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!