Google Maps Adds “Bike There”

With the surge of bicycling commuters across North America, Google has finally added a “bike there” option in their next-to-ubiquitous online mapping application. From Google’s description, it’s pretty much everything I’d hope it would be… Optimizing the route for bikes by “taking advantage of bike trails, bike lanes, and bike-friendly streets and avoiding hilly terrain whenever possible.”

While definitely handy for a guy like me who commutes on a regular basis – I can see this as a real boon for those thinking of getting into cycling either as a hobby, or as transportation. Rather than have to struggle through traffic and wonder if there were better ways to get from A to B, Google Maps now takes the guessing out of it.

As with all good things (it seems) this feature is only available in the States right now, but after the recent adoption of Google Street View here in Canada, I’m optimistic that Google Maps by Bicycle won’t be far behind!!

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Fat vs. Carbs – The Fuel Battle

So, this week I met with my new coach, a Mr. Mike Sarnecki. He’s going to see me through the following months, as I get ready for my second race season. Though I haven’t seen my new training schedule yet, I’m guessing my volumes are about to increase here right away. I have some big goals this year though so I’m ready to put in some solid time. In prep for this, I’m going to need to be a bit more diligent about my diet – specifically, my caloric intake. I’m happy to report, I’ve dumped all the weight I gained over the Christmas Holidays (some 9 lbs) and I’m back to a reasonable fighting weight. This is good news but, I’ll need to be sure I’m fueling my body properly moving forward, or risk dropping more weight, which I don’t want to do. More than that though, this year I want to make sure I’m fueling my body with the ‘right’ stuff, so as part of that, I started to dig into the Fat vs. Carbs debate.

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Winter Riding

Happy Monday to you all! Winter in Edmonton (Alberta Canada) for me is mostly a long, dark and cold expanse of time devoid of any real biking. Winter means it’s time to get out the trainer and start to think about which new movies and which TV series I want to get caught up on; last winter it was Rome, and Seinfeld. Ken on the other hand, has been consistently riding all winter long for a few seasons now, and of course, he’s been givin’ me the gears for cowering inside as much as I do. This year though, I’ve managed to get out there ‘a bit’ more, and let me tell ya, once you get movin’ and warmed up, it’s pretty sweet and in some ways more fun than summer riding.

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Pre-Loaded Holiday Training

When it comes to training, I’ve always understood that you can’t really make up lost time; if you miss a session or two, you can’t just go out and ride that much harder next week to make it up  – that’s just a fact.  If you miss training time, you just have to let it go. Trying to play catch up will only lead to overtraining, or under recovery and further limit your progress. If, or should I say, when, this happens to you, the best thing you can do is be glad for the additional rest you’ve had and just get back to your regular routine. So, if you can’t make up lost time after the fact, can you try and make it up beforehand?

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Riding through the pain

One of the best (if not the best) by-product of racing is the environment and people that it puts you touch with. This past year during my first season back racing I was lucky enough to join up with the Deadgoats – an awesome group of guys and gals. I will admit that they’re a pretty hardcore bunch, but it’s been good to get back into the mix, and there’s nothing like riding and surrounding yourself with people that are better than you to raise the bar on your riding. One of my newbie cohorts this season was Kyle Husband. He managed to squeak in every type of racing you can think of, and even won himself a new bike frame at one of the races. In light of his diverse experience I thought I would get him to share some of his thoughts as he looks back on his first race season.

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The Dark Art of Cantilever Brakes

I’m fortunate enough to live on top of a big hill. I’m fortunate enough to cruise down it every morning on my way to work, and fortunate enough to have to grind back up it every evening. The unfortunate by-product of this is that I go through brakes in fairly short intervals. The really unfortunate extension of this is that the brakes on my commuting/cross bike are cantilevers.

As anybody who’s ridden canti’s can attest, they are, and forever shall be, the devil.

Nothing shakes the fillings out of your teeth worse than a set of badly aligned cantilever brakes howling their way down a hill. Having run canti’s on mountain bikes ‘back in the day’ I can tell you will 100% clarity that installing/aligning them is anything but a science. It is a dark and mysterious art… One that I am still struggling to master. That said, should you find yourself in the same boat as I, I thought I might share some tidbits of knowledge I’ve picked up along the way.

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On Air

While I was struggling not to get lapped in my last cyclocross race of the season (Dairy Queen Double Dipper), I noticed my breathing was out of control! I mean, I was gasping for air and dyin’ out there! This got me talking to myself, which is always a good sign of solid mental health. “Breathe man, c’mon breathe! In, out, in, out!” I kept telling myself and to my surprise, I found when I focused on this, I felt better, though maybe only by a fraction and only until I hit the next hill. So, up popped the obvious questions, am I breathing correctly? Do the pros know a breathing technique of some kind that I don’t and if there was a way for me to improve my breathing technique, could it make me a faster rider?

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Burn Out – by Kirk Hamilton

I didn’t know Kirk Hamilton was a rider at first. I find it funny but it was actually a lot later on that I found out he was an Elite level XC racer and bike afficianado. I’ve since had a pleasure of riding with Kirk (or what might be better described as, trying to keep up to Kirk) and it’s been interesting getting to know him better. He started where I am now, just a wee Novice racer with a big dream, and he successfully made those strides to get up through the ranks. I was fascinated by that story because, I wanted it to be my story – with every ride and race I wanted to get faster and be able to move into Sport and then maybe even Expert. Who knows if that will ever be in the cards for me, but, as our next Feature Rider, Kirk will explain himself that this kind of progress can come with a price.

So without further ado:

It happened.  After eight seasons I had enough, I was burned out from racing my mountain bike, I was finished and frustrated, wanting nothing more than to hang up my shoes and helmet and do something, anything, other than ride my bike.  Somewhere along the way in the summer of 2008 I lost my way and I forgot to have fun.  I grew tired of the seven-day routine of the weekly race regimen and viewed training days with the same disdain as cleaning the bathroom: something only done out of necessity…

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Nightriders

Night Ride ‘09 from Sheldon Smart on Vimeo.

Ahhh… living in a northern town – this means super long days in the summer and shockingly short days in the fall and winter. And of course, temps can turn a wee bit cool. Except that is, maybe in an El nino year like this. It’s already November 9, and although we’ve seen some snow, it hasn’t bothered to stick around. Thankfully, the temps have also been surprisingly mild, excluding some recent freak days where we hit highs of 17, it’s still managed to stay steadily up somewhere around 5-10 degrees, which is truly pleasant riding weather. When it’s cool, you don’t over heat and you feel like you can ride forever. So I guess the only other complication might be the darkness.

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Gearing up for a stage race

If our recent experience with stage racing has taught me anything, it’s the importance of being prepared.

It’s not to say that Sheldon and I weren’t prepared for regular mountain-adventure circumstances (ie. rain, sun, wind, etc.), we just weren’t prepared to have almost the worst of them shoveled to us repeatedly for several days. Warm weather poses it’s own challenges, but gear isn’t usually one of them (unless you count hydration and sunscreen ;-), bad weather, especially day after day, will truly test what you and your gear is made of.

I can’t speak for Sheldon, but I know that I mulled over my packing list for quite some time as the Transrockies approached. I was rushed pulling everything together (as usual), but at least I had planned things out in my head ahead of time.

Simon Parker (who we had the pleasure of riding with later in the race), has pulled together a great 10-part series of articles about ‘What to expect on your first Transrockies’, and although he does a great job at outlining a gear list, I thought I would share mine with you in a slightly more condensed manner.

One thing that I will mention is that being properly prepared for stage racing requires a sincere amount of gear, and outside of your regular gear you’re going to want to stock up on some replacement parts, and be prepared for things to break and/or wear out. With that said, it’s worthwhile developing a relationship with your local bike shop – Explain to them the race you’re planning and oftentimes they’ll let you buy the additional parts you need and return whatever you don’t use (so long as they don’t have to special order parts). Even though it’s a chunk of cash out of your pocket up front, at least you’ll be able to recoup some costs after the race (assuming you don’t use all the extra parts ;-).

So without further ado, here’s most of what found it’s way into my gear bag:

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