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.