Cross Training

Thursday it hailed as I was cycling to my weekly personal trainer session. Hard, biting pellets of solid rain with strong wind gusts.

Friday was snow.

Saturday dawned very nice but cold. Three degrees C. Kirsty and I joined up at noon (5 degrees C) to ride Burnaby Mountain. Taking the Trans Canada trail really makes riding Burnaby Mountain a lot more appealing than driving to North Road. But it is always nicer to ride from your doorstep than to drive to a trail. Had a great decent down Mels and Nicoles trail and then played on the wiggly single track back to the Trans Canada and some extra fun climbing Cardiac Hill again. You know, just for giggles. I've said it before but the Enduro is such a happier bike when I'm clipped in and not on platforms!

BTW. Saturday ended with MORE SNOW. We were so close to being home, just getting off the Second Narrow Bridge and the sky opened to solid rain. No ride pics as my camera battery did not like the cold temps. It was still a great 4 hour ride with a great friend and some great thigh burning.

When in Rome....
When it is snowing...go for a ski tour.

Kirsty and Neil scoping the routeThere is still amazing powder to be had on the North Shore! K, N, another friend and I toured Mt. Seymour on Sunday. The boys were on snowshoes and carrying their boards. Tough work! We skied out to the third peak putting in a couple short runs before a bomber route from near the first peak. The second best powder run of the year (after Kokanee Cabin, of course). The run is through perfectly spaced trees greater than 1 meter in diameter. Hugh trees. Safe slope. Powder. mmmmm deep powder.

Peek-a-boo view to downtown Vancouver

The boys were trashed after the hike back up. Of course, K and I being on skis only sank 3-4 inches when putting in the up-track. The guys were wading through knee to thigh deep snow for the entire climb back to the ridge. So the guys went to lay claim to a pitcher of beer while K and I went for another lap. When the snow is that good and you just put in the up-track the snow gods get angry if you don't do at least one more lap!

Yup! Our line started by ducking under the rope next to the Danger sign.

The day's training ended as all good days do sitting in the pub having a pint!
The only thing better would have been a post-weekend rub down. My legs were definitely fatigued during today's commute and short recovery ride!

Still snowing

No more snow.

*stomps foot*

I'ts about 2 cm thick on the ground now.

Tomorrow's mountain bike ride will be wet.

Long Weekends

A good week at work means not a good week for riding until the weekend. Spring has come even if the snow line is still low on the North Shore and I took the long way home via Simon Fraser University on Burnaby Mountain Thursday night enjoying daylight savings. The Trans Canada trail runs across the mountain and connects to my normal commuting route at the southern end of the Second Narrows Bridge. I was on my road bike and it was a good steady climb. I decided to take the Trans Canada trail down the hill instead of the road as I wanted to come back for a mountain bike ride on the weekend. My road bike still has the bomber kevlar tires that were purchased for the Kootenay tour last fall and I had no worries about being on packed gravel travel. The last pitch down to the road was quite steep and sore forearms from braking forced me to stop three times. In all the taking the long way home made Thursday's commute 45 km instead of the standard 26 km.

View towards downtown Vancouver and Stanley Park from Burnaby Mtn.

I went back to Burnaby Mtn Friday afternoon for a solo dirt ride. There are about 10 road kilometers to get to the trail. I was waiting at a stoplight and the guy in the low-to-the-ground convertible pulled forward and started talking to me. It took a couple of iterations before I realized he asked me "How do you get to the top of the trails?" and took me even longer to figure out he hadn't considered pedaling uphill. Odd. Vancouver is mostly a downhill and shuttle kind of town, but riding to the top of a trail shouldn't be a novelty. At the top of Burnaby Mountain there was a father/son duo getting in training miles for an upcoming Moab trip. Lucky guys. We rode the first bit of the Mels and Nicole's Pole trails together, but the father was on a hardtail.... This was my first time riding Burnaby Mtn clipped in, without armor, without a full face helmet, and without the guys from work. I have to say that the Enduro is a much happier bike clipped in than with platforms. It was nice to ride my own pace and not feel pressured to session the ramps and jumps. More a cross country instead of downhill frame of mind. Nicole's pole is a good intermediate trail for descending and there are ride-arounds on most all of the stunts. I climbed back to the top of Burnaby Mtn and took the wide, easy, swoopy Pandora trail back to the Trans Canada. All told it was about 3.5 hours round trip and 40 km (according to Google Earth).

Part of the Trans Canada trail

Saturday's ride was a late start after another trip to the physio. damn knees. Then the fiddling with the NEW ROAD BIKE getting the water bottle cages, the computer, and other bits set up. I hate fiddly things. But the Orbea was amazing. The downside is I've become that person. The person with too much money and a bike that is better than she is! My legs where tired from yesterday's ride but the bike was mocking me! It kept encouraging one more push to Horseshoe Bay, then why not go all the way down to White Cliff Park? How about a little out and back along Jericho Beach? Well, if you're already this far out, why not go all the way around UBC? So Saturday's ride turned into 100 kms at a decent speed. The one vegan cliff bar provided insufficient calories and I had to make brownies Saturday night. Yes, that is butter melting on the warm, homemade, fudgey brownies.


The appeal of the Orbea was shared by others. Three different people (not cyclists) cat-called when I rode by. That never happened with on the Trek. Odd. Because, honestly, spandex isn't sexy. Neither are bike helmets and neoprene booties. Maybe the bike's appeal will be so great that I'll actually find people to ride with! Or maybe a guy with great legs who will take me cycling every weekend and wash my bikes....

View of my bike storage, I mean, dining room.

I bought happiness

Kootenay High

How can a person not love a trip to the Kootenays? I have been off my bikes since Friday and dedicated the weekend in Nelson to 'cross training'.

View of Nelson from Pulpit Rock

I woke up at 5 am Thursday morning to get in a couple more hours of work and do a road ride before driving 7 hours across BC. Re-jigged my geochem model to calculated total metals instead of dissolved, cycled to Lighthouse Park in West Van and picked up the rental car all by 10 am. The hardest part of a Nelson trip is figuring out what toys to bring. I decided to leave my road bike home and ignore the guilt of not doing the scheduled long rides on Saturday/Sunday. Just brought my tele gear and climbing shoes on this trip. Rather, I brought most of my tele gear. At the Hope Slide, 147 kilometers from my apartment, I realized I forgot my ski pants. At Grand Forks, I realized I forgot a toque. Fortunately, Greg is only a few inches taller than me and had an old pair of pants and a toque.

We lift skied at Whitewater with another friend Friday afternoon. The runs are short and there was no liftlines. My legs where shot after 2.5 hours of trying to keep up with the alpine skiers in the trees seeking pockets of powder. Doesn't anyone ski nice blue cruisers anymore?? They consoled me with a jug of Nelson Brewing Company's Faceplant and a plate of nachos. Friday night was more upper body training at Mike's Pub lifting pints while watching the constant loops of bike and ski and surf porn on the big screen TVs.

A short, sunny hike on Saturday gave views of town. We watched 'The Great Global Warming Swindle" and "Into the Wild" that night. Greg in his role of shit disturber, was trying to spark some scientific, environmentalist indigenation from me.

The reason people live in Nelson is the lifestyle. Everything you could want is close. Hotsprings are 30 mintues away, mountain biking is out the back door, lift skiing is 25 minutes, ski touring is 20 minutes, climbing and kayaling are 15 minutes away. A lazy Sunday morning including breakfast at the Cornerhouse Cafe, forgetting gear at home and we were still touring at Evening Ridge by 11:30 am. My cardio for the weekend.

Top of Evening Ridge

View to the Ymir Bowl and Whitewater Ski Area

After the tour it was back to town to grab beers and kites and head to the beach. I was very excited try kiteing (sp?), but the wind was too strong for a newbie. Sitting on a Canadian beach in March means that you don't have to worry about having a killer bikini body underneath the goretex pants and puffy jackets. And the beer stays cold for hours.

Kiteing at 6 Mile

There is no scheduled date for the next trip other than a tentative spring climbing trip to Skaha :( At least that is one less thing to distract me from training for the BCBR and working. :)

Another sadness: None of the pictures of my favorite rocks along Highway 3A turned out. I can hear my sister's sigh of relief.

Night Rides and Expectations

Even southern latitudes in a northern country mean that the winter nights are long. Thanks to an early switch to day light savings time most of today's after work ride was (mostly) in daylight. Left the office at 5:30. Got home, fed the cats, changed bikes, changed bike shoes, changed bike jackets, changed the bike lights from the commuter to the Trek. I almost look like a roadie these days and I wonder about the correlation between decent bike tights that keep my joints warm and a reduction in knee pain. But we all know that correlation is not necessarily causal.

What I am really struggling with is my expectations of training. The training program on the BCBR site is geared for a professional level rider. It says so in black and white. I'm not a pro rider (heck according to the province of BC, I'm not even a professional geoscientist yet and don't even meet the academic requirements with an undergrad in geological engineering and a masters in geochemistry. grumble. grumble.). My last and only year of bike racing was in the twilight years of the last century. Ok, it was Colorado 1998. A particularly good year if only b/c of excellent cycling friends. Nevertheless, I expect myself to try and follow this training program? It is probably the fear of the dreaded DNF driving me. Must train hard to finish. Managed 37 km after work + 26 km commute = not bad for a desk jockey.


OK, it is nerdy, but the previous plot shows the speed for each of last year's womens teams for each stage and the calculated minimum required speed for each stage based on 2008 distances and time cut-offs. There is consolation in the graph. While I've never been a winner in athletic competitions, I have generally been reasonably competitive (defined as not in the bottom 50%). Therefore, if of all 9 all women teams from 2007, there was only 1 speed less than the minimum required, then I should successfully complete this race. There are zero concerns about team mate Kirsty finishing as she is simply amazing.

Spring?

I am no longer content waiting for Spring and am to welcome Summer and say goodbye to cold toes. However, I finally purchased a good pair of leg warmers and nice cycling jacket after realizing I've been commuting year round in a temperate rainforest climate with a single pair of knee warmers and a 10 year old pair of tights.

Unsurprisingly, I have not kept to the training program provided on the BC Bike Race web site, although my minimum distance every day is 30 km due to my commute. Managed 65 km Wed night by skipping the spin session and riding for 2 hours in the dark. I learned that the flashing bike light I use for commuting is insufficient for highlighting road hazards. It's actually insufficient for anything but making the white stripe and yellow stripe on the road visible for 3 meters. Took some hard hits along Jericho Beach near UBC.

My normal desire to wake up, drink coffee and then get on the road bike was thwarted by an 8:30 am trip to the phyiso. Thankfully, the best part of the day was the afternoon and went for a nice 3 hour road ride with my teammate Kirsty.

I've been looking a purchasing a new road bike....I lust over the Orbea Diva. Thankfully when I went to Speed Theory bike shop this afternoon they helpfully told me that the Diva with full Durace is $4500. I still lust. But it will be unrequited.

Not so Useful

There are two things in my life right now: work and cycling. I've got a great project at work . I'm building an Excel based model to estimate the water quality in an open pit mine once mining has ended and there is a lake in the open pit. I say estimate rather than predict because (to me) prediction implies a precision that is unreasonable given the variation in the model inputs and the assumptions necessary to make the calculations.

Regardless, the model is being built and the file size is HUGE. It's at 50 MB and only 3 of the 10 parameters for the first scenario have been completed. It's way to big to email or put on an ftp site for my senior reviewers to get and is getting unwieldy to work with. The model isn't geochemically complex but there are a number of VLOOKUP and nested IF functions. and it does run on a monthly time step for 300 years. Our company has an internal microsoft support person. I thought maybe she could tell me what is acting as the suck for the file size, thinking that if I know what is causing the file to balloon then I can try to restructure the model. The response from our internal support landed me in a Dilbert cartoon. She suggested that I burn the file to CD when I'm done and even offered to help walk me through the process to burn the data file......

Dirt again

Winter in Vancouver can be tough. The winter is not as cold or as long as the rest of Canada, but most days I would take -15 to -5C and sunny over +1 to +5 and rainy. However enough snow has melted in Lynn Valley that several of us got out the cross country bikes for the first dirt ride of the season. Winter isn't over and most of these folks will head to Whistler tomorrow for skiing. The ride was lovely and as cross country as you can get on the North Shore. The ride was slippery. Everything is wet here except for a few weeks in July, August and September. Slippery roots, slippery ramps, slippery logs, slippery skinnies, slippery bridges. Any thoughts of getting a hardtail have evaporated and the Enduro still has my heart. Now a new road bike....

Tomorrow I'd like to do a longer road ride but will probably keep it to 3 or 4 hours. The reason? I left data at work that I need this weekend. Not being able to work tonight means a shorter Sunday ride and a longer Sunday night.

Overall it was a decent week on the bikes. Wed spin class is challenging. Thursday at Kirsty's class is always a quality workout. Riding home through Deep Cove adds 14 km to the daily commute. Getting anxious for daylight savings. I failed to put in 2 laps around Stanley Park after work of Friday, only managed 1 as it was too dark (and I got creeped out riding alone through the forest).