Sweedish Berries

So yesterdays secret training called for 5 hours steady aerobic ride and four hours on Sunday. Given that the weather was a little, well a lot nicer Saturday, I figured I'd get as much as I could in on Saturday and deal with it on Sunday.

So I did a quick 40 km before joining the Cornwall group ride, where I met up with Tasha and my new Protege Matt Despaties whom I brought over to the RWR side of the force. So group ride gets going, a little slow but it picked up nicely and made for a great way to get a couple hours in, and no group ride is complete without a couple sign sprints. No matter who you are it's always good to mix it up a little in the real world. I mean you can sprint your brains out in training, but doing against a group I think is great for the timing and a little bit closer to racing, well sort of.

So Tash and I brought Matt on our Kenyon Road where we lit it up a bit on the rolling hills, gravel and only got chased by one dog. I was really impressed with the kid, Matt, I'm glad that he's going to hook up with Nick Vipond for some coaching and join the RWR juniors, did I mention I was impressed with the 17 year old who is already 6 foot 2, before you know it he's going to be as tall as me. Nick already warned me not to totally rip his legs off after all we want him to progress nicely, but no worries, I made sure he didn't exceed his time and told him ease up here and there and sheltered him from the wind on what could have probably been a very long last 20 km home for him.

So it was still 15 degs outside so I rode on the nicely shoulder highway 2 to Lancaster and back after that. So, I had made a pit stop at 4 hours in to replenish with some chocolate milk which gave me the biggest brain freeze...and some water and a coke which I continued to sip on...
So everything was ok until I was about 10 km from home, so about 190 km into my ride when all of a sudden the pedals just weren't turning over as well and the over pass felt really high! Oh no, I know what is gong to happen, my bars felt like they were melting into ground and I knew there was a store about a km ahead. I was a really long km. So I walk into the store and see salvation in form of Sweedish Berries,mmmmm, I rip the pack open at the counter and dumped the contents into my mouth for a big mouthful of sweedish berrie goo. About 30 seconds later everything was alright and I made it home where my sister had cooked up a huge spaghetti meal for us.

We headed out for our ride this morning clearly under estimating the March rain, and we were soaked and frozen after about 20 minutes, so as much as I love being tough, I just couldn't take it after a huge couple weeks of training and don't think my body could deal with an extra stress today, so we resigned ourselves to ride the trainers to finish off the last few hours. Well Tasha finished the hours, I cut it short as I also have a session to do tomorrow.

I was trying to be Belgian tough, lovin the rain and misery, but it's definitely a balance between tough and stupid cause being tiered, cold and eating road grime from 4 inch puddles is probably the easiest way to make yourself sick this time of year and like I said, we were way under dressed, not to mention my quasi bonk yesterday.

Moral of the story? It's great to push yourself and punish your self, but you have to keep in mind that you break your body down so it can build itself up better and stronger, if you push it too hard and too long you just don't get to benefit from the damage you inflicted on yourself.
As much as you and your coach put together a program to prepare you to reach your goals, you have to listen to yourself, or at least the person beside you throwing helmets or watter bottles, hehe.

DSJ

Coming together

Hey,
I know,I know we haven't really been blogging too much, trying to get Tasha to write a blog is like trying to get a dentist to tell you it's not really important to floss, but so it goes.

Things are starting to come together really nice. I really drained the batteries out of my wuss meter the last couple weeks and put in some good chamois time. I'm working on my invention as well, it's a chamwow short, you know those infomercials on TSN, Vince selling the German made Chamwow's, I'm trying to develop a chamois that retains that much water and sweat. On second thought, I just hd a visual and maybe it's not such a great idea, it's a little derriculous.

Ok, back to buisness. Met up with the some of the RWR's guys for some good old fashion computrainer pain. Nash, Marky Mark, Jimmy the Greek, Casey Skywalker Roth, Glen the Main Man Rendell, Chris Pretoria Pet Ried and Ron Firetruck Amos. It was pretty ballistic from the start. It didn't feel that bad until about ten minutes to go when Nash was closing on me fast and there was not a whole lot of reserve left, he came within 50 virtual feet of me, as in reality he was about 4 feet away, and almost got me, but I had my friend Elvis Presley talking me through the last couple hundred painful, painful meters. I don't actually remember the last couple minutes, but I know they happened.

So it was good to mix it up with the guys, indoors, but who cares, it makes for good training and had we been outside I would have fell off my bike.

So that was a nice little "test" to finish our training camp. Lone behold, we're going to the Catskills in a few days to do Agent Orange camp. What is Agent Orange camp? I'm not exactly sure, but I know Paul Datars is gonna lead us through some pretty sweet 180 km rides.

Other than that, just a few random thoughts. Man do the Senators look great these days or what? I tell you watching Alfredson set up plays, man the guy is so skilled, it's sick.

Oh yah and even us people down in the country here in Cornwall have been follwing the FOX news escapade. I can't belieive what they said about the Canadian Army, I know they were trying to be funny, but come on, I would seriously punch that guy in the mouth if I saw him. I'm not a big fan of punching people in the face, but that guy....well both those guys.
That's just ignorant, especially when 4 deceased Canadian Soldiers are being sent to CFB Pettawawa this week. Those guys (Canadian Army) are heroes fighting a fight that we didn't start.
It's funny how patriotic I've been since coming back from Europe, I never really realized how much of a proud Canadian I really am.

Ok, my rant is done. That gave me some extra anger today to pound the pedals, I somehow went so hard I got a flat on the Computrainer, now that doesn't happen everyday.

DSJ

D.A.N Camp

Nice and Sunny in C WAll





THe drive way is slanted, Tasha is not that much taller...


What is D.A.N camp?



Well thanks for asking, although it sounds like band camp, it's nothing like that...it's actually the brain Child of Derrick And Natasha and coach Dan Proulx, get it.


It basically involves taking advantage of the great weather to make up on some lost time on the saddle and get some good endurance in before Batenkill's 200km of agony.


We did a great couple rides on the weekend and as weather permits us, have extended some courtesies to get some miles in the legs.


Like I've said before there is some wicked riding out here. And when you have 150 km ish to do, you get a good mix of open roads, rolling hills, farm lanes, gravel paths and scenic ride along rivers and a few small lakes. The great thing is because I grew up here, I have a pretty good bearing of where we are and we can just hammer down a Concession road or two if we get off track of our destinations. It's pretty cool cause anytime we hit the gravel I look over and Tasha comes from out the draft and challenges me a little on the rollers. We were actually on a road today that was getting grated and put the cross skills to use to jump over 6 inches of loose gravel here and there.


So it's basically like doing a mini training camp here in Cornwall, it sounds lame, but it's actually really productive and we don't have to leave any comforts of home and best yet....the price is just right. Although we, well I did manage to shred up a local group ride by accident the other day, sorry guys. I swear I thought I wasn't going hard. Also I try to tell Tash some of the history of the Scottish Highlands and show her that I'm really actually a well diversified person....but I don't think she really cares about my andecdotal stories of the land...oh well, maybe one day...





I feel a little bit like a storm chaser , as we have been glued to the weather network, to optimize the warmth of our rides. But it comes at a perfect time with a few weeks of really hard trainer rides, speed drills and threshold work, we couldn't have asked for anything better.



As well, I'm loving my new Opus Vivace(Thanks RWR,OGC and Charles) and a few modifications we made in my position and set up are great. The bike is super stiff where it needs to be but absorbs the bumps really well. For me the test usually comes with some tempo kind of riding on bad roads, you really need to feel like the bikes gives in the right ways and it sure does.


Hopefully the weather cooperates tommrow as well, supposed to rain,but just maybe we can beat most of it.


Oh yah Happy Birhtday Linda Elliott, Tasha's mom, we hope you enjoy your trip to England...



No early season ride is complete without stopping at least once to adjust something that "doesn't feel right" for the Tash.

Adeno what?

Knock knock.
Who's there?

Adenoviridae

Adenoviridae who?

Adenoviridae who is

gonna make you

sick, ha!

....I'm gonna find a new home in your tonsils and make your life hell for a week or until your body is strong enough to bust up my DNA. I've got 52 different flavors of strands which you have probably not been exposed to since you have been out of the "childcare" loop.
Kids carry me in there lungs and I need to find a better home. Your tonsils look like the perfect place. You'll think that I'm Strep, but joke on you buddy, antibiotics, go for it, they can't touch me. Best of all you can't even prove that I'm in you without doing a ridiculously expensive test most likely. I'll wait until your sleeping and I'll make your tonsils sswweeelll and make you choke on your own saliva.

So that's all I have to say about this week, I'm not sure who invented ibuprofen, but I'm pretty glad he or she did, cause that's my only help for my swollen tonsils. I went to a local establishment to have them "viewed", a lot of help this guy was, he told me I had a virus, no really you are brilliant, I already knew that, I went to see if we could do anything about the fact that I wake up every hour cause my airway collapses and my engorged tonsils fill up my airway...take it up with your family doctor.

He didn't really seem to care that I couldn't breath at night, I guess I thought that was a big part
of the ABC's of medicine, surely they haven't changed those rules, I've only been gone for 6 months.

Health care professional? Maybe they should change the name to "people who look at you when you are sick and tell you things that you already know". Cause this person obviously didn't care. I can say all this because I am a nurse.

DSJ

John's back

Who? John Carter, on ER(the TV show)...man I love that show. And as life imitates art, I made my short return to Sandy Hill CHC to work. Ok, maybe I'm not as cool as John Carter, but I do also work in the ER. Although it's gonna take a couple shifts at the CHC before I go jump in the ER mix of things. It was nice to go to work, I generally enjoy it, the people are great and it's good for the brain and the spirit to produce something useful every now and then. Funny how challenging it was yesterday to do rather easy work, I guess I am a little rusty. I only worked half a day but I slept so deep last night, not use to training and working, forgot how hard that was.

Thing is because I am a registered professional, I have an obligation to myself and the public to keep up my skills and knowledge in health care so even if I was making money cycling, I would still work to keep up to date. So enough about that.

Training is obviously pretty hard right now as Tash and I working are butts off to get strong again, but everything seems to be falling into place rather quickly, thanks to some slight training modifications. Ok,well some pretty significant changes, but that's all I can say.

Tasha attributes it to her sweet new bike and position as she had half the factory at Specialized involved in making sure her bike fit was totally perfect. It's really amazing to see how Specialized do everything to tailor the fit of the bike to the athlete. They put some shims in one of her shoes, to fix her wonky leg, special women's saddle, compact gearing, shallow bars, it fits her perfect!

Word on the street is that my new bike is in, this year I'll be riding an Opus again. Glen, the great guy he is made sure I am going to be rolling a nice rig, word on the street is it's just arrived.
It's always nice to get new stuff, it's not all about having cool stuff, but it just makes you wanna ride your bike, it's the part of the sport that makes you feel like a kid again.

Speaking of kids, looks like Natasha will be doing some math tutoring and I'll be doing some reading with our 6 year old Nephew Ethan, he is changing schools and the curricula in Quebec was not as aggressive as the programs here in Ontario. That being said, it's great to have the kids around, but I don't think I've ever said "don't do that" so many times.

I told Ethan he needed to eat his vegetables to get all his energy. He looked at me with his big blue eyes and he said "but I never run out of energy". I laughed so hard I nearly spit my drink on him. Kids.


Best of all....they think I'm huge in Europe...

update from the Wall

So...long time no post. I tried to stay away from things cycling in my off time, but that was pretty hard. I had started to write some blog posts, but they were either negative or fluff and I just saved them in the archives. Maybe one day I'll publish the unpublished posts, I'd probably get in trouble if I said everything about everything that I was feeling after out Euro trip.

We've taken the last couple weeks to assess last year and plan out things for this year. This time of the year always makes me laugh, everyone always looking for the magic bullet approach, a new style of training, a supplement to take, a new air to breath or whatever. We are no different, we've made a few little changes and also had a slight change in paradigm as well.

It was actually really funny when I went to write down my goals for this year how different they were from years previous. If you know me, you know that I love power, training with it, putting it out and getting more of it. Well this year the objective isn't so much to "get more", but simply put it to better use. Last year I was hyper concerned about following the program and all that, that at times I should have not followed so much what was written on paper, but what I knew I had to do to achieve my goals and objectives.

I think it becomes really easy to get all caught up in everything and you kind of loose focus of why you do this and what your place is in the big scheme of things. Obviously when we were in Europe I was all into Cross and everything, I mean I had to, I had an opportunity to go to Worlds and put a descent ride in so I went with it. But my raison d'etre in Cycling isn't all about the Cross, yah it's great, but it's just a part of the equation, and as far as racing it in Europe, that's a whole ball of wax. I think if I would have reminded myself about that a little more, I would have smiled a little bit more.

So, as the road season approaches, our prep time is a little more limited this year, but good news for us, with the help of the Computrainer family, we acquired a new one through a sponsorship and we now have a new pain cave in the C Wall. Ahhhh....sweating it out in erg mode....in Cornwall it's great, living in the country, there is no temptation to go anywhere, it's a great place to stay focused, we don't even have to leave the house. Wake up train, eat, train, think about eating and then eat celery, train some more....what more could you ask for. Ok, maybe it's not a luxurious lifestyle, but it's just kind of like going to work. I know we are a little sick in the head, but we like it.

Also in our time off we adopted a six yer boy! Ok, well that's not entirely true, but my nephew is coming to live with us as my sister is moving down the road and they want him to start as his new school asap. So he's here for two months as well as my sister and her new born who are here a lot, so it's always a party lots of diapers and puking. Last night we had a dance competition, I got more points on the techno songs, Ethan did a pretty good job on the hip hop. Natasha ran away as she doesn't know how to dance and has no interest in learning how.

D

Tasha's interview

http://www.canadiancyclist.com/dailynews/February/2.3.096.53PM20.shtml

Nice to see that Natasha's interview looks pretty good...except I'm not sure what she meant by her "mental head"....still pondering about that.

Anyways. Just FYI...we are back safe and pretty much sound, the bikes took a few extra days at the airport it appears they were a little tiered as well.

It's kind of funny to be back, well it's nice really. It was great to be out there livin' it, but no offence, I love Canada. Yah it's cold, but I put the TV on, I know what they are saying, I can watch a little Sheamus and Marcy on Canada AM, no BBC. I go to the grocery store, I can get whole wheat Eggo's and 1kg of frozen fruit. I don't drink Tim's but it's nice to know that lots of people still do. Also I havn't booked a reservation at Shawarma Palace yet, but be aware that it won't be long until I find an excuse to drive up to Ottawa.

Every time I leave the country to live somewhere else for an extend period of time, I want to kiss the frigin ground when I get back. I think this time too, sporting the Maple Leaf, racing for the National Team, it just kinda sinks in, I love where I'm from. Maybe in Cross the Canuk guys get our butts kicked a little, but whatever. We live in the greatest country in the World.

We even gotta run in -16 deg weather yesterday...hey you can't beat that for excitement.
Nice to be home.

Funny enough I received an email from the Tour of Battenkill RR yesterday confirming RWR's official invitation. Man I'm going to have start training soon, I haven't ridden a road bike in months.

DSJ