No Mud...Until....

Today we did our hill climbs out on Moose Mountain Fire Road - with an added loop down Sulphur Springs Trail. We were very surprised with how dry all the trails were! You have to remember we just had what seems like weeks of rain in Alberta.

We were joined after our first climb by Schwartzee, who was able to come and play on the trails with us today. Since he is a crazy ass downhiller - he led the way. And as you can see from the photos, he didn't slow down for the mud bogs at the bottom of the trail!

What you see is what you get -- his bike is stuck in this position and Mark flew over his handlebars. When we came around the corner, all we saw was his bike - thinking that it must be leaning against something -- nope. The mud was as thick as cement and as deep as his front hub - very crazy. And glad that he didn't get hurt! (And VERY glad that he was racing out in front)

Let's just say that that the second loop was much more successful with everyone finding alternative routes in the mud area. Overall, a fantastic day on the trails, with a total of 1100m of elevation gain and more than 38km. And aside from this bog - the rest of the trail was in excellent condition!

Tomorrow we are on our road bikes for the inaugural bike trip to Adam and Roxcie's Acreage!

Oh & Katie finally got fed up with her hair and got it cut this week - she looks super cute - don't ya think?! (It's better when she hasn't had her helmet on for 3 hours!)

Mix of Biking With Chores

Katie came up with a great idea of how we can get a workout and do some chores around the house!

Now there isn't an excuse to avoid lawn work.

Anyone out there need us to come by the yard for a workout?

Have A Great Weekend!

Consuming

As I sit here and type - I am listening to Blue Rodeo's song, "Five Days In May" from their Five Days in July CD. And I am struck by a few things.

Where did May go? I wish there were five extra days to get some stuff done!

We will soon be biking on some of the best single track in North America - for Five Days in July...

And then my thoughts fade to how consuming training seems. It is consuming! We talked about it the other night and it's such a commitment - time, money, sacrifices. So thank you to friends and family who we don't get to see much because we are always on the road, in the mountains, or on the trainers. We are eager to race, don't get me wrong - the training has been excellent and we can't wait to put it to the test. But we also can't wait to do some of the other interests we love -- climbing, scrambling, sleeping in!

We have some blog readers who have been emailing, calling (you know who you are!) asking for more insight about race preparation, so here it is -- a typical day including what we are eating and what kinda distances we are doing.

• Wake Up @ 5am


• BFast typically is a few boiled eggs, banana and energy bar. Katie doesn't eat as much pre-ride.


• Bike to work @ 530am


• At work @ 640am (27km later)


• Shower, Change @ work for 7am


• Snack/Bfast is more fruit, oatmeal and yogurt


• Still working


• Lunch - wraps, typically tuna or chicken - a salad with nuts, cookies or chocolate, fruit cup


• Back to work


• Snack - maybe an energy bar, maybe some salty chips or crackers and peanut butter


• Bike Home @ 500pm (27km)


• 630pm - Typically we will drop off our packs, grab some more water at home and do a workout. Depending on the night it could be 20-30kms of hills or just distance/intervals. Making a total day of 70-85 kms.


• Home @ 800pm - one of us will clean the bikes, while the other starts dinner.


• Power Bar Recovery Drinks for us both (these are vital - we see a huge difference when we miss them after a good workout) Stretch together in the living room.


• 845pm eating dinner and we take turns saying "845! where did the time go?!" hahaha


• Dinner is steak, chicken or fish with veggies, rice. And then we'll snack on pretty much anything we want -- crackers and cheese & nachos are current favorites.


• Bed by 930pm, if we can!


• Repeat

We don't count calories - sorry, Dennis! We pretty much eat as much as we can or want - trying to find good healthy choices that are a nice balance. Our current guilty pleasures include ice cream sandwiches and marshmallows!

So there you go. More than you wanted, we are sure - but you get the picture!

Thanks for sharing our journey with us!

BC Bike Race Update

On a weekend when the rain and cloud icon on the weather network makes us frustrated, nervous, and did we mention frustrated?! We are happy that the BC Bike Race has updated their site with a complete list of racers for the June 28-July 4/08 biking adventure. Check it out -- see out team photo and read our bio.

We discovered a few things that spiked our heart rates. But we also found a few cool things too:

• Of the 191 Teams, there are 30 teams in our racing category (Open Mixed)
• 9 from the USA, 10 from International Countries and 11 from Canada
• There are some serious riders in our category - including the current USA cyclocross national champion!
• People don't pay big bucks to fly from overseas for the race, unless they are good.
• But we also saw a theme that excited us -- people talked a lot about building new friendships and sharing the passion for biking. And that's encouraging for us, after all - we have a blog dedicated to passion, action and crashing!

And encouragement is good on this rainy weekend where we are likely to have to resort to our trainers, yet again, so that we can feel remotely prepared for the 7 day 550km challenge that is only 5 weeks away!!!

So as we begin our chant of: Rain, Rain, go away... we hope you can feel the excitement building with us!

Wasa Weekend

We went to Wasa Lake, BC for the May Long Weekend. Lots of the Alberta trails are still too wet and by going to BC we were looking forward to getting a mix of trail rides and road rides. The weekend did not disappoint! I hope you had the same amazing sun shine as we did throughout the weekend -- wow!

We left Friday afternoon and were in Wasa by 5pm. Schwartzee's family is building a cabin at the lake, so they had a BBQ going for us when we arrived! Saturday was our mountain bike ride -- we managed to see three (3) different lakes (Sulphur, Premiere and Quartz) on this 75km trail ride -- wicked fun and amazing views.

Here we are for a quick toe dip in the lake -- Katie, Scott, Schwartzee and Tanya.

And Katie sits on the ledge of a great view.

And here is Katie showing off her guns as she rocked the climb to get this great view!

And this lake was so calm as we rode up to it with the mountain view in back.

The first graph is our Road Ride Elevation. The climb into Kimberly is the toughest part.

Next is our 3 lake mountain bike trip - the climbs are short distance, but good elevation gain.

We spent the rest of our time enjoy getting caught up with friends around the camp fire - eating way too much, hitting the trails on the quads and catching a nap before dinner.

What else could you ask for on a long weekend?!?

We came home after a pancake and bacon breakfast on Monday. We did pretty good at beating the traffic and found time for lawn chores (so our neighbours don't think we're white trash!) and got some food in the house for the rest of the week.

This week we find out if we make the top 3 of the BC Bike Race Competition (Prize Package) Don't worry, you'll learn more, if we make the top 3. We'll need your help with voting!

Anyway -- hope your weekend was as much fun. And let's hope the rain doesn't come like they are predicting.

Update

Lots going on since our last post. And with the Long Weekend coming, we thought we'd get you up-to-date before even more happens. So hold on....

3000kms -- Yeah! We passed the 3000km in training (since December) last week and we were very excited! We even specifically designed our ride so we'd ensure we enjoyed a night in Fish Creek on some single track when we'd roll over the km while having a blast!

Swing batter, batter, batter, swing batter! -- We played ball on Tuesday night and won both of our games. Katie was amazing up to bat -- wow, even the other team made a comment about her hard hits! She was 6 for 7 for the night and could be counted on when there were runners on base to knock them in! Truly a batting clinic took place. More trips to the batting cage are planned - although it's mostly for Scott. He was 5 for 7 on the night. Needs to be more disciplined at the plate, but took a couple bad pitches and popped-up. Next week is a bye-week for the team.

Race Update -- Our Jerseys and Shorts are on schedule and will be delivered in the second week of June. Training is going well and we both feel healthy. The bikes were just in the shop for a great tune-up and Katie bought some new shoes that make her very happy!

Long Weekend -- we are headed to Wasa for some biking with friends (two 60km trail rides planned and a 100+km road ride) between Saturday - Monday. In the down time we are just gonna chill by the campfire, eat, sleep and relax. We'll take the camera and should have a good long weekend documentary for our readers!

Whew! There's the highlights -- catch up more soon!

Going the Distance

This weekend was all about the distance. We needed two rides that were each around 90-100kms. The tough part was trying to do the rides and not go crazy with the winds. But I guess it was the wind that kept the rains away - so it's a little ironic, I guess.

Saturday we rode to Black Diamond, AB -- had a quick visit with our friends Kyle and Melissa and came back to Calgary. The winds were from the South-West, so we rode into the wind on the way out and got a little help from it on the way home (the wind always seems to calm when we have it to our backs!)



Sunday we headed North and, as you can see from the GPS, we rode from South Calgary limits (Highway 22x) to North Calgary Limits (Country Hills Blvd) Once again we fought a 25km wind from the North -- but thankfully it continued to blow and carry us home, once we turned around (sweet!)

As we write this, we both really feel good - so that's a nice sign that the training is working. It wouldn't be good if after a 200km two-day weekend we were exhausted...not when we have a 550km seven-day event in 6 weeks!

Next weekend is the traditional Golden Triangle Weekend, but our plans had to change. However, we have a great alternate biking weekend planned with Schwartzee out in Wasa Lake where his family is building a cabin. We are loading up the 4 bikes - road and mountain - and have some great trails and road biking planned. We'll take some photos to share.

Happy Mother's Day -- we had Katie's Mum and family over for a BBQ tonight...good fun!

Moose Mountain Hill Training

Today was our hill training day of the week -- and we were excited to actually hit the mountains!

Thankfully it was much drier than we had expected (although some of the photos would suggest otherwise!) We did two treks up/down for a total elevation gain of 1100m (Two hours of climbing and 24 minutes of descending!) The good news is that elevation gain is about 2/3 of the total of any one day of the BC Bike Race - so we are more comfortable in knowing we can do the elevation.

We've done this hill in past years and didn't feel as good - so we can see the benefits of our training beginning to show.

Of course we had our GARMINS with us -- you can see our HR peaking just before the top of the mountain. Pretty much identical climbs each time, as far as pace and HR goes. What we didn't include on the chart was the grade % of the road. But we can tell you the steepest grade was 23% in places. We're pretty sure you can match up the grade with the HR to figure it out : )

As you can see, we were happy to be done. A good day of training and now that we know the conditions are in great shape, we will work this training into our regular weekly schedule.

Tomorrow will be a nice long easy spin to help give our legs some recovery.

Fish Creek - Finally Ridable

Tonight we thought we would try our luck and see if we could get some real mountain biking in...we were going to ride downtown for a little batting cage action, but decided to go for a quick ride in Fish Creek to see how the trails are coming along. Lucky for us the trails are in great shape! They are a little muddy in places, but most of the park is nice and dry. Needless to say we didn't make it down town at all...

We managed about 2.5 hours of riding with a nice mix of climbing and descending, easy smooth single track and rooty technical riding. It was awesome!!!

We were also lucky enough to see some wild life...up close and personal!!! We came across some deer (mother and three little ones - probably born last spring) and we couldn't believe how close they let us get. They were munching away on green grass - which they haven't seen in Calgary since June of last year - so I'm pretty sure I could have climbed on one of their backs and did my best impression of Adam (my bro) back in his bull riding days!!!

Tomorrow we are heading out the the Moose Mountain Fire road for a little climbing. The fire road leads to the fire look out at the top of Moose Mountain - it's 7.5km of pure climbing!!!

Play Ball!

Wednesday night marked the start of our slo-pitch season opener! With Calgary's weather being what it has, the team didn't get a chance to get together -- so it was bound to be an interesting start!

Katie had Spanish Lessons, so she wasn't able to make it -- but most of our games will be played on Tuesday nights, so she'll be in for the fun next week.

Each night we play a double-header, so there is lots of action. The first game Scott went 4-for 5 with a home run, a double and two-singles. I left some vital runs stranded near the end of the game and, as a partial result, we tied our first game.

Second game, I fluked out and became the highlight of the night. I was in Centre Field, and Angelo was playing Right -- a high fly ball came our way and he called me off. He got under the ball, but it bounced off his glove and landed in mine! Total Sports Centre Top 10 - for sure hahaha! Scott went 4-for 4 with three doubles and a single. Our friend Jen is palying with us this year too and she had some amazing hits! In addition, she had some classic lines, such as:

(Jen To the Umpire) "If you're going to call me out, can you say you're out sweetheart!"
(Umpire to Jen) "You're out Sweetheart!"

Not a bad start for our team, Corked Bats.