Off to the races!

It's official! I am going to be heading to Belgium once again to ride with the big guns. If you have been following the blog the last while you know already. I have been reluctant to announce it without the plane tickets in my hand, but now it looks like just a couple of small details regarding exact flight dates and times needs to be sorted out and then I am good to go. I should be out of here by the 18th of April and returning on the 15th-19th of June in time to take a bit of a break before lighting it up in Quebec City for nationals. After that I will do BC Superweek and any other races I can get my hands on.
I will be riding for the High 5/RDS Bikes squad based in Liedekerke, Belgium. The team is managed by Tino Teirlinck and directed by the great Willy Tierlinck. Our sponsors include High 5 Sports Nutrition (world's best tasting sports nutrition!!), Spiuk (clothing, helmets, glasses), Mendiz Bicycles (Spanish beauties), RDS Bikes (shop) and Rotor System (cranks, chainrings). The team has been doing well so far this year with at least one win that I know of and some other podium appearances.
This team is an amateur squad which means they compete in everything from the local VWF series races, to pro kermesses and interclubs. My racing time will include about three interclubs, mostly amateur kermesses and if I am feeling especially inclined to ride myself into the ground, pro kermesses. For most of you these names mean next to nothing so I will start my coverage of Belgium o6 with a little tutorial that is essential to understanding the posts that will follow once I arrive in cycling's heartland.
Amateur Kermesse
This is the classic kermesse that Belgium is so famous for. Kermesse is actually the Flemish word for "carnival". In the old days when the carnival came to town there would be a bicycle race as part of the entertainment, the name stuck and now kermesse for most English speakers is the name for the type of racing I am about to describe.
Kermesses are scheduled daily in Flanders, during a typical week I could race daily if I wanted to and be able to ride no more than 30 km to most of the starts. These races are not open to professionals and depending on the course and the prize money the fields range from about 60 - 200 in size. The courses are well known in terms of their difficulty and prize money is published in the papers in the race ads so riders pick and choose their battles based on what type of course they like. If the prize money is low it won't attract the best riders so if you are looking for a result these are often a good bet. On the other hand if you want a large, strong field go to the big money events. Although true pros (pro in Belgium means you get paid a salary to ride your bike, unlike so many Canadian "pro" teams like Ital and JetFuel etc.) don't race these the level of racing is still very high with many foreign riders and Continental level full time riders.
These races are typically between 125-140km in length with several laps of a 10-15 km circuit making the distance. The traditional kermesse race is truly an amazing cultural phenomenon. Even if a race is scheduled for a Tuesday afternoon at 1:30 you get 150 guys on the line and all of the urban portions of the course lined with spectators. Another important thing to note is that all races in Belgium regardless of the level result in full rolling road closures with police escort. That means the entire road, not just one lane, no matter how big the road is. Last year I did a race with about 60 guys and they closed a 4 lane main road into Brussels. The best part is that when the road is closed for the peleton to pass people get out of their cars and cheer the race on, it's like a rolling flow of spectators!
Professional Kermesse
This is the same as the amateur version with a couple of very important distinctions. First of all the race is open to professionals meaning that they will show up! Depending on the money and the prestige of the event you can get some big names on the line. One of the pro kermesses I did last year was won by Glen Chadwick (now on Navigators), and included names like Bart Wellens, Sven Nys, Frank VDB and many others. The other one I did was in Ninove and included all of the Belgian Davitamon Lotto riders, a handful of QuickStep boys, a couple of Belgian Cofidis and AG2R riders, 15 Chocolade Jacques, Mr. Bookmaker etc. It was fast!
The other major distinction is that the distance is longer at about 180km on average.
InterClub
These are races only open to teams. The kermesses can be entered as an individual as long as you have the appropriate license. Racing in teams means that 6-8 riders must start the race, you need a team car etc. These races are usually about 170 km long with about 140 km being done on a big lap and the rest of the race being decided on shorter finishing circuits of between 4-10 km. A favorite is to make the finishing circuits brutally hard with lots of climbing and tons of cobbles. Until you have ridden in Flanders or northern France you have never seen cobbles, Gas Town crit is not cobbles! Teams have to apply to start and organizers pick and choose, you can safely bet on at least 2 or 3 Continental squads showing up. Last year when I rode for Drukkerij van Lijsebetten (European Continental Tour) we were expected to place well in these events.

There you have it. I will do my best to keep up to date with results, pictures, Flemish lessons, cultural tidbits and everything else. Also, stay tuned for a more complete race schedule.

I guess this is an appropriate time to announce and thank some sponsors for 06 including Giant Bicycles (bike), Rudy Project (glasses and helmet), Bicisport (big money), High 5 Sports Nutrition (if I havn't given you a "green apple" flavoured gel yet you really must try it, I still have some samples) and perhaps some more to come....

Just incase you missed it here is the article from the team presentation that I posted a while back.

http://users.telenet.be/high5team/

Calgary boy in the medals

Congratulations to Travis Smith of Calgary who took the silver medal in the keirin at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne Australia.

Man up...

"Go into your closet, take your skirt off, put your workboots on and Man Up About It!" I have a friend who always drops that line. Those were the words going through my head as I decided enough is enough and rolled out the driveway in pursuit of Cochrane hill. I had climbing intervals to do and I had spent 3 hours the day before in "the cave" so I had to get out. It turned out to be a great ride, not cold at all. The weather station was reporting -4 with a windchill of -10, but the coldest my Hac4 read was -3. The wind was moderate and with the right gear it was no problem. It ended up being 3 hours, a solid day. The pictures are mainly for my Belgian friends who havn't had the pleasure of experiencing this part of the world. They are racing in shorts and getting tans right now...

The 1a. I normally avoid this highway in favor of some quiet roads just to the north to get to Cochrane, but it was cold and I had to get home so I took the main route. The fog you see is very unusual for Calgary. The view from halfway up the Glen Eagles climb, my two wheeled kingdom.

-3 was the coldest it got, not bad at all.

.

New Rudy Project Kontact helmet, again thanks Rudy!

Hard Lesson Learned

Last year I purchased a 2 year old laptop from a friend who got an incredible deal through his school. The price was way to good to pass up so I dropped the cash and scored a nice Toshiba laptop with everything I could ever need on it. I mainly use the computer for photo storage, video editing and writing documents. The laptop has wireless internet capabilities, but I have only used them a dozen or so times as the computer mainly stays at home and the house computer has internet access so I just use that. It is great to have a laptop for traveling to pass the time and store pictures. I had several thousand pics taken in the last year including all of my traveling adventures. By complete coincidence many of the best pictures and all of the best video has been transferred to other computers over time, but I never thought of actually backing everything up to disk until about a month ago. When I did decide to back everything up the copying to the burn folder was taking way to long as I was going to transfer everything via disc of just store it on discs. I decided that this might be a good time to defragment my harddrive to make the process go smoother. I started the defragmentation, came back a couple of hours later to check on the progress and the computer was completely frozen. That is time I accessed any of my files. Just the other day I left it in the hands of a very capable expert who after using all of his knowledge, various programs, other operating systems, networks, everything, has declared the harddrive bunk. It is done. My files are gone. Everything. Forever. In the blink of an eye a years worth of memories completely wiped. I am not happy with myself....

Caffarel Olympic Chocolate

Last Friday I was called in last minute to cover the front desk at the Oval for an hour or so while all of the full time day people went to the Olympic Athlete Welcome Back event at the uni. I was promised chocolate as a perk for pulling through on such short notice (as well as my hourly wage of course). I love chocolate, but I really just did the shift for the extra cash. Anyways I got four very small chocolates and thought nothing of it at the time placing them in my bag and heading off to class. Later that day I was hungry and bored, after too many hours of neural circuitry memorization which was taking its toll, so I decided to sample my earnings. To my surprise these were no ordinary chocolates. At the Torino games they gave chocolates out at the various events and venues and I am now in the possession of the chocolates from Oval Lingotto (speed skating), Palasport Olimpico (ice hockey), Sauze D'Oulx Jouvenceaux (freestyle skiing) and Setriere - San Sicario (alpine skiing).

Norwegian Culinary Delights: Nype Suppe

This week in the spirit of winter and it's demand for a strong immune system I am proud to give you "Nype Suppe" or rose hip soup. Rose hips are berries that we are used to seeing everywhere in this part of Canada, but most people don't realize their potential as a tasty and extremely nutritious fruit. Rose hips are very high in vitamin C, thus being a great booster when training and a generally sick population put you at risk of a prolonged time out.
This dish is a sweet soup served warm with a healthy dose of whipped cream. Typically this soup is enjoyed as desert after dinner. You can get nype suppe at Ikea, it comes in the package as seen below. Note that Ikea is a Swedish thus the slighly different name on the package.

The Cave of Pain and Lots of Gain!

The weather isn't changing...I haven't ridden more than once outside this entire week. Instead I have been spending excessive amount of time in the place I have dubbed "The Cave". The cave is my bicycle room. It serves as a storage facility, workshop and high performance training center. It is the place where the foundation for hopefully great things this season are being laid. Another reason for the indoor riding is that Ricky T is really pulling out all the stops and we are now into the second phase of preparation for the big goals of the season. After literally hundreds of hours of base and LT its time to move closer to the red, its AC time again! AC has started a bit later this year in order to ensure an indestructible base. This next month is all about long, hard and fast intervals. I can't go into detail as this is top secret cutting edge stuff Rick has going here, that's why he gets paid the big bucks. With the weather being the way it has been and intensity being the goal I busted out the running shoes after my 2 hours of AC and blasted the snow covered trails of the Douglas Fir for an hour or so. I love trail running, especially when I am feeling fit. Running through the pines on that trail is like flying, its euphoric, like being weightless and just letting the legs go. Up and down the slippery staircases, skipping up and over stuff, I have never felt so light on my feet before.

I am so pumped to start racing. While my teammates are ripping the cobbles (two wins already this year!) I am still stuck in my cave... Heading to Penticton for the last week of this month, can't wait. And then the adventure begins....

Suffer More

Me and my buddies the "Arctic Monkeys" head out for a trail run.

Also...Modeling my new Rudy Projects, thanks Rudy Project North America!

Recognize

Last night Bicisport had its annual sign up and awards night. This fine event was held at the Calgary Outdoor Counsel Building on the bike path at 10th street in Kensington. It was great to see everyone again and catch up on how winter was treating the teammates. While some of our members are in various places training and racing most of the returning riders were present. It was really exciting to see all of the new members as well. I didn't get much of a chance to speak with most of them, but I recognized several as some of the talented young guns Adam Bailey is doing such a fine job of bringing into the fray at the Oval.
Besides registration this evening serves as I time to celebrate the successes of the past season and recognize the individuals who brought honour and glory to the Bici Blue. The rider of the year this year was Brayden McDougall who is a carded national team paralympic athlete who has represented Canada multiple times on the world stage and has brought home some impressive results. I managed to take out the cyclocross rider of the year award. The award came as a tribute to my successful late season mud shredding campaign in Ontario at the National Championships and Aurora C2. Normally we give out small trophies as recognition, but this year our freshly appointed president James Purdy chose a creative and practical approach handing out engraved pedal wrenches. Check mine out below.

Alternative Measures

For those who don't know it has been cold and snowing for the last little while here in Calgary. After coming back from Victoria I took some days off the bike completely and then eased back into the training regime with some rollers, weights, skiing and squash to break things up. Yesterday I did what I call the "Poor Mans Winter Coping Triathlon" which is named for the fact that I can't afford to move away from this blasted place and thus have to take nature in stride and come up with alternatives that keep me sane. The triathlon consists of riding the rollers for as long as you possibly can until your brain is so numb you start to enjoy watching curling, running up to the Oval the long way (about 20min), doing weights and core for 1.5hrs and then running home the really long way along the river (45min). The entire training session can take up to 5.5 hours depending on how long you survive the rollers. Yesterday I managed 2 hours on the rollers, my record is 3 hours 20 min. As you can see this is not the most stimulating of workouts, but the weather yesterday was cold and the roads were brutal.
Today the sun came out in the afternoon and the mercury revealed 5 degrees above freezing in the sunshine. After swapping out the wheels and pedals on the cross bike I was set for some snow riding action. I ended up riding out to the canal and back. All the way from Inglewood and out the path was snow covered and sparsly travelled making for some fun riding and cross skills development. Not many people have walked past the bird sanctuary so the going was really slow. It felt like riding through a several km long mud bog, never had my heart rate so high riding on a dead flat road in my 25t before. The track along the train tracks at the east end of the Douglas Fir trail was especially fun as the runners have packed the narrow trail down hard making for good grip and a smooth, icy blast through the pines.

Spooky's are the ticket to winter fun.

Norwegian Culinary Delights: Fastelavens Boller

This treat is the bomb.....calorie bomb!
On the church calender last Sunday marked the beginning of Lent which is the start of the period of fasting prior to Easter. In Norwegian Lent is Fastelavens, so these buns in english would be Lent buns. I am not one for fasting, but if you had plans to engage in such practices these buns would give you the adipose triglyceride store boost you might need to get yourself through.
These buns have basis in a basic sweet bun. The bun is sliced horizontally and filled with whipped cream and a thick layer of marsipan. I am fortunate enough to have a mother with culinary skills well beyond the norm so our buns are filled with home made marsipan, made from freshly ground almonds. To top it off the bun is dusted with a touch of icing sugar.
Devine.

Greenpeace and Kleenex

http://kleercut.net/en/

Didn't realize what the Kleenex folks were actually up to. Interesting stuff.

2006 Giant TCR C1

Ice Cold

Smooth and Shiny

Carbon EA70 stem
Race Face Cadence crank and rings. The back of the crank is extensively machined out and the chainrings are very well made with incredibly clean ramping and pinning.

Ready for action, my brand new ride for this year. This is the same bike Giant sent me last year with the exception of the new Race Face crank and the super clean Easton EA70 carbon stem. Haven't been on it yet, but I am sure the ride will be just as smooth and precise as last year. At first I wasn't sure about the yellow, but its grown on my and in the sunlight it has some metallic, mustard qualities, very nice. I am very happy about Giant dropping their house brand carbon stem for this year, the Easton is alot stiffer!

All photos Per Strom

High 5 Team 2006

From the flemish newspaper "Het Laatste Nieuws"

2006 is going to be a gooder!

Plans for this coming season are coming together. Sponsors are coming through with product. Training programs are getting tighter. More details to follow, I just had to post I am so pumped to rip it again in 06.
As a preveiw cobbles, carbon and lots of air travel are among the highlights of the coming season. Stay tuned!