• Mean Watts: 297 (=3.4 Watts/Kg – unimpressive)
• Normalized Watts: 311
• VI: 1.047 – very proud, kept aggression in check!
• Fourth Place: Swim Split
• First Place: Bike Split
• Third Place: Run Split
• Second Place: Overall

Fun Race. I may add more comments later. For now I’m just posting my stats. In summary, HR was through the roof out of the pool. I killed the second half of the bike with the headwind. Very well paced bike leg considering the race-situation. Ran short on mojo in the second half of the run. Probably due to riding 190+kms the day before. That was by choice, I’m not unhappy that I did that, but it did have an effect on how I raced on Sunday.

• Mean Watts: 349 (=4.01 Watts/Kg – nothing impressive)
• Normalized Watts: 382
• VI: 1.095
• Sixth Place: Cat 1/2

For a relatively flat course (33m ascent and descent in 9.4kms) I had too variable of a power output compared with ideal. I probably should have had a variability somewhere around 5-6% with the start and 3 corners, not up near 10% where I did. I did execute well on two other strategic metrics (shown below). I had my highest power outputs when speeds were lower. I also did a good job focusing on shifting to keep my cadence centered right in the range where I am most powerful. I had an exceptional amount (>88%) of my time spent between 88 rpm and 100 rpm. It was also centered right on the 92-94 cadence range, which for me is the sweet spot. It’s drifted up a couple rpm in the past couple years, but this is consistently where I am at my best. I pedaled my best on Saturday, and I would conclude I was getting some very efficient power transfer. That indicates to me that I am comfortable on the TT bike and comfortable enough to access some good power even though I haven’t logged too many miles on it yet this season.

Then I learned what my friend Matt is planning to do for 40 days. In fact it’s something I previously have done as I approached Easter, I did it in 2006. I’ll quote his note from Facebook instead of trying to describe.

As I enter lent this year I have been mulling over many different conversations, realities that my friends and families are living in right now, and the need to challenge the systems of our day which are killing our souls. Thus the decision to fast from refined sugar feels like it is tying in all these threads. I’ve also been challenged by Isaiah 58, the call to a fast that is less about giving up something, as it is about activism to the poor and needy around you from a heart of love and justice. i feel like many times my fasting is lived from a very shallow level, and my mind is concerned with what it is that I’ve given up, rather than the many whose daily reality is like this. More and more i have become suspicious and pissed off with the rampant integration of refined sugar into all things that were intended to be pure and good in the food Creator has given us to live off of. This comes from becoming a parent and only recently introducing food to our dear little Jasper. A rant is coming about this in days to come.

It’s also appropriate to quote a section from Isaiah 58. I don’t know which portion struck a chord with Matt, but this is a summary of the relevant pieces.

…
The bottom line on your ‘fast days’ is profit.
   You drive your employees much too hard.
You fast, but at the same time you bicker and fight.
   You fast, but you swing a mean fist.
The kind of fasting you do
   won’t get your prayers off the ground.
Do you think this is the kind of fast day I’m after:
…
To put on a pious long face
   and parade around solemnly in black?
Do you call that fasting,
   a fast day that I, God, would like?
…
This is the kind of fast day I’m after:
   to break the chains of injustice,
   get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
   free the oppressed,
   cancel debts.
…
Do this and the lights will turn on,
   and your lives will turn around at once.
…
If you get rid of unfair practices,
   quit blaming victims,
   quit gossiping about other people’s sins,
If you are generous with the hungry
   and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out,
Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness,
   your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.
I will always show you where to go.
I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places—
   firm muscles, strong bones.
You’ll be like a well-watered garden,
   a gurgling spring that never runs dry.

Excerpts from a paraphrase of Isaiah 58 – “The Message”

Similar to Matt, this year I’m going to do three things. The first, is to adjust my diet, the second is to raise my voice against the injustices in our food system, and the third is to mourn.

Changing the diet: I’m going to stop eating manufactured food for 40 days. The intent is not to “put on a pious long face and parade around in solemnity” as Eugene Peterson puts it. There is not going to be excessive discussion about what counts as manufactured food, but it’s inevitable that such a discussion needs to occur on a few occasions. Most non-manufactured food has one ingredient. Some of it has two ingredients, like good bacon (Piggies and salt) or good peanut butter (peanuts and salt), or maybe even three ingredients like good ice-cream (milk and cream and sugar), but I can hardly imagine that anything will have more than four – Beer (water, malted barley, yeast, hops). I’m not going to eliminate sugar (partly because I already invited 20 people over to my house next week to eat ice-cream) because while refined sucrose, glucose & fructose are under publicized as an unhealthy sources of our daily caloric intake, they are the biggest problem when disguised and manufactured into other food, not when eaten as an ingredient to a home made lemon-poppyseed loaf.

I don’t anticipate that not eating manufactured food will be that tough for me, last weekend I ate about a hundred things, six of which were things I deemed to be manufactured. A few perogies, a clif bar, some cheerios, gatorade, and two different kinds of store bought bread. I needed none of those. Especially if I had made bread, which I haven’t done in a couple months. I’m also going to write, I’ll post what I write here on the blog but I don’t plan to write exclusively for the blog. I’ve been doing a fair bit of writing to elected representatives in the past couple weeks with Bill C-11 and now the nightmare that is Bill C-30 banging around in Ottawa. I’ll be doing a bit more writing to them, but I need to figure out who is the most appropriate elected audience before I decide who to write to. Instead I think I’ll start with an open letter to my alma-mater about the conferring of honorary degrees to corporate executives with the multinational corporation Nestle.

On the final point, mourning, I’ll leave that to Matt to describe.

Alongside these 40 days, I have been really confronted by Jesus’ secret to the universe in, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” We as western culture don’t really do mourning well, and in fact so much of our society is constructed to pull us away from it’s life changing depths to live in the triviality of our age. I don’t think we can truly enter into an activism for social justice without paying the price to enter into mourning. This is the way we find Creator’s heart in the midst of all the crap in our world, and then also find the comfort by which to seek to bring good and change for the kingdom of what is true, good and beautiful. So I’m trying to intentionally enter into mourning around all the hell that has been caused by refined sugar in Canada.

Instead of a hushed and sombre beginning to lent this year I’m doing something less than traditional, but more in line with the attitude of Isaiah 58, I’m starting with a battle cry:

The morning started 30 minutes later than normal because organizers wanted to give it a bit of extra time to warm up. This was definitely appreciated. Still though, it was a green-wax morning, and I added two layers of V30 on top of the six layers of VR40 I had applied the night before (over a relatively thick KR20 binder). I had done as best a job with LF6 glide wax that I could but the scraping/brush job was still a bit hack because I still haven’t built a ski-form. That half hour delay made the difference in clothing choices for me and I got away with one less than I probably would have worn if we’d started at 9am. I almost certainly would have had to stop and take that extra one off as temperatures reached ~-5^oC by the finish. Luckily the difference between start and finish was only to remove my outer mitts and to partly unzip my windbreaker and jacket.

At the advice of my ski coach Emily, I lined up just in front of the 4 hour mark. That meant I was 8th row back. I had also been instructed that due to my fitness and skill level it was basically impossible for me to go too hard at the start. The positioning benefits of a max-effort start were going to be worth it and I could always recover later… when I would be in front of all kinds of slower people and not have to deal with passing them later. I started absolutely as hard as I could when the horn sounded, and was seeded in what I felt like was an appropriate spot. I dealt with just a bit of congestion at the third time the number of lanes reduced and we had to merge but otherwise was able to go full tilt all the way across the lake. I went through the first couple kilometers at sub-3:30/km pace and then I lost a pole. The velcro came undone and because of my enthusiastic polling I pulled my hand right out of the loop. Luckily by the time I had slowed and stepped out of the track someone behind me had picked it up and I didn’t need to shuffle-step backwards through the traffic to go pick it up. It took a bit of time to get the strap re-threaded and I got passed by a few people but I got going again without too much delay. I guess that was what Emily was referring to when she said “You can always recover later”.

I kept the gas going full-tilt until soon after station 1. I believed at this point that I was working really really hard and I should probably try and start to be strategic and get behind a few other skiers for some drafting. This allowed me to back off my effort level temporarily from really really hard to just really hard. After a bit, drafting either suddenly became incredibly easy or the two guys I was following decided to give up. I passed them and pushed on to try and catch the guy in the red jacket. He was about 150 m ahead of us and it took me about 5 kms to catch him. Good motivation to push hard. Somewhere in there I rolled past the 10 km mark and found myself on-pace for a 3:37. I then proceeded to draft him for a kilometer or two before getting dropped on a big uphill. I had just ticked past the first hour at that point and decided I needed to try and get in a few more calories as the first couple aid stations had proved minimally successful, just a cup of gatorade at each. I let myself fall behind a ways and got a gel in. I also decided I would coast the remaining stations and get three cups of gatorade and either a piece of banana or a fig newton at each. It was a smart decision in retrospect and if I’d waited much longer I would have been in trouble getting enough energy down my throat. Things progressed and I went through 20kms on pace for a 3:35 finish.

Just before the Winter station I was passed by the leaders of the 31km race… and witnessed one of them go up a hill in three steps. The same one took me more than 10 steps. The interaction with the leaders of the 31km race was short as we split off to head down to Islet Lake on the long route. I spent another 5kms trying to reel in the guy in the blue jacket who was about 100 m ahead of me when we turned onto Lost Lake. Rolled through the 30km mark on pace for a 3:40 finish. I caught him just as we were approaching the Islet Lake station and was then passed by another pair. I tried to keep up with them in a moment of inspiration but they were flying and even skiing as third person in the train I was outclassed. This meant I skied solo back to Elk-Push having dropped the blue jacket man while trying to pursue the other two guys.

I was passed by teammate Tanner Broadbent like I was standing still on the big hill out of Elk-Push (who was skiing 55 km “Lite”) and was thoroughly humbled as I was starting to get sloppy with my weight transfer and was loosing good kick as a result of fatigue. Wax was good though and I spent the better part of the next long rolling section to Wanisan focussed on good technique. It was a good way to get through this challenging section quickly and I passed a number of people here including Jan Plavec who I didn’t even recognize as I went past.

I rolled through the 40 km mark on pace for a 3:43 finish time and got done the marathon a few seconds over the 2:50 mark. If only I could figure out how to run that fast! The long double-polling sections begin right around Wanisan and I struggled to keep myself motivated to keep double polling even though I knew it was the fastest technique for the terrain. The kilometers kept rolling past and I was really needing to start the self-motivation to keep the effort level rising in an attempt to maintain pace. I dug out a caffinated latte flavour gel with 10 kms to go and it tasted super amazing. I can’t handle them at all on the bike, the flavour doesn’t work for me in the summer, but skiing it was just what I needed. I was starting to pass lots of people at this point, almost all of them not going anywhere quickly and no-one able to keep up. I caught and passed the red-jacket guy here who I’d absolutely killed myself to keep up with from kms 10-15 and was pretty proud of myself. I slid past the 50km sign still on pace for a 3:43 finish and just kept telling myself to hold it together for another 20 minutes.

I think I passed another 5 guys in the closing 5 kms and got to the 1 km to go sign just as I got the first twinges in my hamstrings. My technique was starting to fail even when I was focussed on it and I was very glad that this thing was almost over. With about 200 meters to go I got a crazy cramp in my right thumb and laughed at myself on the last glide in to the finish with a bit of a gimpy polling technique.

Done!

Third in my AG and tenth overall in the with-pack division. About 35 minutes faster than last year!

Shout outs to: Keegan for his first Birkebeiner ever, Laura for her first time through with a pack, Danika for starting classic skiing a few weeks ago and managing to get on her AG podium. Emily for an incredible fourth place and Aaron for a fantastic third. Tanner, Jason, Greg and Paul from ERTC. Also to some intrepid 31 km skiers (which we decided would be considered a crazy-far distance to go and race if the 55 km race didn’t exist) Lenka (Fast!) Paul (Fast!), Claire, and Brent and Lianne who won’t make the mistake of arriving late to the start grid ever again. Also Corey, for an incredible performance in the 60+ AG! I’m going to learn how to ski from that man and I’ll be back for Birkie 2013!

• The season debuted at The School of Cross and I got destroyed. More accurately I destroyed myself. Off the start line I pulled the wheel out of my dropouts by putting down too many watts [not kidding, it happened!] and got dropped on the race to the first corner. After readjusting my wheel I caught the tail end of the peloton by the time they left the road at which point everything was single-file and there was already a breakaway forming. My prospects of having a “good race” were bleak. I worked my way up a bit, passed most of the guys who are old enough to be my Dad. Then the crashing began and I started to get passed by most of the guys who are old enough to be my Dad. It is definitely my responsibility to show up for the race with race appropriate equipment. It turns out that a bald 34cc that I’ve been commuting on for two years is not race appropriate equipment for very dry and dusty grass. It was like my tires were lubricated. A few crashes got inside my head and I got pretty hesitant… and pretty slow. Good thing the lap was long, I didn’t get lapped out, but did need to get Keegan to hand-up a bottle of gatorade of which I drank every last drop… with only a half lap to go. I was in a world of hurt at the finish and it took three cans of coke and laying in the shade for 30 minutes to feel a bit better. The season was only going to get better from here!

• Cyclocross continued the very next weekend in Calgary with the Dark Knight event. I had purchased appropriate tyres and tightened my quick release, nothing could go wrong. The race started with a long paved climb and because of the size of the field (60 guys) I really wanted to make sure that I wasn’t going to get caught up behind everyone and have to expend a ton of effort passing people on this tight and technical course with limited visibility. Did I mention that the sun had set an hour before my start time? I was third or fourth up the climb and immediately following the lung-busting effort the course turned onto a section of the downhill MTB track at Paskapoo. I managed to show that I’m better suited to skinny tires and straight lines by dropping my chain, getting it stuck in my spokes and crashing off the side of the third downhill corner at my first sight of “technical difficulty” encountered in 2011. By the time I got my shit together I was in last place. Being familiar with this situation I was determined not to blow myself up like I had by going as hard as I could and causing subsequent crashes due to reckless cornering. I caught back on to the tail end of the pack pretty quickly and slowly made my way forward through the group. The crowds were riotous in their support (well, the music was loud and a few people knew my name, so I got myself pretty motivated somehow). I spent basically the entire race catching and passing people, I also had some rather conservative pacing imposed on me by the fact that I got stuck in slow traffic a lot for the first few laps. In the end I was basically the last person on the course to not get lapped out. About half of the field got lapped out, so despite rolling across the finish line in nearly last place I actually did pretty well for myself considering the situation with a mid-pack finish, limiting my crashing to only one instance.

• The morning after Dark Knight we headed back to Paskapoo for the Cross for Kids race. I was determined to get off to a good fast start for once, this time I really overdid it and after going off for a good fast start I made the mistake of staying at too-quick a pace for a couple laps before settling in to a reasonable and sustainable effort. The course was tricky but I had a fair amount of time to pre-ride and there was actually a lot of the course that I was able to ride relatively smoothly if I had my wits about me. After my fast start and subsequent detonation I was passed by a fair number of guys who all deserved to pass me, there was no question in my mind that they were faster, but after maybe 3 short laps of moving backwards through the field I found myself amongst the guys who I should have been racing from the beginning. Then the race became really really fun, three or four of us were in close contention and places swapped regularly and each person pushed the pace where they felt they had an advantage to do so. I don’t know if it was residual fatigue from this being the third race of the weekend for me or perhaps I just didn’t bring my suitcase of courage, but I couldn’t hammer the uphills as hard as the guys who I was racing with. Instead of trying to do what I was finding very difficult I decided I would be wiser to attack on the long downhill and try to gain a gap there instead. I put in my big attack and was starting to put time into them with only one and a half laps to go when I clipped my handlebars on a stake when trying to go too fast around a tight corner and lauched myself off my bike. After calling for help and getting someone to extract me from the wreckage I decided I didn’t really have a good reason to quit, and I climbed back aboard my bike and rode it in for the last half of the lap. The crash took enough time to get me lapped out by the leaders so I finished an inglorious +1.

• Thanksgiving weekend served up some spectacular weather and I took advantage of the sunshine with 170kms on Sunday at a pretty good pace with some great company. Sunday was to be Red Cross, the next cross race, and I did a bunch of things right, I got in a decent pre-ride. I actually got nice and warmed up before my race instead of warming up way too early and then getting cold and damp before starting (the weather is the main contributor to that good decision making). I also pounded a can of coke immediately before the start to ensure I had some good blood sugar on my side, it wasn’t guaranteed with the long ride the day before. I missed my clip-in on the first try off the start and got stuck mid-pack for the first lap of the race. By the time that I had freed myself from the clutches of the traffic jam there was already a breakaway off the front of the race of about 5 guys and the pack was splintering all the way through the field. I slowly worked my way up from my position from one person to the next, I typically paused briefly behind each person I caught long enough to feel like I had got my effort under control before attacking and trying to close down the next gap. It probably could have been paced a bit more evenly, but as people started to fatigue, my lack of max-efforts in the first 15 minutes gave me a huge advantage over the rest of the guys who I was riding amongst. I eventually broke away with a lap and a half remaining from Jan Plavec and the guy who rides for Slime. I dropped the hammer and went for a max effort to try and get across the gap to Tanner Broadbent from ERTC. It was going to take a heroic effort, but for the first time in the season I felt like I might have a heroic effort in me. That last lap had me sprinting out of every corner and rolling huge gears on the flats, I probably closed a full 15 seconds on Tanner in the last 5 minutes and caught him just as we crested the final hill with a long drag race to the finish. He immediately attacked hoping to prevent me from getting any draft on the run in to the finish. It sort-of worked, I couldn’t close the gap enough to really get “into” the draft but he didn’t put time on me. Into the last corner I caught his wheel as we hit the brakes and I picked my sprinting gear exactly right. I turned myself absolutely inside out in the final 80m to the line and with a pretty fantastic bike throw, took him at the line by less than a half a wheel. It felt like I won the world championship. In fact I was sixth in the expert category, but I didn’t really care, it was a big victory for me.
• Buoyed by my success I headed to Red-Deer the following weekend for Riverbend Cross and hoped that with a bit better start I could maybe get a race with good execution start to finish. I lined up aggressively and tried my best to stick with the guys who I had finished amongst the previous weekend in Edmonton for the first few laps. It was too tall an order. After about 3 laps I was hurting, not breathing well, and feeling dead in the legs. It was a pretty flat course with a fair number of long straight sections. Everyone before the race was commenting on how this was a course that suited me well, it wasn’t. At the beginning and the end of all of the long straight sections was a corner, and 95% of the corners on this course were well more than 90^o bends. I didn’t have the cornering prowess to take them at the same speeds as the guys around me, and so I had to accelerate harder out of the corners than them, and lug all 200+ pound of me along. Me and this course were not match-made for eachother despite what people had said. I still thought though, that I should be able to hang with those guys, and so put myself over the edge early in the race trying to do so. By lap 4 I had done too much damage and in a moment of poor judgement caused by blurring vision and the taste of blood in my mouth I drove off the course into the woods. Unfortunately the crashing had only just begun and two laps later I crashed off the side of a hill when I missed a mount and fell smack-dab in the middle of a lane of oncoming traffic. No-one hit me, but the same can’t be said for my bike. Standing up, I didn’t have a ton of reasons to quit so got on the bike and kept riding. The subsequent crashes weren’t so bad, just minor bike handling errors leading to me tipping over, you know, the usual. I wasn’t quite last place once it was all over with, there was still the really old dude behind me.

• The next weekend was provincial championships at Lions Den Cross in Devon. This is a fun course and it’s one I have some pretty good memories from. There are some fun bits and pieces and the climbing and descending is limited to once per lap. Being under 30 meant I had to race at the elite level to contest provincials which meant racing against all of the really really fast guys. It was a challenge I was ready for, I did my best to pre-ride well and get warmed up well. I also decided that my strategy was going to be to go hard off the start and get in a good position and then try to settle into my best pace possible right away instead of trying to stick with anyone. There was no guarantee there would be anyone to stick with anyways, and if I wanted a real time instead of just getting lapped out, I needed to pace myself to a max effort for an hour instead of an explosion and dawdling in for the second half. I lined up next to Peter Knight who had declared he was going for the hole shot, and I got myself to corner #2 on his wheel, ahead of everyone else, including many-time-defending provincial champ Aaron Schooler. I got heckled a bit by him, telling me not to crash him out, but I just joked back that I had a hard time hearing him because I was so far ahead. Within 400m I had backed off the pace of the leaders and was settling in to my own effort. It wasn’t very hard to let the fast guys get away for that first lap and a bit, I was up amongst guys I cheer for all season long, I wasn’t going to finish anywhere near them and I knew it. It was a good strategy I think and I settled in for a good solid effort. I was really having a great race despite the fact that I was battling to stay off the podium of last-place-ers. As the race came to a close I got some good cheers when I rolled up to a barrier pretending I was going to bunny-hop it and then a big round of Boooooo!!! when I hopped off and dismounted instead. The next time around I decided that I’d better not let my fans down and attempted the bunnyhop. I had attempted this three times during warmup. Twice were barely on the side of “success” and one was an absolute catastrophic failure. My fatigued brain figured that my chances were alright, it was too fatigued to take into account that it should be calculating my chances of bunnyhopping while fatigued. Well, I hit the deck hard, the bike went flying and I lost some more skin. My fans loved it. The end of the race was pretty good, I nearly closed the gap on a young Juventus guy, it turned out he had a lot in the tank to sprint with despite his fade on the final couple lap. In the end I stayed well ahead of Aaron who defended his title as provincial champ and so I would definitely chalk this race up as a success as well. Good way to finish off the season for sure!

I learned a few things this season at ‘cross:

1. If you want technical prowess, you have to earn it with practice.
2. Whatever I might think I’m doing to get better and bike handling doesn’t count as practice.
3. Cyclocross is very hard to do when you’ve got some ego, or even an idea of who you’d like to try and beat.
4. I had better never buy carbon wheels for cyclocross, they probably won’t last one warmup lap.
5. It is way easier to blow yourself up cyclocross racing when you have been working on 5min power, than when you have been working on aerobic endurance
6. Despite being easier to blow yourself up doing shorter harder efforts in training, it does make you faster.
7. It’s very important to downshift into corners, or I destroy my back.
8. I should probably buy some new shoes, mine are 6 years old and the velcro comes undone at very inopportune times.
9. If I don’t get any better at cross I don’t think it will diminish the fun.
10. I’m really happy I don’t have to race as an ‘elite’ all season.

Ironman began with my arrival in Penticton about quarter past 5 in the morning. This was about 15 minutes ahead of last year and it made all the difference. I walked right through the lineup for body-marking, got myself marked. Got the tyres on my bike pumped and headed over to the toilets before it really started to get busy. I scoped out a few of the pros getting their bikes ready and chit chatted with a few people. I then realized I had a long day on my feet ahead of me and went into the change tent to claim a chair for the rest of the morning to wait. There were some hilarious things going on that you’ll only see at Ironman. Most cannot be shared without a parental advisory. I realized that this is the reason that WTC has a minimum age of 18 years for competition in their events.

I was in my wetsuit by the time the pros went off at quarter to seven and made my way through the traffic jam and onto the beach with 5 minutes to go. I found my brother in the crowd shooting photos, not very difficult to find, he was the only one not wearing black neoprene. We had a little chat and I made my way to the front. I liked my choice of start positions last year and chose the same thing, second row, a little outside of center. I told myself that I had to go at the horn, no hesitation. Less people sang the national anthem this year than last when it felt like I was a part of a triathlete chorus line.

Then after all the hype, and talk, and waiting, and speculation it was finally underway. The horn went and it was just time for business. I tried my best to put in a solid effort off the start line to get myself in amongst some slightly quicker swimmers but after perhaps 200m I had fallen off the back of the leading crew of triathletes who had lined up near me and was swimming in clean water. The solution was to move towards the buoy line gradually where things were thicker and I soon found myself in amongst some better drafting in the river of neoprene. Nothing really surprised me about the swim. It was a long ways, it was pretty rough at some points in time and there was some unbelievably terrible navigation going on around me. I kept my head in the game and focussed on good long strokes, and keeping the breathing controlled. Eventually it was over and I was on my way out, none the worse for wear, but at the same time happy that I was finished with the swimming.

I had a fantastic transition, found some grass space to dump my gear bag and stuff the wetsuit. Helmet and sunglasses on and grabbed the shoes and ran barefoot to my bike. I got sunscreened by the volunteers and was through more than a minute faster than last year, very proud of myself. I don’t think doing it very much faster would be wise, starting with the shoes mounted to the bike isn’t permitted for the amateurs (with good reason) and running any faster would just spike the heart-rate.

As I headed out of town the passing began and while I was riding the aerobars it wasn’t possible to really work very hard at all because of the congestion. I reminded myself that I needed to have a very patient morning and treated this like some patience practice for the rest of the ride. I had also lost satellite reception on my GPS and it needed to re-acquire so it really felt like I just took the first 10 minutes to get going.

Once through town I started into the nutrition by pounding my first bottle of Gatorade and just rolled along easy to McLean creek hill. I held back as much as I could on the ascent, being passed by about a dozen guys, but the watts were still much higher than I would have wanted them. I found the speeds high with the tailwind and refused to push it, kept the watts on the low end and did my best to keep it even, meaning being passed on all of the uphills and gradually riding away from people on all of the descents. Nothing much happened from there until Richter’s Pass, just some easy riding and a lot of eating and drinking.

I mean a lot of eating and drinking. The nutrition plan was as follows:

• 2 bottles of Gatorade – 170 cal each
• 800cal of shot blocks
• 2 fruit bars – 240 cal
• 2 clif bars – 260 cal each (Subsituted one for another bottle of perform and a banana at end of bike because it was hot and I didn’t feel like eating so only 260cal)
• A bottle of Powerbar Perform beverage at each aid station. I took 8 bottles, and drank on average three quarters of each one for a total of ~1000 cal.
• Bananas wherever possible, which was less often than I would have liked, usually they were cut in half and only one person was doing hand-ups. Ate a total of 2.5 for ~300 cal
• I was targeting 550+ cal/hour. By my best estimate I got in 580-600cal/hour. I drank far more than I expected, not expecting to drink as much perform as I did, and didn’t really anticipate drinking much of any water except to follow food, I drank two full bottles of water, yet still only peed once on the bike course at around 120kms. The stomach felt fine the whole way.

Richter’s pass with a headwind and a power-meter is a humbling experience. Last year I rode past everyone on the hill convincingly, this year I rode past no-one convincingly and was passed by dozens. I gave Fernanda Keller a huge cheer when I went past her. That was actually a high-point in the ride, she is a total legend and I think it’s great that she’s still racing pro despite being past her peak. I summited the pass eventually, a bit slower than last year, having averaged 320 watts, right about what I had hoped to do, and then set off down the other side, face tucked down against the aerobars in a zero watt tuck.

The infamous rollers are next and I found myself in with a pretty talented group of cyclists here. I was of course faster on the descents than the rest of them as I was probably 30 lbs heavier than the next biggest guy. All in all though, it wasn’t bad, it forced me to stay focussed but it also prevented me from working the uphills because I didn’t want to enter the draft zones of the guys ahead of me and be forced to pass them. I did go to the front off the top of the final rise just before we rolled out onto the flats in Cawston and put my head down, got aero into the headwind and went to work, sitting right on 275-280 watts to get away from the group. After about 10 minutes I hadn’t just formed a gap, I had dropped them like rocks and I couldn’t even see them. Onto the out and back I was now moving my way through the pro womens field. I realized as I rode towards special needs that I was now unequivocally “off the front” of the race and the only age group guys remaining ahead were very spread out. I think from 100kms through to the finish I only passed about a dozen men before reaching T2 in sixth place.

Before T2 though I had to ascend Yellow Lake which went by very quickly, keeping the head low and working on preventing wattage spikes. I was soon at the Green Mountain Road and just kept it rolling up to Yellow Lake proper where I saw my cheer crew, heckled them a bit for wasting such a beautiful day watching a race instead of riding their bikes and then took off down the hill. No brakes this year was a significant improvement to the pouring rain and hail of last and I loved the descent which wasn’t even as fast as it could have been as I was dealing with a head-wind. When tucked down with my face to the aerobars I did get a few twinges in my upper quads letting me know that they’d been working. Nothing surprising, this happens all the time to me, but it was my first warning that the legs weren’t necessarily going to be happy for the rest of the day.

As I rolled into town I came upon Paul Tichelaar and as I crested the hill in town I shut it down and rolled easy into transition. If I would have known it was the difference of 5:00:22 and 4:59:59 I probably would have kept the watts up. Instead I took my feet out of my shoes and spun the legs out, waved a bit to the crowds. They were going ballistic, it was like I was in the top 10 overall or something

Average Power = 270 Watts – Normalized Power 290 Watts – Intensity Factor = ~0.73 – Variability Index = 1.074
Click image to enlarge

I was handed the wrong bag in transition and when I ran into the change tent it was tied in a bit knot. I tore the whole thing open to dump the stuff out…. and out came a yellow towel. This isn’t my bag. I was on my way back to go get my real bag when someone came running, they apparently had figured out their mistake. I dumped the bag on the ground, socks, shoes, quick sunscreen spray on the shoulders, and a bottle of coke. Go. I had frozen two cans of coke with added salt in a bike bottle and left it in T2. This was to force me to take it easy on the first mile of the marathon and it worked well. It also got 300 calories into my system and got me rolling on the caffeine. I think this was an excellent strategy again and I split the first mile in 7:48. I had seen Paul run into transition as I was running out so I expected him to be catching me any second but it was taking him a while. It turned out he had stopped for a washroom break and when he caught me at about mile three I agreed to run with him.

The pattern of the aid stations was starting to get underway, I tried to drink two cups of coke at each mile, replace my sponges with two new ones, and dump as much ice down my top as I could get my hands on. Normally that was about four cups. As I left the aid station there was always water and I tried to get a cup onto the top of my head as well. It was working well and despite running in 32 degree weather without a cloud in the sky and a tailwind I was managing to feel rather comfortable on the run. My HR was right around 155bpm and holding steady and so I continued along with Paul running about a 4:45 pace/km for the first 10 miles. I had been running 4:40 in most of my recent brick runs and holding to about a 4:50 pace as my default cruising pace during the past month so I felt that 4:45 while ambitious wasn’t unreasonable. My mind started racing for a little bit when I realized I was running in fifth place overall in the age-group race alongside a former Olympian and on track to beat my wildest dreams for an ironman finish time. I realized the danger of the situation, both physically and mentally and calmed myself down. I then decided I was not going to allow fear of the unknown slow me down before I needed to and because I was good on calories and core temperature and not feeling the least bit challenged by the pace I decided to continue. It was a risk I was going to have to take, and if I started running slower I had absolutely no guarantee it was going to mitigate the main risk I sensed I was taking, that being that my muscles were going to give up on me.

I started to really loose the strength in my stride at about 10 miles, landing and toeing off was feeling OK but the middle section of my stride was really feeling weak. It wasn’t the greatest situation to be in at all but when it happened it wasn’t a huge surprise. It was the final six weeks of training playing themselves out again for me, many workouts had been limited more by strength than by aerobic capacity and so it was only logical that my racing would be limited in the same way.

I walked my first aid station here and then walked the biggest and steepest hill on the course. There was no point in running it if the muscles were already screaming. I got to the top and got back running but the pace was now slower as I was having the onset of mild cramping in most muscles between my waist at my knees. Things continued and I walked the rest of the aid stations on the way to the turnaround, my pace was blowing out but I wanted to keep pushing onward. Just before the turnaround there is a very steep section of descent and as I walked down there to spare the quads a bit of eccentric loading it just wasn’t enough reprieve, they let me know that they were basically done for the day. I rounded the corner at special needs, scooped myself some more frozen coke and water from my bag and walked briefly while I drank. I got myself back up to a run towards the base of the climb away from the turnaround but when I got there I realized that the charade of racing was over. I was going to be walking most of the way home and I could either start walking now voluntarily or be forced to start walking in another mile or two. If I waited ‘till I was forced to walk I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to walk all the way home at all and so made the decision to try and optimize the finish time from here on out by just walking as fast as I could.

It turns out that when I’m good on energy and in a relatively good mood like I was I can walk pretty quickly with my long legs. I was holding it well below an eight minute per kilometre pace and just got down to business.

The rest of the walk home wasn’t comfortable at all for my legs. The heat wasn’t so bad though as we had a headwind on the return. I was getting myself access to ice and coke every mile and the view was as good as it could get, I mean I was just across the street from an Ironman playing out in the lives of 2800 people! I made the most of it and eventually I realized that if I kept pushing my walking pace I still had a hope of coming in below 11 hours. That kept me going pretty good and I was even able to pick up my HR slightly on the way to the finish. On lakeshore drive everyone was screaming at me to run in to the finish but I just kept the walking up, the run wasn’t about to happen now if it wasn’t going to happen for the past 12 miles and I knew better than to try.

The Canada Day Criterium is a long standing tradition in Alberta Cycling. It takes place on a nice loop of road in the park behind the Alberta Legislature, with a hill, a couple relatively tight corners and a blazing fast descent on each lap. It’s the only points race of year… but I wasn’t really anticipating I’d be trying to accumulate any points. I was going to try and finish with the pack on my debut race in the new category. The elite guys were slotted to do 32 laps. There were points to be won on intermediate sprints on every 4th lap. 5,3,2,1 to the top 4 guys across the line each time, and double points at the finish.

It started out fast but reasonable, I was able to stick with the group, and when little gaps formed I was able to keep closing them down. It felt like I had it under control, realistically though, I didn’t I was doing too much work. In the end, those little gaps were the big problem of the day. At the corner just before the long descent I was always rolling in towards the end of the pack, but every time I tried to improve my position I would be pushed backwards within 10-15 seconds. I’d need to slow it down for this corner and then lean it way over to get around. I was really hesitant to pedal around the corner, I probably could as a few of the other guys were pedalling, but it was a matter of millimeters of clearance or I’d clip my pedal on the pavement. That was to be my downfall. It meant that I had to ramp up the power all the way down the hill to make up a fraction of a second to stick with the group. The guys in front of me just had to sit there and draft. I ended up working for half of the lap every lap. Everyone in the middle of the group was working for maybe 20 seconds on the hill and then just sitting in for the rest of the ride. Cory had advised me to just sit in and coast for as much of the lap as I could… the problem was that I couldn’t. I’ve got skills to learn.

I lasted 16 laps, I had been dropped twice but had fought my way back on both times. The 16th lap was an intermediate sprint and when the group accelerated for the points at the line I got spit off the back and that was it for the day. I managed to do 6 more laps solo before I got lapped out. The win went to Aaron Schooler who spent more than half the race off the front with Jeff Barnes who came second.

Friday night things got underway with a 2km “technical” prologue time trial. It included 11 corners and no TT bars were permitted, although we were allowed to run a disc and so I set up the Aerocat with my TT wheelset. After warming up I promptly got cold standing around waiting the three minutes for the start, it was drizzly and about 14 degrees. I had arrived too late to pre-ride the course so I would be riding it blind. That’s a dumb mistake, but I was out for beers with some guys from work after a long week… so at least I had a good excuse to show up to the start late. Right? I launched out of the start, took the first corner 80 meters down the road at 38 kph and the next corner, another 130 meters up the road at 43 kph. It was then time for the drag race, a 600 m straightaway and I rolled it up to a max speed of 54 kph. The next corner was a turn onto a road with a boulevard down the middle and I thought we were turning into the inside lane, but just as I set up my corner I realized I needed to go far, it cost me a fair chunk of speed as I had to get upright to handle the bike through there. The trip back was a series of corners none more than 200m apart. Some were 90 degrees and some were a bit wider than 90 degrees but I wasn’t sure which ones were which because I hadn’t ridden it. I quit pedaling for each one to make sure I didn’t clip a pedal but it was unnecessary for most of them and each time I’d be frustrated for backing off the power. It was over before I realized it, done in a time of 2:51. Enough for 4th overall and 1st among the Cat 3s. 20 upgrade points!

Saturday morning we had a TT. 16.4 kilometers long. I was hoping to do between 380 and 390 Watts and expected it would take around 23-24 minutes. I warmed up, lined up and then went hard. I caught my 1 minute man before 3 kilometers and was unsure if I’d catch my 2 minute man at all, it turns out that I wouldn’t. There was a little bit of a rise in the road at one point which took some thinking to make sure I was in an appropriate gear but otherwise it was very flat and very straightforward. I rolled home on the last stretch with a big fade in power and a bit of a tailwind. It was probably not my best paced TT of the year, but it’s better in a relatively short effort like this to get more energy out before the end than less. There’s no reward for finishing with anything in the tank. I wound up in second place to Jason Hargreaves from Cat 3, which wasn’t really a surprise, he’s a fast guy and so to be beaten was not unexpected, I thought I’d be closer than 20 seconds, but I only managed an average of 380 Watts, the bottom of my goal range, not 390. Second place was another 15 upgrade points.

Saturday afternoon I went for a bike ride with my parents who were visiting from Calgary, We did about 45 kms and I kept the effort low the whole way. We rode out to the Donut shop in Calmar which I like to go visit, unfortunately the donuts were all sold out and we got some other pastries and cookies before heading back to Devon, eating some dinner and getting ready for the crit.

The general classification for the weekend had Blaine, a team-mate in Cat2 in the lead and so the strategy for ERTC was going to try and keep the race together as much as possible for as long as possible. We wanted to shut down any attempts at breakaways quickly and come to the line as a bunch. Hopefully Jon Wood would be able to take the win and we anticipated that Nick would also score some bonus time, but our hope was that neither Colter nor Chris would be allowed to accumulate anything of substance. We were to do 40 laps of an 880 m square.

I lined up near the front and even on the first neutral lap with a lead vehicle out front it was crazy fast. The first 8 laps were just plain fast. No-one let up at all and when someone on the front backed off at all someone would take over and keep driving the pace. There was tons of single-file and on occasion we would bunch up to be two wide. We were hitting 50kph each time we came down the finishing straight with a bit of a tailwind and a slight downhill right into the tightest corner. I found myself well towards the back and just working as hard as I could to stay on the group. So much for trying to position yourself well. I knew where I should be but I just couldn’t be there, every time I moved up towards the front third of the pack for a bit better positioning I would immediately find myself being passed and shunted off towards the tail of the group again. Eventually the full-gas pace shifted and there was a bit of respite for a lap every once in a while while no-one would be attacking on the front. The group bunched up quickly as soon as the pace dropped by the slightest and we’d find ourselves four or five guys wide going around the corners. One of these bunchings was responded to by the only attack that formed a break all race. Three guys went off the front and put in maybe 100m on the group. It was about halfway through the race and it was unlikely to be successful. At the same time you say something is unlikely to be a success it means that someone has to do the work to bring it back. I watched from the back of the pack where I was stuck as a few team-mates put in some effort to pull down the gap. I then decided that I’d better put in my share of work despite having so much trouble just hanging on at the back. So, I went on the tailwind section and drilled it up the outside, moved all the way from the back of the pack to first wheel and went through the tight corner. I had been working about as hard as I could work at the back so figured that once I went to the front I’d have to keep working as hard as I could work if I was going to pull in the break. I overestimated the amount of power that was appropriate to pull the peloton along and gapped the group instantaneously. By the time I looked back at the first corner I was already halfway across the gap to the breakaway. Oh shit, I thought to myself. I was supposed to be trying to keep the race together, not go off the front. I made a split second decision to try and bridge. It took just one lap and I was there with the leaders. The next time through I could hear coach Cory yelling from the sidelines not to work for the breakaway. I didn’t work, but I did pull through at a mellow pace once when I found myself on the front by accident. Back in the peloton second and third place on GC were getting nervous and they did a bunch of work at this point to pull back the breakaway. I think I lasted off the front for maybe 4 laps and just as we were going to be caught the bell went for an intermediate prime. I lasted long enough off the front to secure third in the intermediate sprint and then went back into the peloton. I didn’t let myself drift quite as far to the back at this point and had an easier time staying within range of the front. The lap-count was starting to run out and the whole race slowed down for a while. Everyone knew that it was going to be a bunch sprint and people tried to rest-up as much as they could. I knew that there would be some crazy fast stuff again before the finish and that Jon Wood now shouldn’t be the person covering all of the attacks if we wanted him to sprint for the win. I think all of the other ERTC guys from Cat 3 had been lapped out by this point so that left just Steve, Blaine and myself to do the work. With 3 laps to go someone made their bid for glory, I ramped it up and pulled hard along with a few other people, we had him back with just over a lap to go, I drifted back to maybe 10th place as we began our final lap and then saw Jon Wood and decided I’d follow him as he was probably a good navigator in a crazy situation like this one. I picked the same route that he did, wound it up with two corners to go, 50kph going into the final corner, and hit 55kph in the final sprint which Jon won for ERTC. I was good enough for 7th overall, first place amongst the Cat 3 boys. 20 more upgrade points.

Sunday morning the situation was the similar to the beginning of the criterium. Blaine was first on GC and I was 5th. Jon Wood was one second ahead of me after racking up 16 seconds of bonus time at the criterium to my one second. Nick Jendzjowsky had amassed enough seconds to get within one second of me on GC. The plan was to try and keep the race together for as long as possible. No-one from ERTC was supposed to work in a break unless they were the highest person on GC from that group. Cory wanted me to try and get in a breakaway if the opportunity presented itself and gave me a list of good people to try and go with. We knew that the race would likely blow to pieces on the final hill but hopefully we could get Blaine there without having had to work very hard yet and a few people with him to chase back the few guys who would inevitably be able to climb that hill faster than him.

The wind was definitely a factor on race day. It was coming from the north-west meaning we started with a cross-headwind and we would finish with a long fast flat section of cross-tailwind. It also meant we’d have some opportunities to make the peloton hurt in the crosswind along the way. I found the start of the race to be very difficult positioning-wise. We were rolling mostly single or double-file down the yellow line, no-one wanting to work on the front. I kept getting pushed backwards through the field and would have to make an effort to move back up. It meant that I was never really near the front for more than a few seconds at a time and was poorly positioned to cover any attempts at breakaways. I had team-mates up near the front who were managing to do the job but I kept finding myself right at the back of the pack, never intending to be there. It mean that when a breakaway went that ERTC would have liked to have me in I wasn’t there. Rob went with the pack instead even though he was way down on GC. He took a free ride for the day on the breakaway train and didn’t have to work at all. He wouldn’t finish successfully with the leaders from that group and he wasn’t the best positioned on GC from the pack. It wasn’t a breakaway we should have been satisfied with but the leadership on the road from our team wasn’t giving instructions to chase it back while the gap was still small, that was our big mistake and it would cost us.

Through the southbound section of the course we descended the river valley and climbed out of it without having the pack explode. Then there was an explosion and the whole field shattered but eventually came back together. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get back on when it happened though and really had to go to my limits to stick with the pack. The accelerations and sections of coasting associated with that helped the breakaway gain time and the day’s winner, Jeff Barnes, bridged the gap to the break at this point. I was destroyed at this point and couldn’t go with any confidence that I’d even be able to get across the 90 second gap to the lead if I had someone to draft to get there, I was maxed out in the peloton. In retrospect I should have tried, both on behalf of myself, and on behalf of the team.

We then started rolling with a big tailwind and ERTC really started to contribute to the chase. At first it was mostly the other Cat 3 boys who were doing the work, Travis and Aaron. The problem was that we were just riding steady, not riding hard. The guys in the break were riding hard and with a tailwind they were adding to their lead. As we approached the turnaround into the headwind I went to the front and lifted the pace from steady to hard and started to reel things back slowly. We spun the 180 and headed back into the headwind, I stayed on the front for long periods of time working at between 160 and 165 bpm, go, go, go. I was taking splits on the break where we could see them and it started at about 2:15. By the time we were turning off of the headwind section into a period of sidewind I had brought down the gap with a few bits and pieces of help to 70 seconds. I was tired, but as we entered the sidewind section Jon Wood rallied me to try and gutter the peloton with Blaine in the draft at the front. We rolled a very serious pace for the next stretch. Much of it at or above my TT effort from the day before. What was left of our peloton was single-file right on the edge of the pavement, every single person trying to play a game of inches with how close they could ride to the side of the road without hitting the ditch to maximize their draft. Jon and I took turns on the front, 15 seconds at a time, drilling it and then drilling it again, and again, and again. It was, as Jon would later say, “What dreams are made of”.

We descended the river valley on the way back with a bit more than a minute deficit to the break. Our team rode alongside Blaine on the ascent and held him in our draft as some of the smaller guys attacked the hill and started to put in time. We rolled over the top having lost about 100 m to the fastest climbers, there were no big guys in that group to really haul ass along the flats so I was pretty confident that properly motivated with 4 ERTCs ($200 of beer money is pretty good motivation I think!) that we’d be able to reel them back. There were a few stragglers in between which we soon scooped up as we turned right, the speeds were consistently in the mid to high 40s and often while I was pulling through I’d see 50kph on the speedo. Drag race! It’s really fun to be riding with a tailwind and a good group like that. Your bike just handles a bit differently and even though it’s taking a lot of effort to keep it going it feels a bit like you’re riding a bike with a motor. Go Go Go. Then suddenly we have to stop pushing. Blaine is dropping off the back and he’s struggling. I shout to the guys rolling hard at the front of the group to ease up. At 50kph they can’t hear me… I drop back to Blaine, let him catch the draft and escort him back up to the group. Just as we’re catching back on he looses my wheel. Jon and Steve have now dropped back and the rest of our group puts a gap on us. Jon starts pushing Blaine and I’m trying to sit tall and create as big a draft as possible. It’s an uphill battle, our GC contender is bonking hard and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. I get the go-ahead from Jon who’s acting like the brains on the road for our team to latch back on to the group we were with, don’t work are my only instructions. It takes me about 2 minutes at 50kph to latch back on and I sit there in the draft just rolling along, my HR comes down and I sit and wait. The wheel-truck pulls in between our group and my team-mates so I have no idea where they are. I just figure I’ve got to wait. I don’t really know what I’m waiting for but if anyone else from our team is going to catch back on it’s important that I’m not pushing the pace. Eventually Jon appears, he gives the go-ahead to start working again and we really ramp up the pace again and blast along the road on the run-in to the finish. We drop a couple guys in the final couple kilometers as the pace peaks. I’m second from our group across the finish line. First from Cat 3. 20 more upgrade points.

I wind up in first place on the general classification for a further 20 points for a grand total of 95 upgrade points over the course of the weekend. That springs me up to 171 points total and I got the upgrade to Cat 2.

Saturday morning we arrived early for the TT, and knowing that both myself and Travis had UCI illegal bikes we went an hour before the start to the commissaire to have them checked so we knew what we had to change and adjust before the start. We were both told that our bikes were barely legal. I was a bit puzzled, I was pretty certain that the seat setback was not 50 mm but the jig they had to measure the bike was the final ruling and so we went back to warm-up. I did 25 minutes on the rollers at about 220 watts, just enough to start to get sweating and then hopped off with 10 minutes to the race start, dried myself off and put on the skinsuit and rolled over to the start 3 minutes before my start. The rules are that you have to measure the bike immediately prior to the start, and so he popped it back up on the jig and now it was illegal. I reminded him that I had been there and hour before and it had been legal, now it was too late for him to make such claims, I picked up my bike off the jig and walked away. Travis had the same thing happen to him but he was sent off to go adjust his seat and thus missed his start by 15 seconds and also got his heart rate right up to maximum rushing around before he even started the race.

The course starts with about 2km of false flat out of town and then dips under the highway. We had a tailwind through this section and I found myself going 50kph at about 380 Watts and was content with that. I caught my 30 second man just as we turned right onto the Minnewanka Loop road. The loop begins with a quick descent past cascade ponds and then a very steep climb up towards the turnoff for Johnson Lake. Masa was shooting photos from there and gave me a good scream and I went really hard up that climb. I passed my 1 minute and 90 second guys at the crest of that hill but I was really suffering, I had loaded up the muscles way too much and could hardly keep the legs turning. As we came through a pretty fast section in the trees near Two-Jack Lake I caught and passed my next guy, he could have been my 2 minute man or 2:30. I wasn’t really sure the order of the people as they could have been passing one another by this point.

Leaving the edge of Two-Jack Lake I knew the next rise was the final one before we rode across the dam at Lake Minnewanka and went really hard again but this time managed to hold it together enough to get back up to 50kph across the dam. I caught another person just as we left the edge of the dam and then the descent began where I passed one more person. It was terribly fast and winding but nowhere did I need to touch the brakes, plenty of it required me to stop pedaling through the corners to prevent clipping a pedal on the pavement. The descent was interrupted with short flat sections or little rises which I really spiked my power on to prevent myself from loosing speed on the downhill. I ran 53×12 most of the way, 53×11 wasn’t really necessary. I had been thinking that the descent would be a bit of a break before having to deal with the flat into the headwind once back under the highway. The huge power spikes required to keep the speed up meant that I wasn’t getting any of that anticipated rest on the descent, and I reached the dip under the highway with just about no energy left and a couple kilometers yet to go. The final stretch really put me over the edge. I was doing everything I could to keep my head out of the wind, my forehead was right down on my hands for a few sections and I was just watching the white line beneath me and peeking up to take a quick look for upcoming corners and cars. It was the deepest I had dug myself in on a bike all year, possibly ever. I was killing myself to try and keep up 400 Watts, and if you check the stats I was almost able to do it. I’ll do an in-detail analysis of the power-output from this TT in a few days when I find some time. Perhaps along with the Devon TT next weekend for comparison. Across the line I could barely breathe hard enough and once I had finally got that under control I started coughing quite hard. Only afterward did I realize that this had been done at relatively high altitude compared to Edmonton. It’s nothing crazy high, but when you’re pushing the limit on VO2 max the difference matters. In Edmonton we typically work with 93% of the oxygen at sea level but at Minnewanka we were working with only 84%, the difference is non-negligible.

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The comissaires took forever to deliberate about how they were going to rule on illegal bikes. I hadn’t been the only person to ride an illegal bike, that’s for sure. I had also done everything in my power to comply by the rules. In the end they decided that they had screwed it up badly enough that they couldn’t enforce the rule fairly so it wasn’t applied at all. Lucky for me. I figured my chances of winning were about 25%, 50% chance that I was the fastest person there from Cat 3 and a coin toss on whether or not I’d be punished by the ruling on bike legality. I think this begs the question regarding UCI legality in the best of circumstances. Is it possible to apply these rules fairly in the best of times? I don’t think so. Why are the measurements fixed and not variable by rider size? In some regard I feel like I should have to put my seat even further back the the average person. 50 mm for me will cause crotch pain, but 50 mm for someone who is 5′2” is going to destroy them. I also think it’s a bit of a farce that you’re allowed to cheat a rule about using “a bike that looks like a regular bike” by putting on a saddle (an Adamo) that doesn’t at all look like a regular saddle.

Travis and I got some coffee and then tried to nap in the hotel room for a bit in the afternoon before suiting up again and warming up for the crit. A discussion with Cory before the race had me settled on the following plan. Try and line up with a good position at the start and ride near the front for a while and get a feel for the fastest line through the corners. When an opportunity presented itself I was going to be ready to go for it. I anticipated that someone would go hard from the start and indeed one of the Calgary Cycle guys (I think it was Craig Fraser?) leapt from the gun and had a gap on the peloton. The chase was hard and we ran through in mostly single file for the first 3 or so laps. At this point things slowed down for two laps and people started to look around and scope out who was where. The slowing at the front meant that the group started to bunch up a bit at the back and I was not interested in being in the peloton going two people wide around the corners. I saw an opportunity on the back straight and went hard down the inside past everyone, held my gap and went full gas for a full three loops. A Bow/Cyclemeisters rider sucked my wheel but I was interested in having him along as we had 20 laps to go and didn’t exactly want to do the whole thing myself. It took a lot of convincing to get him to finally take a turn on the front, and even then he was only interested in doing the two easy corners on each lap. Another 5 laps went by, each of us doing a half-lap, and then I convinced him to switch which half we were going to do, but I needed to pull for a whole lap to do it. Our gap had stretched out to about 8 seconds by this point and a few people had tried to come across the gap but they were ultimately unsuccessful and got reeled back by the peloton. We were starting to gain a bit of time on each lap again, and I believe we were up to 12 seconds when my tyre exploded. It was on the third corner, and just as I went to commit to get around the corner my rear tyre went with a loud bang. I overcompensated so hard from skidding out that I tipped over the other direction and landed on my right hand side and slid to a quick stop before I reached the fence. I leapt up and was out of the way long before the next group came through. I guess I could have tried to get a new wheel and get back in the race but I just wasn’t interested at all. As I would learn later, the cable had slipped in the derailleur and I wouldn’t have been able to shift anyways. There was some minor road rash but nothing bad, I have some on my forearm and my greatest worry is that I won’t be able to rest it on the aerobars for the TT workout on Tuesday. When that’s your greatest worry, it’s not really a worry at all.

Sunday morning was the circuit race and we were all lined up and ready by 6:50 for a 7:00am start on wet roads with cloudy skies but the rain wasn’t actually falling. All of ERTC got lined up near the front and was positioned well so I felt the liberty to drill it a bit down the long flat approach to the first hill. Our team-mates would be well positioned by default from the beginning of the race and it would be a good opportunity to make some people near the back of the pack work harder than they wanted to to get up the first hill with the group. I did a lot of pulling on the front with some help from Tim, Travis, Greg, Brett, Neil… a lot of ERTC! We were able to stretch the pack out but unfortunately 50kph wasn’t fast enough on the big fat flat road to thin things out into single-file while everyone was still fresh. We didn’t exactly fly up the first hill but I came over the top about 12th wheel. I was happy with that positioning and the pace dropped, people were a bit gassed already I think. Either that or still in the process of waking up. Stefan then launched an attack and I went with, about 4 of us went for a while, it wasn’t enough to put in any time but we had formed a good gap and it needed to be closed down. The peloton needed to work to do it, not bad. By this point I was really starting to feel a bit worse for wear as a result of the crash the evening before. My hip, which had sustained minor road rash wasn’t feeling too good, one of the supporting muscles that goes around the outside in the glutes was under some duress. I debated pulling the plug and quitting, but then we got to the next couple climbs and descents and I was having quite a bit of fun riding in the rain and so I soldiered on.

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Our first lap was fast and as it slowed down a bit Stefan went up the road with one other person. The gap went out quickly at first but rather abruptly it stopped growing and looked like about 30 seconds. It would hover between 30 second and a minute for the next 4 laps. It rained on and off, sometimes hard and sometimes not. We had a few people jump off the front of the peloton and go across the gap to the break which grew to six at its largest. On the penultimate lap I gapped the field on the final climb and descended the hill as fast as I could go off the front. I had put in some time and when coming through town I was joined by one Rundle-Mountain guy and Cory Dickinson from United. We agreed to give it a shot and took a few pulls each as we began the last lap before being caught by the peloton. I immediately went back to about 12th wheel and sat there biding my time. The last ascent saw the breakaway break apart into a few pairs. I stayed within myself on the final climb, positioned myself well and stayed out of the wind until Tunnel Mountain Campground. At this point I decided that it was time to go. The lead pair from the breakway still had about 15 seconds on the peloton. I attacked up the right and had a gap right away. I quickly leapt across the gap to Stefan and one other who had been in the break with him. I took a little pause here in the draft as a few other people had come across. I let someone else make the next surge to go across and followed a wheel for the next bit up over the second-to-last rise. It was now time to go full out all the way to the finish. The road through here was fast and curvy and the peloton began to shatter. I went as hard as I could over the top of the hill and got it in the big ring and turned the pedals as hard as I could. The final descent was definitely my fastest of the day. Coming into town I had two people on my wheel, the lead pair from the breakaway still had a gap on us by about 5 seconds as we flew along the road. I was positioned second wheel for the sprint and when the third wheel came around from the right I went from the left. In the end the guy starting from two lengths back took third at the line and I wound up third out of our trio (5th overall). I’m not unhappy about the result. If I wasn’t able to make that lead group I wouldn’t have been able to have the chance to sprint for third place. I’ve never made the lead group like that in a race before, and I’ve never won a sprint, so I’ve got to just take this stuff one thing at a time. I made the lead group this time, maybe next time I can make the lead group and have enough left in the tank to take away a few positions in the sprint as well. Good thing I only have to wait until next weekend for the next race.