Thought I woulda learnt the first time....

NEXT TIME I go blackberry picking I am definitely wearing pants!!!!!! My legs are soooo sore.....but the blackberries are soooooo goooooood!!!!!!! Now I have to do something with the many containers of them...haha......and not eat them all in one night....which I could very well do...hehe.

Tickets booked to the World Cup in New York at the end of August and the World Championships in Mont Sainte Anne the weekend after (fingers are still crossed that I make the team)!!

One week and I head back to Calgary again for another week with my mule (Jeff Neilson) at the Transrockies. Going to be a good battle against Norm and Wendy again.

Off to eat berries!!!

Blackberries

Hahaha....it's blackberry season on the west coast. Although I'm jumping the gun a little, I spend 20 mins and got a huge container full of fall off the vine ripe blackberries...yippeee. Had to fight for them a little cause all the ripe ones were a little outta reach...hehe....looks like I've just been through a cat fight. Soooo excited.......Mmmmmmmm......Blackberries!!!!!!!!

Stiff today

A little stiff sore and tired today...hehe....yesterday was an awesome but busy day.

Finished painting kitchen
Swam for 30 min...haha...that's a long time for me (2km in 20 mins...don't know if that's good but it nearly killed me:)
Yoga class (haven't gone to a class in while .... it was great!!!!)
3 hour evening hard mtb ride with Regan after work

Yup, I'm tired....Love it

11 inch bicep

hahaha, yup that's right....and that's my useless left one...yikes!!!!! I have to carry that up hill on a bike too....grrrrr......I'd be huge if I actually did something with my arms.....LOL

Nationals!

Ya I know, I’ve kinda felt off the face of the blog world yet again…I’m really enjoying not spending very much time on the computer as of late. Didn’t take it to BC Bike Race, didn’t take it to Nationals, and doing lots of work around the house so all that’s running is my Music  So now I’m sitting outside, twenty something degrees after supper, with Regan as he slogs through his BCBR write up for Pedal mag.

Here’s a really neat little article about the BC Bike Race week by Cumberland’s Teresa Edgar for Adventure World Magazine.

http://www.adventureworldmagazineonline.com/cycling/bc-bike-race-2010/

Mountain bike nationals were this past weekend in Canmore, Alberta…formally one of my favorite courses ever…..not as stoked with the course they had us do, missed a lot of really, really cool and fun trails. 2 weeks of recovery from the BCBR and I was really excited to see how my legs would feel with some intensity, and a little bit of altitude. Living at about 5 m above sea level, within spitting distance to the ocean, I can definitely feel the what, 1800m of Canmore…haha…ouch.

Regan and I flew to Calgary Thursday evening after work; where momma and poppa Dyck picked us up….I have the best parents!! Super good to see them and my Calgary stampede parking attendant brother for a couple days…..and Regan’s mom too. Early Friday morning after a huge breaky of moms famous colon blow gingerbread waffles…..yummmmmm, my fav, we headed to Canmore for a quick pre-ride of the course. Dad even played hookie from work to come ride…hehe, sorry I ratted you out, but it was super nice riding with you. Legs felt pretty good, still a little tired but not bad, did a few intensities to blow out the gunk…but glad that I opted out of a couple of the longer harder rides planned for the week before.

Early morning Sat, we all piled into the van like the Walton’s and headed back out to Canmore for my race day. Off the start I felt strong, and as per usual I had a great start, felt really strong and had my 15 seconds of fame as I lead around the flat start loop. Once we hit the climb Catharine Pendrel quickly grabbed a couple gears and pretty near walked away from the rest of us…haha…one day I’ll give her a run for her money. Amanda Sin was close to follow in passing me on the next short climb, and I settled into an uncomfortably hard pace as I tried to keep Amanda within my reach.

There was a lot of steep climbing and nothing really fast and technical which unfortunately didn’t play well for my top strengths. And on the flip side, I got sucked into racing a race that didn’t accentuate my strengths either. I worked really hard on the climbs, and actually found that I was climbing very strong, but it left me a little too gassed to take advantage of the flatter power sections. Lesson learned …… don’t give everything on the climbs to keep up to the little climbers, save some power for the power sections!!!!! I managed to keep Amanda in sight for the first 3 of 4 laps, and unfortunately faded a little in the final lap but held onto my first 3rd place at MTB nationals!!!!!!



2 mins behind Amanda and 7 mins behind Catharine….but hey, if I can keep the current World Cup champion with 10 mins of me on a climbers course, I’m not too choked. Pretty happy with the race, still feel that I have another gear in my legs somewhere……. Haha …… and when I do find it, WATCH OUT! hehe.

It was awesome getting back on the full carbon Trek 9.9 hardtail, I love that bike. Even tried out the new carbon wheelset, have to admit I was a little scared about a carbon wheelset to begin with, they actually ride great and are really stiff.

Oh ya, had my first in competition drug testing….blood and urine….haha, ya I was kinda excited about that until I bonked in the drug testing room because the whole process took so loooooong!!! And I was even able to pee right away!!

Regan raced Sunday afternoon in the Master 30-39 race and it was super fun whipping around the course yelling at him!! He holds a sport license being his first year racing, but unfortunately I didn’t realize there was a sport category……..ooops, sorry my dear. 5 laps of a really physically demanding course (we did 4 with the “Oven”) and the sport cat did 3, in probably the most competitive category of all, but he was still smiling at the end.

I was great to run into everyone from ABA that I haven’t seen this year as of yet being out in Victoria, really nice getting to spend a little time in Calgary…..and loved the post race IKEA shopping date with Regan (but don’t miss the crazy Calgary hail storms that always seem to catch me by surprise when I’m out on the bike!)

3 weeks of training/resting then onwards to the Transrockies August 7 to 14, then the World Cup in New York, and fingers crossed the World Championships in Mont St Anne!

Ciao

Video from Day 2

Fellow BC Biker Gian Malär sent me the link to his video from Day 2 in Cumberland.....some super fun flowy trails that day :)

BC Bikerace 2010 Day 2 from Gian Malär on Vimeo.

He caught me from about 7:40 on to about 15:00 :) Thanks Gian for recording these really fun trails and making me look fast...hehe.

Congrats to the rest of the Trek Canada guys at the Edmonton Canada Cup this weekend!!! One week to go till nationals!!!! Yippeeeeeee...love Canmore trails.

Recovery?

What better way to recover from a 7 day stage race then painting our bedroom and building a slat bed..hehehe



Though picking the hottest day of the year so far, 31 above, might not have been the best idea for this venture. Yes, it was about 45 degrees up there and yes, I was sweating like a stuffed pig.

Hehe, oh yeah, don't ask me to build shelves.....great idea executed very, very badly :)

Day 7 Whistler!!!!

Day 6 Squamish

Day 5 Sechelt to Langdale

Day 4 Earls Cove to Sechelt

Day 3 Powell River

Day 2 Cumberland

Day 1 Naniamo

BCBR all over :(

It's just like Christmas...you wait all year for the BC Bike Race, so excited for a week of nothing but riding, eating and sleeping....then it's over, just like that. Just under 22 hours of mountain biking....predominately singletrack!!!!! no wonder my arms are huge!!..hehe.

Day 1 was all in Naniamo, great job Norm and the rest of the trail designers on the amazing and hard first day...what a way to knock us into reality quickly grinding through the abyss. Day 2 in Cumberland was definitely a highlight.....well, everyday is pretty much a highlight.....hammering up Forbidden Plateau, followed by loosing 500m of elevation in under 4 km!!! Day 3 in Powell River was a new stage, some amazing trails there....now that 500 racers have traveled over them they are going to be really sweet to ride! Day 4, Earl's Cove to Sechelt was a killer climbing day. Started out with a water taxi ride from Saltery Bay to Earl's Cover...super neat experience. Hump day last year was the day I cracked hard, so we budgeted our energy a little better this year, and with way more singletrack this year on this stage then last year....it was a really good idea!

Rainy day 5 from Sechelt to Langdale was the rough day for me, this was my day to crack (eating breaky an hour before hammering made my guts crack a little too.....and I thought it'd be a good idea to eat turkey sausage....Right!!)...the only thing that kept my pedals turning a couple times was the knowledge that this stage ended with I think a 12 km amazing downhill to the ferry terminal!!! YEAH!!!!!!! That one got more then a few hoots and hollers outta of our train. Day 6 .... Squamish....they always do an amazing job here. What, with the new government funded Half Nelson trail mixed in ....... I totally want to go do that one again soon. Day 7 in Whistler was somewhat interesting....as per usual from what I've heard....but better then last years course. After the lead group taking a wrong turn about a minute in and circling back up the mountain to slot ourselves back into the thick of things, we hammered straight up the mountain for about 20 mins, then straight back down on Crank it Up....similar to Squamish's Half Nelson, but really beat in and rough from the downhillers. Finishing up the stage and the week on the Whistler Lost Lake trails...which are pretty freakin fun.

Had a great time racing again with Jeff (the Mule) Neilson. The first 4 days we road really strong and didn't leave much of a time gap between Catharine Pendrel and Geoff Kabush in front of us and Wendy Simms and Norm T-BO nipping at our heels. Day 5, just as Jeff's legs were really starting to come around, I cracked a little and had to really dig deep to keep moving. My guts weren't super happy either, so keeping moving was definitely a necessity. Nothing like passing out for 2 hours right after the race before supper.....did I ever need that! Day 6 was also a struggle for me, but the course was so much fun that I started to come around again near the end......followed this day up with a good long nap too. I think that was my problem, just not recovering properly at the end of each day and it slowly creeped up on me and slappedd the life outta my legs on day 5 and 6. Day 7 was hard....full on short race pace for the entire loop!!!

Now, I'm walking zombie like around struggling to focus on the smallest tasks...hehe...definitely in need of a couple of days of recovery :) Casey, my brother, flew out to support us, it was super cool having him there for the week...doing my laundry and buying me food...hehe. Regan got a lat minute entry as a blog writer for pedalmag.com and it was really neat seeing him experience the race from a racers side versus the support side that he did last year. Considering he had zero prep time going into the race he did an amazing job!!!

Thanks Jeff for riding with me again :) and I can't wait to tear your legs off at the TR....right :)

My Trek Top Fuel was an amazing bike for this kind of race. I've really enjoyed learning how to ride and race a hardtail again this year, but for the longer stage race a full suspension is sooooo nice. The Fuel climbs so well and with a flip of the switch on the rear shock from pro-pedal to open, it rides like a bigger all mountain bike on the rough trail. I love it.

2 weeks until Nationals in Canmore...yippeeee!!!! Hope my "secret training" works good this year!