Financial Struggles in Amateur Racing

I came into the sport having heard many stories and watched a few documentaries telling of the tales of the lack of glory on the road to the top. Eating whatever you can afford, and sleeping on the floor at peoples houses because you can’t afford your own rent. Even at the pro level there wasn’t an abundance of money, especially compared to the NBA or NHL. Whether this is right or wrong, I came into the sport sort of expecting nothing to be given to me. I am finding in the amateur scene around here, many athletes seem to expect lots from their team and sponsors. Many of these athletes don’t even get top end results, so why do they think they deserve special treatment? Surely they have seen the same documentaries, and heard the same stories I have?

We are living in an age where people see what other people have, so they think they need all of that as well. Everyone wants top end bikes, clothing, race support and vehicles to get around in. All of this on top of not having to work to pay for it themselves. If you have personal sponsors such as family that are willing to help you with this, then don’t take it for granted. The sport is insanely expensive to try and move up in between race entries, travel and feeding those legs. You should enter with the mentality that you are going in with nothing, trying to spend the bare minimum (because that’s all you have), and anything you happen to get is extra and be very thankful for it. Now if you are top end cat 1 and winning races all the time, then sure you can start to ask for more from your sponsors.

The sport itself has become much more expensive. Compared to 20 years ago, the costs have gone up 5x, and the prize money has decreased by at least the same amount. This is partially due to rising insurance costs, and policing costs. It would be amazing if the government could figure out a way to cut the costs of police for special events, because it isn’t just bike racing that is suffering from this. On top of this we have a decrease in sponsorships from companies. This could be due to the recession, or all of the drug fallouts and companies not wanting to ruin their image. Cycling needs to find a good way to attract sponsors and keep them around because there is no other source of income. Unfortunately there are no ticket sales to spectators to keep things going like there are in other pro sports. Also it is sort of frowned upon for some reason to wear a pro team kit if you weren’t on the team (I do it anyway, think of all the kids on city rinks playing hockey in their Leafs jerseys!) so there isn’t much income from team merchandise.

In the end, people seem to want something for doing nothing but riding their bike. In this technological age, people think “why pay someone when I can figure out how to do it myself?”. And with social media, companies are easily able to advertise for themselves, so you have to ask yourself what more can you offer them that they couldn’t do themselves. At the end of the day sponsorship is payment for advertising of a product or service. Teams like Silber have been doing a great job promoting the products of their sponsors and it impacts all those people who are on the fence of choosing between two or more components. “If Ryan Roth can be so good with that POC helmet, then they must be good and I won’t regret spending that money on that”.  Basically, if you can find yourself a sponsor, do what you can to help them out so they feel it to be a worthwhile investment so you might have a backer for the following season.

Having myself not been at the top level, you might say I don’t know much about what is going on in the sponsorship end of things. That is totally correct, but this was mainly about the struggles seen in amateur racing, and to acknowledge many riders seem to want special treatment without giving back. Part of the blame can be passed to team directors, as they should make it obvious what they want from their riders, on and off the bikes, to ensure their sponsors are kept happy. There is lots of work to be done to get cycling back to the glory days of the 90’s, but at least acknowledging the issues is a good start to getting back on track. I think Oleg Tinkoff is doing a great job trying to get things working at the pro level, and we can all work together to get things working again on the amateur level.  

At this point I need to thank my parents for all of their help, without them I definitely wouldn’t have the funds to compete. Thank you for helping me do what I love!

My thoughts on weight training for cycling…

Let me first start by saying that I am not entirely sold that weight training helps a lot. There is a lot of work that you have to do in order to keep the strength gains for the season. I do think it is an amazing tool to stress your body a bit differently and develop some of those stabilizing muscles. This should help with injury prevention when you are putting in all of those hours when the warm weather returns. As a guy with small legs, I always come into the weight season with high hopes of developing some Chris Hoy style, monster legs. I just want to go through some thoughts on some of the major exercises people hit.

The dream. 

Squats:

This is everyone’s go-to. But why? For cyclists, their back is their weak point in this exercise, not their legs, so they won’t be doing much for building leg power. They might also injure themselves (see cyclists having a big egos and wanting to show off their leg power). On top of that, as far as specificity goes, it would then be great if you need to put out big power while sitting straight up. Perfect for those attacks in the feed zone while you are trying to eat. However, it is a great tool for building the glutes, but I think cyclists should stay light with high reps.

Deadlifts:

I love this one, the Romanian deadlift. Keep the legs mostly straight and just bend at the hips with your back straight. Great for building that pull-back strength in your pedal stroke. Wrist straps are for babies, and our grips aren’t that great with our tiny arms, so invest in some chalk if your gym allows it. If you want to work more glutes and stabilizing muscles, then turn this into a one legged deadlift. The additional benefit is you will be lifting lighter weight so it will be easier to hold. Also with less weight you are less likely to hurt your back.

Leg press:

This should be everyone’s go-to. You are bent in a position to mimic your position on the bike and you are just working on the feeling of smashing those pedals down. All of the stress is off of your back which allows you to maximally stress you leg muscles. I think there is footage somewhere of Chris Hoy doing 600+kg, yes kg, so the bar has been set. What do you got? With that he has many gold medals, so this must be the magic maker.

Leg extensions and curls:

Because why not? If you want to see muscle growth you need to tear those muscles apart. This is a bit safer way to do it than doing squats and deadlifts with high weights that could end up hurting you. Save these for the end and use them to give your legs a kiss goodbye.

Calf raises:

This is mainly for the ego. You can’t tell me in a group ride you don’t check out the person’s calves ahead of you. Then you question if yours look that chiseled. Make sure you are the one with the golden calves, and rock those raises!

Remember they look better with a clean shave!

Core and upper body:

These are for whatever looks you want to have during the part of the year where you are allowed to return to a ‘normal’ weight. On top of that, they are great for strengthening the bones which can help in injury prevention in the event that you crash. Core should be kept up year round, but the higher the weights you are doing in the free-weight department for your legs, the less core-specific work you need as the core gets a killer workout stabilizing you back in those exercises.

Don’t be afraid to question your weight routine and change it up. Also if you are new to weights, get a personal trainer to help you work on your form. Weights can help add some power, but they can also mess your body up if done poorly. My coach Jeff Kehler was able to help a lot with this while doing kettlebell workouts that past two winters. Alright this is the part of the season that you are allowed to have fun doing something else, so enjoy it! Now go to the gym and legally pump some iron! 

Random Rumblings

Now that we are in the depths of fall, the days are short and the weather is getting colder. The winds seem to be stronger due to the missing leaves and crops that would provide some sort of shelter. The hardest part of every ride becomes finding the right clothes to wear. Riding in the fall can be some of the best riding if you can find a section of daylight and you dress for warmth (but not too warm because once you start to sweat, you are fighting an uphill battle). Since I opted to not race any cyclocross, my intensity and training is cut back as off season has started. I am doing a little more intensity though than I typically have done, which should hopefully help my early season racing. I am using the extra hours from not riding to get ahead with school work so I can justify the longer rides when I need them in the spring. I got all the work I did for my masters published so now I can take this work and really build on it for my PhD. If you want to see what it is about you can check it out here. It should be accessible to everyone as it is an open access journal, but I can't guarantee you will understand it all ;)

The rest of this post is just to remind you guys to always keep your minds open. With the recent election, most people were posting overly one-sided articles and not putting any actual thought into their posts. I won't tell someone who to pick, or which side of an argument to be on, but I like to know that people are informed on their decision. So here are two hot topics related to gender that will hopefully stimulate your thinking, and are not meant to push you to any side.

First: Why aren't their more female CEO's? So what I want to mention here is just something that a female friend shared with me that is doing pretty well in a biotech company. It was an interesting perspective that I have never heard before. People like to associate women's 'lack of progression' in the business world because of motherhood, such as taking a year off for maternity leave (which now men can do, so a business driven woman can continue to work if she pleases). So let us just leave men out of the equation completely here. What about a women-to-women comparison?
This is what she insisted that no one looks at. How is it fair to the woman that decides she would rather focus on business than have a family, if a woman could have a child and take a full year off of work and still receive all the same promotions and raises?

Number 2: This actually has ties into sports, so it is relevant to the blog. It has been posted all over Facebook so maybe you have seen it already, but it is essentially asking why women get asked different questions than men in sports. The video is here. My argument here is that the 'why' is easy. In the world of media and entertainment (which is exactly what pro sports is), money talks. So if you look at magazine sales or TV shows that excel with women, they are typically associated with beauty, fashion and/or gossip (like the bachelorette, or Kardashian's). So in order to get the female audience interested in sports, they bring in what they know sells into the interview questions. On top of this, how many women actually watch sports? It certainly isn't the majority, and from what I have seen, if they do a lot of times it is then because 'so and so is hot'. So then why is it so bad now for men to watch women's beach volleyball if women are watching men's sports for the same reason?

That was a bit of a rant, but the obvious thing that I see here is that women need to take more interest in the sport. As for the video, the why is easy, but the 'how can we fix this' is hard. Women don't care about men's sports, so by equality you can't expect men to care about women's. If you get women caring more about sports, the depth of the sport will increase and you will have something great to watch that will attract more viewers. So once 'Women's Health' starts outselling Cosmo, then we will know we are on the right track.

Tour de Hans -7th overall. A great season finisher!

I was a little hesitant at first to do this, as I said I was going to avoid mass start events, but Ryan Roth did it last year so I knew it had to be good. And it didn't disappoint! At first I just signed up knowing it was in the KW region, but then it turns out it was closer than I thought! I normally ride a lot of the roads it was on, so it was good for me. The weather was perfect, and I wanted a good confidence booster to go into the off season with to fuel my training for the winter.

I figured a break away would go, so I tried to be apart of them. The race started and Mike Novo went right away. Everyone let him go for a while and then after a couple km’s a group of strong riders went across. I didn’t want to miss out on it so I went with them. We were off the from for maybe 2km then everyone sat up as the pack got close. I decided to keep going. They let me have my gap and I continued on solo for a few more km’s. The pack caught me just before the turn onto Greenfield. I stayed near the front until we got over the train tracks, then I drifted back to get better recovery in the peloton. At this point Rivers attacked (listed as Bozek on the results), and the group made a half-assed effort to get him. I thought they were going to pull him in so I didn’t try to go across. Firek noticed this was sticking and jumped across. Unfortunately I didn’t see who went across, and I tried to ask people and no one I asked knew so I figured it was a nobody and it wasn’t an issue. (It definitely was)

The group stayed together, not really working well together for the next 20ish km. With about 40km to go (on Oxford road, right out of Drumbo) a group of about 5 strong riders got off the front with Niles, Larbi, Peter Morse and Patrick Kings. I was stuck a little too far back to make this after having tried to go with a few earlier attacks. At this point no one wanted to work, the people that did, just wanted to bridge across. When we turned onto Bridge St. there was 3 or 4 of us in a rotation at the front trying to reel them in (Tony Morelli and Mike Little were taking consistent turns). We did this until the hill after the bridge and we got frustrated and sat in.

We made the turn onto Huron Rd and Shane Lavell attacked. I knew he had a good engine so I jumped across. I was hoping he would come with me but he sat up when I caught up and I just continued on. Right after that, someone with a BMC jersey bridged up and brought the pack with him. He nicely said “Nice try”, after his previous attacks, I knew he wanted to break loose. In my head I thought, “there is no try, just do,” so I countered my own attack and they let me go. I was able to open up a solid gap and I could see the group up the road.

I kept chasing hard, and I saw the chase group ditch a rider, Tim Burton. I worked a bit harder trying to get up to him, because an extra person would mean a little bit of rest. After a couple km’s I made my way up to him but unfortunately he slowed the pace slightly. During this time Ryan Aitcheson and Aaron Hamill bridged across. This helped drive the pace and Tim dropped. Aaron was too tired to take many pulls and I started trying to match Ryan with pull time. All my solo efforts got to me though and I started to fade. He did a great job over the next 10km to get us super close to the break (it was mostly him, I did maybe 20% of the pulling). I thought we had them as they were maybe 50m up the road. My legs were screaming and we turned onto Whistle Bare Rd (2.5km to go). That’s when the group of 4 started to hammer and fight for 3^rd. Aaron and Ryan sat up, and I TT’ed hoping the 4 riders would ease up waiting for someone to take the front. Unfortunately I never made it and finished a couple seconds back from them.

 

Sweet bottle opener medal I will need to open up my Hoegaarden beers during my week off. 

Why do I always look like I hate every second on the bike? This was coming into the finish so I was pretty sore. 

I finished 7^th overall and 2^nd in my age group. My best finish all year so I was happy with it. I was 1:25 back on the winner but was able to put 1:40 onto the pack in the finishing 25kms. I was hoping for overall podium but I think I raced my best I have and I was happy with where my fitness is. My confidence is boosted and I am ready for next year!

Now I am taking my regen week, so no biking for the next week (asides from my two spin classes, a man needs his money to survive). This was my last race with the CoachChris.ca/Ted Velikonja team as well. I was happy to end it on a good note with them and it has been a great couple years with them, and with my coach Jeff Kehler. I am working on doing something different next year but it is still in the works! I will update when it is figured out.

As always, thanks for checking in and following my race season! Hopefully the stories start to be filled with more glory and less blood and cracked bones.

Results: here

Garmin data: here

GMSR - Stage 3 and 4

*******Stage 3 - Mad River Road Race******
 App Gap. Basically all you need to know! I thought I would do top 10 on this stage, but I had never had a true climbing challenge before. At least nothing much more than 5 mins (asides from the few hills around Blue Mountain). Anyway it wrecked me, but it was a great experience.

The race started out fast, with the sprinters that missed out on points on Saturday being upset and driving the pace before the climbs. I kept thinking "do they know what we still have to do?". We hit Middlebury Gap and it eased up at the gradual base. As it kicked towards the top though, people started to get popped off the back. I was able to drop to my 39x28 and spin up without too much digging. I got my bottle from Komar at the feedzone at the top and then enjoyed the fast and windy descent. Nearly broke my max bike speed record with a 89.7km/h. Things weren't too bad for the next 20km, then we got to Notch Rd. It was a short steep kicker, and my garmin had it at 23%. After this we hit a gravel road for a few km. Things were strung out a bit here, but I think it was mainly for safety and not because of a high pace. This brought us into the final circuit.

The first time up Baby Gap wasn't bad, I needed some water though. I grabbed a neutral water in the feedzone, and then dropped my actual bottle that Sarah handed me. Oops! I really wanted the mix in the water, especially since it was so hot. There was a break up the road at this point of a few riders, and no one wanted to pull except Mark Brouwer. Even the race leader was somehow allowed to just ride up to the break. I wasn't feeling the best leg wise so I just wanted to sit in and wait. The neutral water bottle got me to about 5km until the second time we hit the feed zone where I was sure to get a good hand on the bottle. I drank half of it immediately, knowing there wasn't much race left anyway. After we finished Baby Gap the second time, we had a little bit of a recovery before App Gap.

So we drove up the climb Thursday when we got there and it didn't look that bad. Could I have been more wrong! I decided it was best to hit it at my own pace instead of trying to hold someone else's pace and just get popped and go backwards. My heart rate hit 190bpm, and there was no way to go any easier. It was too steep. It was getting to the point where my legs couldn't generate the power to pedal seated (one big issue with being a spinner with high rpm), so I would have to stand. In the last km it went to about 5% for a few hundred meters. At 500m you could see the finish, but it was the longest 500m you will ever do. Apparently it was only 15%, but it felt 100x worse than the 23% on Notch Rd. I figure I was already 15mins into the climb at this point, heart rate 5-10bpm above what I would normally do for a 20min TT. I thought walking would have been a good idea, because I was only going 9-10km/h, even though I was pushing as hard as I could. I made it to the top, finishing 18th and volunteers had to catch me from falling over at the top and push me over to the side of the road. What a crazy finish! Unfortunately I lost big time here, 5:55 down on the stage winner that got away from the break.

***** Stage 4 - Burlington Crit ******

Today I was feeling super fatigued from the last 3 days of racing. I made sure to get a long warm up in on the trainer and took some caffeine to give me some hope of being able to ride. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get clipped in when they let us into the course to take the line so I was at the back. Somehow someone crashed and it was because their bike snapped, and they had to get a neutral one. So happy that happened before the race and not mid corner in the crit.

I rode this way too cautious, not wanting to crash. There were 6 corners and only one section of good wide road where everyone tried to move up. I was unable to move up anymore than 5-6 spots from the back of the pack, so I spent my race at the back. Many people were popped off the back from trying to keep up with the accelerations at the back. A group of 5 riders got up the road and built up a gap. I was sad to see this, as my plan for the day was to attack and get in the break. It then became just finish, and do so in one piece. With less than 5 to go, my teammate Sylas crashed in one corner, but ended up being alright for the most part. The next lap two more people went down in the same corner. At this point I kind of kept a little more space at the back of the pack as I did not want to crash, especially with nothing to gain with a break that was up the road with no chance of getting there. I managed to keep hammering the last few laps and finish with the group. I finished with seeing Sylas getting his road race bandaged up, and Komar handing me a congratulatory beer for finishing.

The whole stage race was an awesome experience and we got super lucky with the weather. Looking forward to going back next year!

You can find pictures of the team from the Crit  HERE

Results for stage 3: here
Garmin data stage 3: here
Results for stage 4: here
Garmin data stage 4: here
Final GC: here


Up next for me is a lot of school work! I will take it easy for a few days and recover from the stage race and finish my season with Tour de Hans at the end of the month.

Green Mountain Stage Race- Stage 1&2

Down here in the Green Mountains in Vermont is a lovely little stage race that happens during Labour day weekend. I first heard about it from a buddy a few years ago that prided himself on his top 10 GC finish in the Cat 3 field. Here I am trying to one-up him by trying to do good in the Cat 2 field.

Stage 1 was a short 5.7mile time trial. It was uphill for the first few kilometres. then it flattened out and was slightly downhill for a while to let you get some speed back. It finished with a nice down-up and a slight uphill finish. I left the start gate, I was going slow and my legs felt like crap! I looked down and to my relief it was because the hill was hitting 12% gradient. I pounded up the hill and had my 30-second man in sight. I had a little mental lapse and eased up slightly at the top. I didn't gain anymore time on the guy ahead of me until the end. I picked up the hammer and started to drill it again. Passed him on the down-up and gave it my all until the end. In comparison to my normal Indian Trail time trials, I averaged 6bpm more for heart rate. Wish I had power data to share but I don't. I finished 14th/71, which was good. 36 seconds off of the lead. When I checked the race website that night, they had my pic posted right at the top! Here it is:

 Results are here

Stage 2 was the circuit race. Komar warned us that there was always crashes on this day, so my goal was to be safe and not lose time. This day was a complete mess. The race went well for the first half. I kept it easy near the back. I made sure to stay on top of food and water (which was hard because it was so hot!). A break was up the road when the Junior field caught us. We were neutralized, but I don't know if the break was. After one more lap, just before the turn onto route 100B there was a bad crash in the junior field. We came up to a blocked road, one SUV sideways blocking the left lane, and cars and ambulance on the right side. We were able to come to a stop and get around. I was near the back and chased to get into a group. We slowed because I was told it was neutralized to let everyone come back together, which was fair because you shouldn't lose a race because of something outside of your race. Little did I know 20-something guys had attacked up the road. We ended up stopping at the finish line (1 lap short) because they weren't neutralized and we wanted to know why. They told us to stand at the side of the road and wait for a decision. Eventually we were moved across the road to the parking lot. We were then told after about 10mins that we would be given a finishing time but they don't know what kind of gap they will put in. They could have said "tough luck, just keep going". Or they should have neutralized the group up the road and brought us all back together.

As of right now they just posted results. Seems like everyone but the first break was given a 3min gap. Tomorrow will be fun trying to make this up on the climbs...

My first successful Provincials

What a crazy last 10 days I have had! On the 14th I had my dental implant surgery and had one more tooth removed. Had to take 2 full days off of exercising to allow wounds to seal and the third day I had to be kept easy. Then on Friday (21st) I had my PhD transfer meeting, so all week I was busy recovering in addition to prepping for this. Saturday was the provincial TT, and Sunday the road race! I haven't finished a provincial road race before, so I was hoping to change things this time around. The courses were in Muskoka, which is a super nice area but a b*tch on the drive home. They were hilly but for the road race I found it lacked a hard, challenging hill to separate the field. Especially on the run into the finish. The TT was super hilly, why can't they have flat TTs?

For the TT, I was aiming for a top 10. I was able to borrow a disc wheel from my good friend Garth, so I was all set. I have been setting my best times on TTs this year so I figured I would have a good shot. I do however have problems pacing a 40km TT though. A power meter would be excellent for this as heart rate can give you such a wide range of efforts. I tend to go too easy for the first half, and then lose too much time. The hills also didn't help with the pacing. Bad news, I was 11th. The light here though was I was only several seconds off of 9th, and less than a minute from grabbing a few more spots. With better pacing I know I had the fitness to make the time up, but maybe they could have too. Also while I am coming up with excuses, I will blame a slower time on lost blood from my surgery just a week before. Anyway, this meant that I had to make up for it in the road race.

Results: Here

So my original plan was to go from the gun, hope the dust settled behind me and then a break would make its way up to me and I could hop in. The race started super slow and I had my opening and went. After about 10km, Kevin Massicotte from Jet Fuel joined me. We worked together a bit and the gap grew to 1:25. It wasn't to last though as by around 25km the pack really picked the pace up and we were reeled in by a single-file peloton. They were drilling it through the rollers as a break was trying to form and I was fighting to get in and hang on. After a few km's of this, a break formed with all 3 Silber riders, Bruce Bird and 2 other riders. The pace was kept high and DEC Express and Real Deal were working hard to try and bring it back because they had no one in it. After the first lap I think we averaged close to 42km/h, which was a little more than the 37km/h they projected us to be doing.

One issue with this race was the feeding, as you only had two feeds so each was very important, and one was with only 30km left (out of 185)... It was my first time using a musette and looking back, I should have practiced in a parking lot. I grabbed it from my brother but then the strap twisted right up. I couldn't get inside of the bag and the pack sprinted off. It took me about 2km of riding trying to get the thing opened (I am not great riding no hands...) and get all my food and water out of it. I then chased for 10mins to get back on, it took me all of Brunel road until South Portage. The pace died down after this and I was able to sit in and recover. Riders were starting to suffer if they didn't take on enough water or they messed up in the feed zone. I was happy to get my last bottle the second time around as I just ran out of water myself.

The pack rode well up until about 50km to go, then things started to get a bit crazy. The pace hit the roof again on Brunel Rd and on one of the kickers, Gaelan Merritt, Jack Burke, Kyle Boorsma and Andrew Lees were able to open a gap. Just after South Portage, someone flatted, and somehow someone on the opposite side of the road crashed by themselves. The group wasn't working together very well, and they were snaking across the road, making it hard to move up safely. As we came into the finishing turn there was a damn car part way through the corner. I have no clue why they stopped there and didn't drive through but it wasn't good. Someone crashed trying to go around it (I think it was Larbi) and a lot of guys had to slam the breaks to get around it as the good line through the corner would have put you right into the side of the car. I was too far back and got held up slightly by the car to be a contender in the group sprint. I was 7th in the group sprint if that counts for anything. Overall I finished 17th, or even better, 12th in Elite men (with u23 removed). I did a lot of work building my endurance and it paid off as I was able to hold on easy for the 185km. Now just to build up that top end and then hopefully see some results.  (Results are here )

I must take some time here to thank my brother Jesse, because without him I wouldn't have had anyone to feed me and help get everything together. And also thank my mom for helping in my surgery recovery, finding me foods I could eat and packing them for me to take, and also finding me a place to stay. Without those two, the weekend wouldn't have happened.

Next big thing for me is the Green Mountain Stage race in Vermont during labour day weekend. I am excited for the Cat2 race, it should be good! I will post pictures from this past weekend if I find any.

Big food for a big week!

I have been logging lots of hours on the bike recently and nutrition has always been an interesting thing for me. I am probably one of the worst people you will meet for nutrition. It isn't that I eat all bad stuff, just a lot of it. I have good reasoning for it. A typical person needs 1500-2000 calories a day, and in that they are able to get all of the essential nutrients to live a healthy life. So if I am biking and burning an extra 1000-3000 calories, my body is only (for the most part) using up fats and carbohydrates for that. The rest of my body still operates the same, and therefore I shouldn't need to make every one of the 4500 calories count for nutrition if it will just end up leaving my body without being used. Eat a good 1500-2000 calories that will give you your vitamins and minerals and then use those extra calories on tasty food and save that will power for when you need it on the last interval of a hard workout.
Side note, for anyone trying to lose weight, it is definitely a calorie in-calorie out thing, it is based off of simple math and physics. You need this much energy to do a task and if you don't eat the energy, then your body will take from what it has. I used this to originally drop 40lbs when I got into riding, and every winter to lose the 20lbs I put on in the fall. It makes sense and it works.

Anyway, I thought I would throw up what I ate on Friday. It is one of my bad days, but I went on to ride 200km the next day, and all the extra calories helped fuel that!

Breakfast:
Big bowl of fruitloops with milk

Bike ride -3hours ~ 1700-2000 calories burned:
Fig bar
Water mixed with cytomax

Snacks and recovery food:
Fruit protein smoothie ( muscle milk protein, fruit juice, yogurt, frozen mixed berries)
brownie

Lunches and snacks (spread out over the work day):
Pasta salad
Cold meat sandwich with mustard
Nananimo bar x2
brownie x2
Butter tart
Granola bar with 10g protein
Watermelon
1 cup of trail mix

Dinner:
6 inch Chicken bacon sub, and 12 inch steak and cheese sub from subway

Late night snack:
2 pieces of BBQ chicken pizza with fat-free caesar dressing to dip

There you have it! There is some good food choices in there and some bad ones, but I always say the bad choices are good ones for my soul.

Next up for me is some surgery on Friday. Getting one front tooth removed and two posts put in to later get some teeth attached. This will be fun... Just oral sedative and some freezing, wooo!

10 Things that happen with long training weeks.

Sorry guys, I have been training lots, and working on doing my transfer to PhD from Masters so haven't had a whole lot of spare time. In light of the increased training I thought I would create more of a fun post with items I know most of us would encounter in our training. Some are more bike specific but most apply to all endurance sports!

1. Saddle sores. - You spend a good portion of time at beginning of the ride trying to find a comfortable position on the saddle for that day. Chammy cream helps.
2. What to eat during the ride.  - You start to get sick of having to chew on clif bars mid ride and start to wonder if there are any other cheap options. (Fig bars are my new go-to)
3. Earlier bed times. -Before, you could get away with staying up a bit later, but now you are excited to get to bed by 10pm on Friday because of the 6hours you have planned to ride the next day.
4. How much water? - You have to decide how much to bring on those long rides. Also if it is worth it to do a scenic big loop and buy refills or do a small loop and refill at home.
5. Sweeter tan lines. -More time in the sun means a darker tan. Plus with all the sweating, I doubt the sunscreen will hold for the entire 6hour ride.
6. Clear the kitchen! - You are hungry every day at all hours, everything will be eaten. For some reason you are more hungry on recovery days and you hardly even rode.
7. Netflix and chill. - Your legs really are too tired to do much else. You tell your friends you would be more exciting to them if they had a bike to enjoy the fun hours of the day with you.
8. Have I been here before? - Longer rides might mean new riding locations that can bring back the exciting feeling of not knowing exactly where you are. Or you might be riding the same roads several times trying not to get bored.
9. My jersey is weighing me down. - Not wanting to stop a few times per ride to get food and water, you pack those back pockets with an extra bottle and lots of food. On recovery days you feel like you are missing half of yourself with all the weight gone.
10. Watch the weather. - Sure you are dedicated and will do whatever it takes, but it is that much nicer to move the recovery day to the rainy day and enjoy sunshine when you are stuck out there for 4+hours.