Tour of the Batenkill

Alright, now I'm almost in the mood to write a race report. Almost.
Not sure if you know much about this race, but I'll give you the skinny, 200km, UCI 1.2, single day classic, 2 laps of 100 km each through paved roads and gravel/dirt road sections in hills of the Batnkill NY region.

The previous years that I have done this race it has been dry as a bone, a rather hot day for April and loose gravel. The dynamic of this race was a complete paradox to years past, 5 degrees cold, wet windy and the dirt sections were sandy and almost muddy.

My prediction on the day was that the 2nd break of the day would stick and sure as shit it was.
I definitely felt a little rust on the wheels as with the exception of last weeks race, I have just been training really hard and although everything physically seemed good, you just don't really know until you mix it up. I was maybe a little too confident at the start and got behind a split and had to pedal like stink to get back onto the bunch early in the race. After all the goal was a top 5 result. I knew it was going to take a somewhat conservative approach to not burn too many bullets early on for this, but you gotta have a plan and stick with it, otherwise your just riding around with your head cut off.

One of the hardest things was to figure out exactly what to wear, I hate wearing legs to race and a thermal jersey can be downright awful, but so can hypothermia as evidence by Tash's and I hypothermic escapade in Maine during Cross season. So I did undershirt, thick jersey, thin jersey, vest, wool socks, cap, long finger gloves, and about 6 pounds of XXX sauce on my legs for that feeling like you are standing too close to the camp fire.

So about 100 km into the race I got cold, right after they ring the bell, one lap remaining, you mean we have to do the whole thing over...man. Slightly demoralizing. MY teammate JS said at about 101 km in..."you ok", "yah", "I'm cold"...just as he said that my elbows started to lock up and my fingers went numb, the old pins and needles in the arms. The worse part is a break went up the road with 12 guys and I was just a little too far back to get across to it, and it gained 1 minute...so there's a little feeling in the back of my throat thinking...shoot, I missed the break now I gotta roll around in this misery for another 3 hours for 14th place and the race is up the road, great...this is awesome. Good thing I actually remembered that this is actually the moment when a lot of people fade back, cause they think it's over, but you actually have to use this to eat drink and stay at the front cause 30% of the time, the break that "should" work, doesn't.
Funny as the day went on I felt better and better, guess the endurance training is paying off.
I mean I still didn't have a perfect race, my positioning was not the greatest here and there and I payed for it, I saw the winning move of 5guys go up the road and I was too far back and not only that there was a reason it was only 5 guys...
So coming into the last 10 km, we absorbed one guy who fell off, so the group had been whittled down from 170 to about 40 guys, with 5km to go I felt awful so I followed an attack and we almost slipped away, it left me a little gassed for the sprint, but I actually had a good position until the last corner and had to check my speed into the corner as I got chopped and lost some ground, rolled in for 23rd place. Funny how a good time to attck is when you are not well...

Doesn't sound like a stellar result but races like this are a bit of man makers, you gotta have your head screwed on right cause loose focus for more than 1 minute and it over.

I'm happy that I went for it with a few km to go, it's a good move that sometimes work if your fighting for table scraps, as they let you float away. We had a Czech guy Pavel riding with us, when I got caught with 1.5 km to go, I told him to go, but I think he thought I was insane, he rolled in for 15th place I think. This kid is tough though, that's for sure.

It's hard to compare it to last years result which on paper looks similar, but it was completely different, the conditions themselves for enough to make you want to throw your bike in the ditch.
There was definitely a little self talk here and there...good news is the voices are saying push harder...don't stop...it's not really that painful...things like that. That's why training is easy.

Funniest thing..I'm not gonna name names, but there was this guy in the race, he won this race called the Tour de France, lets call him "Loyd".... at about 165 km into race it warm up a little, well relatively, it's still pretty cold. He sits up, takes his vest off, throws it in the ditch, takes his gloves off and throws them in the ditch, as if to say "it's time to start racing"...seriously it wasn't that warm but whatever. I started laughing...man I thought that was funny then I look over at Aaron and I say this is kind of like a really hard group ride...he was covered in mud and had this look on his face as if to say he wasn't really having fun eating mud for 200km's in the rain.
As long as you only remeber the funny parts it doesn't really feel like you suffered that much, it felt really hard yeasterday but as the day goes on, it starts to feel easier and you hope that next time it will hurt even more.

Ahhhh...got love it. So I gotta foot long sub and 3 cookies and called it day.

Time to go ride.
DSJ

Clearance Rockland CLASSIC

Gotta love spring races, cool weather bad roads, lots of gravel. Glen put on a great race today, just South of Ottawa, the conditions were tough, the race was only 90 km, but it's not an easy 90km, let me tell you.

I probably made my day a little tougher than it had to be by performing a new sport I invented...it's called gravel bike skating. I invented this today...what you do is during a race, go hard, get your heart rate high...not max, but about 80%, then go through a gravel corner, take a bad line, change lines through the corner to avoid a pot hole...now here is the tricky part....as you are doing this unclip one foot from the pedal...the right, as you unclip it, skate it along the gravel a good rate of speed, then do a sort of cyclocross dismount while trying to keep the bike up right, smash one knee on the gravel, do not let go of the bike, hit the deck briefly, then do not loose any momentum and run and remount on to you r bike...ok maybe not such a good idea, but it will give you a little bit of a sore knee, some gravel in your butt and sheer the plastic off your cleats.

So that being said, things were gong pretty good, it was a hard race, the local guys include Two thirds of the Nationals podium from last year so...we try to rip each others legs off, pretty much.

We had a nice little break going and Aaron attack with about 20 km to go...we were a little slow to respond, I saw the gap growing to about 20 seconds and I was pretty concerned, as on gravel roads the draft isn't all it's cracked up to be, I told the guys if we had any hope to catch him we had to do it now, just as we went over the next hill, I flatted, so that was my race, I got a wheel a few minutes later, but it was over, I rode to the finish and called it a day.

Funny enough my knee didn't really hurt during the race, but it was pretty stiff after and after I looked at what I did to my cleat, pedal and shorts it all made sense.

I'm not really sure if we would have caught Aaron as he ended up putting 2.5 minutes in the next guys, but I was most surprised to see Casey Roth up in the front group with us. This guy has come a long way in a year, strong as an ox. He ended up finishing fourth on the day, just missing out on the podium, barely. So good on him.

It's a little ironic that I often have a little misfortune in early season Ottawa races, but that's racing. Training gets you prepared physically, but mentally it's just not the same thing.
The thing is the more stock you put into a race, the more disappointed you can become if you don't win. I forgot about that part...I mean have a bad day training, well it's not that bad, no one really knows or sees it, you get over it about 20 minutes after the workout.

Good thing about a blog is you get to jot it down, get it out and then it's over. That's why for every trophy on the shelf there are 6 bibs with would have should have could have's all over them. It's a 6:1 thing.

So my real excuse for not winning today.... I was hurried this morning and I had Tasha pin my numbers to a jersey I left in the car. This was bad as I always put pins in the same direction and put a certain number of pins according to size of the numbers...lesson learned.
DSJ

some goods

Here's a look at my new TT rig.

I'm just tweaking it a little here and there, there are a few changes that have to be made with the bars and such, but it's pretty sweet.

Is Time trialing my favorite thing in the world? No not really, but last year it was definitely my Achilles. But it was my Achilles cause I didn't ride it, at all.

My Cross riding was at a whole other level this year and I think it was due to riding the bike, so ipso facto I'll ride this one a little (well I say a little but that is relative) and I should be able to throw down some good speed.

The only hard part about riding the TT bike in training is this bike feels nice and fast and I just want to ride it fast. It feels pretty stiff and yet it isn't intolerable to ride for 2 hours at a time.

So it looks fast, which makes me feel fast, which will yield a favorable outcome. We'll really see over the next couple weeks when I get to light up a little how fast it really is.

I got a little rest after the last annihilation of training over the last month and I'm feeling good.

SO that means I get another chunk of work left to lead into my classics.

My first race will be the RWR Clearance Rockland Classic April 10th. I expect it to be a hard day which will be a perfect setup for the UCI Tour of the Batnkill PRO event in NY the following week.

DSJ

She's back!

Where did Natasha go? I bet you didn't even know that she was gone. I did.
Where was she gone? Well that's a little harder to explain.

If you're regular on this site you may have noticed that we haven't really been saying too much lately. Tasha hadn't been feeling well since November and we thought she was just tiered, so we took a break, took a holiday, but still not better. She almost actually got worse. She was unable to train, had no energy, had huge issues with her stomach, lots of pain and her legs felt "empty".

I'll spare you all the details, cause some of them are kind of personal, but needless to say it was looking pretty grim. We even brought her to the ER twice! Now if you know me, I'm not one to panic over small illnesses or a little sickness...remember Tasha broke her wrist in Belgium one year and I made her wait to get back to Canada to get it checked out....as a Nurse my slogan was "...I really wouldn't worry about it".

Well, we did worry, alot. In addition to going to the ER, she was a physio, sports med doc, family doc, had a vascular ultrasound, had an echocardiogram, ecg's, x rays, 5 rounds of blood work and is still awaiting a GI and Vascular Surgeon and Cardiology follow up. Man she even saw a naturapath!

Well on one side good thing we live in Canada or else we would probably be in debt for the rest of our lives with those bills. On the flip side, damn the Canadian Health CARE system is slow.

Well through all of this Tasha did what she could to start feeling better, she started eliminating certain foods that could have been causing her symptoms. So she started by eliminating yeast and gluten, then dairy and lactose, then she eliminated sugar, then caffeine, then meat. Gradually she started feeling a little better here and there until this week, boom she was back! So I now date a Vegan.

Her heart rate is responding to training, her stomach is normal, she can feel her legs and most importantly she is smiling! It was a rough few months for both us. Well mostly for her, racking her brains to try and figure out what was happening, why it was happening and most importantly...how the hell to get better as no one had any answers. I mena we went from thinking that she had thyroid problems, to food intolerance's, to vascular problems...it was crazy.

But she took it by the horns and fought with an amazing will power to just point blank, cold turkey change her entire eating pattern in order to basically cure herself. Even her blood tests, in which her hemoglobin and hematocrit and thyroid function were low have responded. If you told me that nutrition had such an impact on health I would not believe it without seeing this for myself, cause realistically we are talking about someone who eats better than 98% of the population to begin with...it's truely crazy.

Maybe a little rest and time played a key role as well, but I can't help think that the changes she had made have greatly contributed to her new state of health and happiness.

The intensity she brought to her training in the past she used to fuel her fire to get better...she didn't wait for a doctor to give her a magic bullet, I'm not sure if I could have made all the changes she did...heck I have trouble only having 2 espressos a day, never mind not eating any gluten...do you know what that means? No bread, no flour, no pasta, no yeast not even eating anything that is made in a the same factory that processes wheat...yah right good luck with that...but she did it, everyday, 100% no cheating.

Anyways she's back training, smiling, looking healthy and happy.

Yah so that's the deal. I just didn't want to talk about training on the blog when I knew the most important person in my life was miserable cause she felt awful, couldn't train, felt sick and wondered what it was going to take to be healthy again.

So I'll have some pics coming soon of our new kits , new bikes, new toys now that things are almost back to normal.

I've called in a lot of prayers to the man upstairs, cause all I could do was pray...has me thinking that having faith through tough times is so important. I would just lay in bed at night and I would just talk to God so loud in my head just begging for her to be better.

Thank you.

Derrick

into the wind

Crazy that the weather here is just as nice as the weather was in SC...looks like a few nice days, so I get to take advantage of it...a little. SO there are a couple good ways to get a really good ride in. Here is my recipe...first one shot espresso right before the ride...go outside, ride...see where the wind is coming from and ride straight into the headwind for as long as you can, so today that was about 90 km's, I ended up some where around Chesterville...next turnaround and just start riding into the tailwind for as long as you can handle with proper food...20km after you run out of food, look for a store...hydrate, cal up...then start making your way home...but before you get home, veer off to find some nasty roads, with some steep pitches and torn up pavement/gravel...but you gotta make sure you are at least 4 hours into the ride, you have to be tired...then race pace for as long as you can tolerate...and when you can't take it anymore...that is when you need to do some more...then you should feel pretty messed up...ride 10 km easy to flush out the system...get home eat stretch...brag about how tough you are, write it on your blog just so everyone knows you are a stud or at least think you are...then yah...that's about it.
6 hours at the office...
Oh yah...it's better to do it alone so that at one point you will feel devoid of thought.....that is what you are looking for, don't think, just do...then you have achieved a good training. That's the cool part about this kind of ride, there is a point where you just let go...that's the sweet spot. It's like yoaga and meditation all in one.
You don't want to do this all the time...but it's good every now and then. Maybe don't do this as your first ride of the year, you gotta have some form and some color on the legs for this...
DSJ

Almost done

Well tomorow is gonna wrap our timehere in South Carolina. I have no excuses for not posting other than I've been spending my energy training and there ain't a whole lot left in the PM to write about. Needless to say, we wereset up with our I bikes, they are pretty cool, still getting used to some of the features, really cool to see gradients, altitude,drag factors and watts.

More about the gadgets later once I have time to really test them out.

Other than that, lots and lots of solid riding for me. Good group of guys here and lots and lots of up and down. A few of the longer rides were in the 165km and over, it doesn't really sound that epic, but it was all solid quality riding. Yesterday the rain was pretty intense and I just rode as hard as I thought I could handle for 3 hours, well, I rode that tempo for almost 4 hours, it was pretty intense. Needless to say almost 2000km of riding, almost glad to get back home.

I managed to bring some of the crew out for some SC BBQ which was great.
Weather looks nice at home, so should be able to keep off the trainer...

later

Oh CArolina

Well we made it to South Carolina a few days ago for the training camp.
I never really understood why so many people came here, but the riding is really good.
Where we are in South Caolina, we can easily ride into North CArolina and the other day we even did three states in one day crossing into Georgia. http://www.mapmyride.com/ride/united-states/sc/six-mile/244126766523338990
I uploaded the ride if you want to check it out, almost 1600 meters of climbing, and my watch turned off for a bit so....
It's a littel cooler than usual, but apparently the nice weather is coming. Today I got a lift down the road then rode up and down Ceasers Head mountain a bunch of times and then rode home and then rode some more.

There's 13 people in the the house, a bit of an aminous number so we're throwing salt over our shoulders and not walking under ladders.

We've got a few of the Quebec guys here and a couple guys from BC, and a few other riders from Quebec so it makes for a good sized group and there is enough testosterone that I can punch it and there is always someone who will duke it out with me.

It's funny how fast 5 hours go by with a group of guys at a good tempo. It's a great way for me to be getting in lots of quality, quantity and a little Vitamin D. I wish Tasha could come along but her stomach has been giving her some grief still and she's just taking it day by day.

I'm sure it's hard for her to see me training my brains out and she wishes she can do the same. But in someway I think it will inevitably lead to her cross season being even better as it's not quite time for her to be training full gas.

Anyways, tommorow is a meet and greet with the people from I-bike so it should be like Christmas!
DSJ