There is nO "I" in team (but there is a "me")

Well its been a busy time, training , team building, school work and job hunting..

but things are looking up all around.

Saturday was the first team training ride of the season. We headed west for a 96km tour de force through the countryside. A steady tempo ride for some a gruelling grind for others (add evil laugh here.....muhahahahahahah }:-)

heres the route:

But with a varied terrain being covered everyone got there chance to shine, and lay the hurt down for the others.

we were lucky enough to have the services of Camilo and his buddy as chief soigneur in a support vehicle. Something thats not always easy to appreciate until you consider what your not experiencing. Like being run off the road by passing cars, or the added weight of all the extra water or food you aren't carrying.

they also took some awesome photos that can be found on the new and developing Team web site.. (thanks to Jeff and Camilo again for that!)

you can find those here:
team chain reaction

next week we are planning a force majeur at the Mid week crit race so watch for updates post tuesday and a team recce of the Niagra classic route on the weekend.

life is good...

alchemy con't

been experimenting again.

dark matter bars upgrade.

aiming for the classic 4:1 carb to protein ratio. 25% fats from mid length chain triglycerides (coconut oil)

little bit of coco powder

some orange rind for natural tang

420cals per 100g

Food Name	Amount	Unit	Cals	Fat (g)	Carbs (g)	Prot (g)	Delete
		Total	11,697	380.8	2,056.3	524.0
Almond butter		tablespoongramskglboz	1,266	118.2	42.4	30.2
Nuts, coconut meat, dried (desiccated), not sweetened		ozgramskglboz	1,320	129.1	47.3	13.8
Oats, raw		cupgramskglboz	3,456	56.7	603.0	144.0
Whey protein powder, sugar-free		servinggramskglboz	0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Honey		cuptablespoonindividual packetGuideline amount per fl oz of beveragegramskglboz	3,648	0.0	988.8	3.6
Coconut oil		cuptablespoongramskglboz	646	75.0	0.0	0.0
Raisins		cupminiature box (.5 oz)small box (1.5 oz)raisinsgramskglboz	1,084	1.7	287.0	11.1
Dates, medjool		date, pittedgramskglboz	277	0.1	75.0	1.8
whey isolate		servinggramskglboz	0	0.0	12.8	319.5
		Total	11,697	380.8	2,056.3	524.0

f.f.ff.f.f.fff.ff.ffffrus frus..FRUSTRAION!!!!!!!

What a fuckin crap week I've had....

Its was utterly disappointing on so many different fronts....

On the employment front, jobs kept disappearing into the ether, a day or so from commencing. its going to be very hard to make ends meet this month.

And then to top it off my planned weekend of racing, came to nothing when my comrades license was fucked up by the OCA. So he had to bail out less then 24hrs from the start ( see there is a theme here).

What made it worse was the fact that i had already registered for a different race before, everyone else chose to do another race, so all in all i lost out on 2 lots of registration fee's......grrrrr

I will not be making that mistake again.

So weeks of preparation and training down the Swanee, as well as a sizable chunk of my already severely limited monthly budget.

This week i shall mostly be wearing.....a decidedly lack luster enthusiasm for team sports and racing.

I'm seriously considering taking up Triathlons, individual time trialing, or simply just knitting.

Recovery..race prep and the aging process

So my cold cleared up more or less at some point over the weekend.

Saturday I headed out with my mate John for a 100km up north for a hilly tempo ride, feeling re markedly better than I had expected.

Then i took Sunday off to watch Spartacus destroy the field in Paris-Roubaix...i mean shit it's like the super bowl but with out all the basket ball players };0)

Monday was the obligatory rest day, even though i felt like riding i wanted to get my routine back.

Tuesday was a fairly epic day out, morning Vo2 max hill reps, where i could tell i had dropped some power from before my illness although i was still holding at 112% FTP for each rep. i just did 20+ mins @ vo2 max and called it quits.

That evening i did the club ride, telling my self i'd just sit in and take it easy..but as usual that never happened and when the group fecked off and left a few of us waiting for a lagger in the wash-rooms i knew the chase was on!

Given we went the long route trying to catch them its unsurprising we never managed to, especially finding out later that they had taken the quick route. Still a pursuit entailed and i rode like a manic for the remainder of the ride.

But by the end of a 144km day i was pretty wasted.

So wednesday I only did two 20mins @ Ftp and called it quits I mean shit i was ill last week and i have a race Sunday.

tonight will be an hour of tempo, then rest and rebuild before the weekend.

Oh and my FTP has gone up by 8w to 364w.

thats means i put in a 382w for 20mins at the Good Friday race! only 18w more to reach that magical 400w mark....

the evolution of team kit!

Evolution is a slow and laborious process spanning many millennia. Or so we are assured by the white coated messiahs of our modern age.

Of course there are other views on the matter, intelligent design, alien invasion, or complex multi-verse existences instantly spanning all feasible and not so feasible potentialities across infinite arrays of being.

Ever heard the one about the monkey sitting at a type writer randomly typing out the complete works of Shakespeare? Some physicists say its already happened somewhere in some alternate existence, but I mean what a waste of an opportunity, when Dr Seuss would have been so much quicker and ultimately more meaningful.

anyway where am i going with all this?

yes the evolution of team kit.... or is it just another excuse to use that image of the monkey i like so much? ( i mean there are just so many things wrong with it where would one start?)

I guess once upon a time things and options were a lot simpler. you had your monkey, you tailored a suit and hand crafted a custom bike for him to sit on then took an image with your folding plate box camera, you picked up from shoppers drug mart.

you didn't have to wrestle with the plethora of obtuse asymmetric cuts available with modern fabric, or the full spectrum of either human emotions or the Haus of Kolor paint charts when figuring out your new team paraphernalia.

And back then of course the principle players were content with a damp corner to sit in whilst they scraped the grit from under their dermis, post race, and a bike to share between the lot of them. (if they were from one of the fancy Italian pro tour teams).

"a bike!!!?? , a bloody bike!!!?? We were lucky if we had tires, you poncy twat! Most of time as a domestique, i had to stretch my intestines round a broken milk bottle for a wheel [for the captain] and imagine the rest....and that were just for the provincials!!!"

Of course with the advent of polymer plastics and women's lib that all changed, and now wimpy spoilt bleached haired rouleur's, endlessly rant about how much better things were in the early 90's before the UCI shut down the party and we had Byrd's custard for blood.

you could have Zebra strip full body suits and ride a multi million dollar space ship in the guise of clark kent, with a crit count of 102%, so long as you had the money, the backing and a desire never to stand still or lie down for longer than 2 seconds


So where AM i going with all this????

oh yes team kit..evolution. choice choice choice.

the modern mantra, dark and menacing.

never satisfied drinking the salt water of consumer-isms

so where was i going with all this...?

its a monkey on a bike

what more can i say....?

some what of a crash

Ok so my training was going well, the peak was coming, had a great race Friday.


Then went for Easter diner still tired but not to shabby, let my self go, too much rich food and a beer and a couple of wines (wow really letting myself go - times have changed) and woke up ill.

i guess it was when i was told there was no diet pepsi i thought ok be a bit more conventional.

Not full blown, but definitely the worse for wear. I suppose i had been walking a tight-rope the last few weeks, and that little lapse in focus let it get the better of me.

Still its fine, just sit up and rest up, still over a week till calabogie so i'm not stressing.

if i can get out on my bike by the weekend i'll be fine.

got to remember...do not drink..stick to the plan.....do not drink.

she coming together!!!!

Have to say a massive thankyou to Andy Gilmour of Gilmour frames



for taking this project on for me at such short notice.

I'm totally stoked!!! custom frame, custom paint, custom ride!

There aren't many sports....

There really aren't many sports where you can say that you came 55th out of 56 placed riders (some were DQ, some NP) and yet claim to have had a great race...

Good Friday for me was a resounding success!

From the get go i was on the front covering breaks and playing the game that is road cycling. Watching for that magic combination of riders that would signal a break that would be allowed to stick by the peloton is not as easy as you might imagine.

Its easy to get boxed in, swept up in the tide and rhythms of the group as it rolls, organically through a plethora of road and weather conditions. Its a constant battle to kept on top of things and in a position to make the right move, with the right riders and at the right time.

Its a thinking game, all the more so when you're a small squad, fighting against larger teams.


So when i got to the point i could no longer bridge gaps without dragging the whole pack up with me i knew i had done my job. I sat up and drifted to the back of the group and out the back. Rolling in 4mins down.

But when i got home to check my power meter Data i saw that i had set a new personal 5sec MAX power level 1400w+ peaking at over 1500w.

And my Normalised power was 337w for the nearly 2hrs of racing.

That's pretty significant.....to me any-ways ;0)

Now I'm pretty spent, so I'm taking it easy for a day or so before getting stuck into my training for Calabogie on the 18th.

It was the night before......

So its been along wait and hard winter.. but finally the preparation is over and the season is just around the corner.

My training has been going well, power is higher than ever, weight is about 20lbs lower than new year and the start of last season.

spent the afternoon cleaning my race bike, fitting new tyres, and generally getting ready to roll out to good Fridays O cup race in Hamilton tomorrow....

I feel good, strong and confident but its hard to know where you'll stand with the others until that first race.

the first climb....

that first break???

We are rolling out as a small team tomorrow, smaller than i had hoped but I'm still excited about the new year and the potentials its going to bring.

All the stress and uncertainty is just a memory now.

Time to get strapped in and go forward.

Its a transitional season for me. I want to move on to bigger and better challenges next year.

So i'll take it all in my stride.

here's to the future, and to keeping the rubber side down....