Not now chief...

Shaun, myelf and Hugo

Not sure if you've ever seen the you tube video for "my new haircut"

parental discretion advised...but when the Broski is in the zone he is in the zone.

I started to write a post in the morning, but it sucked. More whining about this and that, frustrated about circumstances, so I just had a glass of Powerthirst and got on with the day.

Listened to some Bob Marley, chilled, then blasted some Deadmau5 to get it going.

The team layed out the tactic for the day, seemed simple enough. Big field of 125 riders, the course had some element of technicality as there were a series of sweeping turns over roads that had abviously blown up with land mines at some point during the war. There was a sweet 600 meter climb that bit into the legs and some winding roads, then another big ring climb to complete the 15km laps through Hudson. The race was a good 145km, a little onger than the norm, but when you've got serious km's in the legs it's good. The course kind of reminded me of Niagra, but on a slighter escarpment(which was funny enough the first race I ever won as a cat 3).

Anyways race starts off full gas, break goes, Spidertech and RWR at the front to bring it back, Aaron Fillion goes across the gap on the hill (shockingly fast) I'm on it like butter on popcorn, cause Aaron is a freind of mine and although some guys don't give him the respect he deserves, I certainly do.

We hammer it out get almost our whole team in the front group, which is nuts. Get the gap to 90 seconds roll for an hour and a bit, then our team goes to the front strings it out, Shaun from My team attacks, two others follow, I hop on, get a free ride, we get to hill, Shaun goes"lets go" he pushes the pace up the hill, we drop the guys it's just the two of us....

Good and bad, good that's it's just the two of us, bad cause therre is 56km's left...I shut my my brain off...don't think abput the the outcome, think of the process. Ride hard up the hills, and harder everywhere else.

Now we are motoring, all of a sudden it just didn't feel that bad, it stopped hurting, I knew we were going fast, cause well my I bike was reading 47km/hr on the flats...hmmm that's pretty fast, I thought we must have a tailwind, but then it was reading above 43km/hr in a different direction and rarely did it drop below 40km/hr, even after the hill we were able to crank it up pretty fast by keeping it in the big ring.

So we hear the bell, one to go, we really crank it..give it everything cause we had no idea of gaps or anything happening behind. We decided thatI would take it since I was able to do a little bit more of the work, I cross the line smile...then hear "one to go" they made a mistake...pause...

you ever get that sinking feeling, like you just ran over your cat or something? I had some negative thoughts...I thought I can't do another lap at that speed, I just emptied the tank...I thought if we get caught I'm going to take my bike and throw it over cliff, I seriously felt aweful...then I rememebred a few things...one winning hurts, if it's too easy it sucks...two I wanted to win for Tasha, since she has had a shit time lately..three stop thinking, suck it up and just fricking ride.

So we rode one more and you know what I probably could have done one more if you told me I had too. It goes to show that you think your legs can or can't but really it's your mind that tells them and not vice versa, first you control your thoughts then your legs. Thinking is good to a certain point, but just be.

You know we put 2minutes into our teamates then 4 minutes into the field...holy shit.

Our team raced the perfect race, good job boys, I obviously owe them huge cause it was definetly something that stands out in terms of perfomances, think about it. We finished 1,2,3,4 and Aaron Fillion rounded out the 5th money spot.

Maybe the week up in Quebec city did me some goo, a little secret training. Also I would like to thank our manager Chritian Leduc, who does not try to control the team, but rather lets us play the cards, but is wise and when he does give imput it goes a long way.

"La pire chose que tu faire au velo, c'est de trop pensee, quand tu commence a te doubtee tu est fini mon homme."

Hats off to Shaun McCarty as well who rode like a champ, and after the luck we've had lately this one goes a long way for me. I'm sure he wanted to win as well, so we'll have to set him up.

DSJ

Struck by a car, podium places, press conferences and commercials

That about sums up the last week of my life. I did tweet a picture of my face after I was struck by a car on the way to a time trail. I never really likes TTing know I know why...Luckily I managaed to minimize the bodiliy damage, coming away with a busted up nose, a swollwn knee and the general feeling of well being hit by car. There has been a little ongoing pain and discomfort but after seeing what happened recently to multiple cyclists throughout Ontario and Quebec I am not going to whinbe too much about it, cause it could have been worse. Luckily my bike took alot of the impact and the side of my shoe, good thing I had my foot up at the top of the pedal stroke. THe driver was charged as she was clearly in the wrong, but she was remoresfull, it`s just one of those things...

So we raced on the weekend, I was definelty not 100%. But managed to ride ok, our team ended up winning, i squeaked out 3rd on the first day and 2nd overall on the weekend. But it was more out of circumstance than anything else.

Monday morniing we met the press for our team launch and press conference. I managed to give an absolutley horendous interview in french for CBC about car vs bike accidents, I hope no one saw it.

Then we were off to shoot a commercial for LG that will run during the Tour de France. Fortunately or unfortunately you may not see too much of me as the camera guys didn`t want a guy with scabs all over his face in fornt of the lense...who knew. Oh well on to the next chance to be famous.

Originally we were supposed ot be in Quebec till beauce, but circumstances have been complicated and we have to go back to Ontario to fill out insurance forms, get replacement costs of equipment and I need to have a little follow up to make sure I`m pedaling in circles. Shit, I was just having fun being a mini super star in Quebec, on tv, in the paper getting treated like a cchamp at the LG factory. It s a pretty sweet set up, they are even going to do a few custom alterations to our skin suits to make em as fast as possible.

So, on tap this weekend is some racing in MTL and we will head home and I will have to ask our manager if he wants me to do Charlevoix or Killington road race. I won Charlevoix last year, it s an awesome race, but after you win it, it`s like well what else could I do. You have to keep on challenging yourself, you know. If he tells me to do it, I`ll go but it would be fun for a new challenge...so hard to make decisions.

If there is a million spellling mistakes, I appologize this computer has a french windows version and well there you have it.
DSJ

Brossard crit

Well this week was interesting...a little laryngitis on Monday...I 'm still not sure if it was more allergies, but whatever...then a little calf pain Friday, I think my set was just a mm too high, then Saturday I was riding at about 45km hr and was stung by a bee right below the eye. Eesh.

So never a dull moment in C wall.

Round 2 of Quebec Cup racing this weekend for a crit in Brossard. The tactic was simple...attack our brains out and win. Well we didn't want to make the same mistake(s) we made last week and we wanted to get the first win out of the way to make room for more.

We had a new addition to to the team as our Teammates Shaun and James landed from Australia earlier in the week. We let them know that although there was not 10,00$ on the line, the racing level is intense in Quebec that you would swear there was 10,000$ to win the race. Sometimes you can say allot without saying too much.

As we really haven't had that much opportunity to race together, it's a little bit of a learning curve, but JS Perron made sure that we weren't firing all bullets in the first 5minutes.

The pace was high and Garneau Club Chaussures was the main protagonist of the race, initiating , covering and blanketing the race in a sea of white, black and pink.
Our hard work payed off as it cause a split of about 13 guys off the front. We had 3 guys in this move, but so did Speidertech as they had their sprinters contingent there.

We were relentless in our attacks and forced them and the others into chasing and covering.
Hugo , myself and JS were in the red zone countless times. I was able to get off the front and do 6 laps but I could not manage to get more than 7 seconds advantage. I was caught and we kept on reshuffling , attacking and countering until Hugo and Kevin Lacombe slid away.

We were very confident in Hugo and although he would have his work cut out for him, it was a good hand to play. Hugo made us proud and took the sprint.

JS fired a well timed attack a steal the third spot. I covered the last digs as they tried to catch JS and barley missed 4th spot by a few cm's and had to settle for 6th.

When we found out Hugo got it was very satisfying to see the team successfully execute tactics and take two spots on the podium.

As it turns out our Australian teammates took 1st and 2nd in the bunch kick as well, so great day for Garneau Club Chaussures in Brossard. The whole team rode awesome, way to go boys!

As well, Jeff Schiller won the Springbank Road Race in Southern Ontario, good job Jeff and the Ontario Boys.