Jeez, I guess I dropped the ball a bit after my last post. Time to make up for it. Things are in motion to get myself, Zach Tatem and the whole team trailer to the Edmonton Canada Cup and then Nationals in Canmore Alberta.
We are somewhere just outside of Thunder Bay right now with one full day of driving behind us. The whole day was pretty painless and we and the trailer are all still in one piece.
Before I continue with this however, let’s backtrack. I arrived home from Europe on the 30th at around 7:30 pm and was supremely excited to get back to everything I was missing ie. Laura, regulated nutrition, bicycles and my own bed. I had been experiencing some discomfort in my right knee and had attributed it to the running and weight training that I had been doing combined with not enough stretching. Fair enough, I had that coming. When I woke up the plan was to head to Durham for hours and hours to got a good long ride in that would leave me gassed and at least get some of my riding legs back before we headed out for this trip. I had been trying to stretch as much as possible for the last bit since my knee started hurting and again once I got home but apparently it wasn’t enough, I lasted about 2 hours before I had to call it a day and head home. After more stretching and a good sleep I felt better and headed out on my road bike for a bit in the morning before heading to The Trek Store to get some work in. Again, lasted about an hour before heading home. Uh oh. At the very least, I managed to get in some good efforts right? After some worrying and intense amounts of stretching I did manage to curb the problem and now my knee is just glorious. Went for another mtb ride on Saturday with Row-bear after work and managed to get a stick caught in my something, which stopped something from rotating, which in turn ripped off my derailleur. Wonderful, half an hour of riding that day with 45 minutes to an hour of walking ahead of me to gt back to the store. Fiddlesticks. That is until thanks to Rowbear’s wonderful piece of Bontrager apparel, we McGiver’d a tow rope and I was pulled to safety. Highly recommended for those interested in electric bikes. Why spend thousands of dollars when there are fit co-workers for free?
Sundays ride was great. Headed out with Mr. Carleton on the road bikes for 4.5 hours after the first crash filled stage of the Tour. Great stuff boys, keep it up. Oh right, forgot to mention it was 40+ degrees outside with humidity. 7 bottles and zero pee breaks. Even tried to ‘givr’ once or twice on the return and wasn’t sad with my numbers.
Monday was good. Good in the sense that I did something that I should have done many weeks ago. Clean my bike top to bottom. It’s wonderful. All the protective nasty tape is gone, all my parts look new, new cables and even made some cockpit changes for these two western races. It’s even cleaner than Matt P’s bike! (who is having a great season on his Gary Fisher Superfly and has provided the reader with some good info on why you should get one too!).
Yesterday! (almost caught up) Loaded up the trailer bright and early with Barry Near and ZT, who’s name has been phonetically changed to (ZA-CHE TAH-TEM) by telemarketers recently. We headed out around 11 and ended up in White River by around 11, each taking marathon pulls through intense fog in the driver seat. Our accommodations there couldn’t have been better. We were referred by a motel with no vacancy to a small grouping of ‘cabins’ down the road about a km and it was a real treat considering we were fully prepared to sleep in the car. A whole separated cabin with 3 beds, full kitchen, living room, wireless high speed, TV and a very nice lady at the front desk. It was also $55.00 for the night. why can’t they all be like that. A friend pointed out that I should probably write down the name of the place in case we need an extreme northern party adventure cabin. Consider it done Kasia.
After a good family breakfast were off again on the road now and are shooting to get past Winnipeg tonight. We are going to stop mid day and do some form of riding. I have my rollers so worst case scenario rest stop intervals. Have been trying to fit in as many push ups/sit ups as possible during our limited stops and seeing how many I can get up to each day of travel. Yesterday was 180 push ups, 40 sit ups. Did some good jumping squats as well. Should easily beat that today, plus the ride. Aiming for Thursday night arrival in Edmonton or maybe Friday morning latest. Any Trek Canada team members who might read this, your bikes will remain in pristine condition *taps nose*.
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