burnaby track and possibly put us in the range to get a medal at world championships. Track cycling is very different from road cycling in that there are several events (like in track and field) each lasting from as short as 10-12 seconds to a maximum of around 5 minutes (for individual events). The level of effort and the amount of power required to do this type of event is much greater than in road cycling as you have to accelerate the bike from 0 to upwards of 60km/h (for the kilometer race) and try to figure out how hard you can push for the short distance without your body shutting down on you. The joke that is used a lot at the track is that at the end of a pursuit (4000m for elite men) is that if a person did not pace their race properly it is as if they have a boat anchor that falls out in the last kilometer because they just simply cannot maintain the speeds that they started at. The timing and efforts are so precise that going a couple tenths of a second faster in the early laps can cost 1-2 seconds in later laps (keep in mind that a lap in the pursuit on a 200m track should be around 14 seconds). Although 1-2 seconds doesn’t sound like a lot, track cycling is similar to events like the 100m sprint where the event can be decided in the thousandths of a second. At track provincial championships a couple of weeks ago, I ended up being tied down to the thousandth of a second for first place and had to do another race for first place.

It was also a really good day for us because we solved a lot of mechanical problems. If you read my post yesterday, you would know that I said that tandems have a lot of mechanical problems. As of the start of riding the other day, we had a broken crank, two creaky bottom brackets, a stripped bolt holding the crank on that prevented us from fixing the creaky bottom bracket in the rear, a stripped bolt on the stem holding my stoker’s handlebars on and a couple of other little things as well. By the end of today, all we need to do is pick up a couple of new bottom brackets (turned out they were toast) and put it all back together again.

Everyone has been telling me that the track in Burnaby is probably one of the hardest tracks in the world to ride and that all of our times will definitely be faster in Aigle, Switzerland. Below is a link to the website for the world cycling centre, home of the UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale) where they actually have a 360 view of the track that we will be riding.

http://www.cmc-aigle.ch/En/

I haven’t managed to find a site where our results with be posted, but I should be able to get that from our coach another day. I found out that there will be 41 tandem teams from around the world competing at this world championships. To give you an idea of the level of cycling, there are probably about a quarter that will be dropped from the peloton early in the race, about a half dozen that will be strong enough to break away and give most top non-disabled riders a good run for their money. We will need to get in the upper third of results in order to keep a spot on the national team next year and we hope to get top 5 or even a medal in the time trial. While in Aigle, we will compete in the one kilometer (the kilo), the pursuit (four kilometers) and a 200m sprint for track events and then a 24km time trial and a 105km road race. Should be fun!

So, after much coaxing from friends, family, coworkers, and the love of my life I have finally started a blog! There have been many reasons that I avoided this for a long time, namely time, but I am also not a big fan of publishing anything without putting a lot of thought and time into editing what I write. But, what the heck, I am just going to blurt out the first things that come to mind about what is happening in my racing and other things on my path to Beijing.

I am currently in Burnaby, BC taking part in a small trianing camp with two of the other three tandem cycling pairs on the Canadian Paralympic national team staying with my stoker (this is what the person in the rear of a tandem team is called). So far we have had a couple of long rides on the road, two sessions on the indoor Burnaby track, and two "Coffee rides". For those of you who are not familiar with the sport of cycling, one of the most critical parts of training is to get a large volume of kilometers on the bike so that your body builds up a resistance to the long hours in the saddle. So a long ride will usually be at least 3-4 hours and be up to 6-8 hours long. Yes, even after riding for many years, it really hurts your rear end.

For those not familiar with the difference between road cycling and track cycling; tracks for bicycles are either constructed of concrete or wood and can be indoors or outdoors. The distances can vary from around 400m around (like the track in Calgary) to around 200m (like the one in Burnaby). Similar to stock car racing, the shape is usually an oval and the corners have a very steep bank, the shorter the track is, the steeper the bank. The 200m track in Burnaby is apparently around 49 degrees, which means that one has to be going at least around 30km/h to avoid sliding off!

The picture that you see is a picture of the inside of the velodrome. Those of you that are familiar with the volleydome will recognize the resemblance to the "volleydome" in Calgary. Apparently, the BC cycling association ran out of money to maintain the velodrome, so they sold it to the BC volleyball association and now rent the track time back from the Volleyball association (hence the volleyball nets and courts in the middle).

As for the cycling tradition of the "coffee ride", this simply refers to a training ride where one only brings along the tools needed to repair a flat tire and a couple of bucks to pick up a pastry and a coffee at the half way point of the ride.

Now, you may be asking, if I am only riding for around 4-5 hours a day, what am I doing with the rest of my time? Well, I am quickly discovering that tandem bikes have twice the number of mechanical problems as a single bike. The main problem is that many of the parts are custom for a tandem bike so they are either unconventional, or hard to find. The other major problem is that the remainder of the parts are ones that are made for a single bike and therefore not build to withstand the additional stresses and strains of two people riding the tandem… so they break twice as often. So we have been spending at least an hour or two every day trying to fix various bits and pieces.

The rest of the time? Eating, sleeping, and the occasional hours of work (the laptop is a mixed blessing. The up side is that I can work on the road… but, the down side… is that I can work on the road :P)

That is enough for one day.