Tripleshot Cycling

Day 1
Highlights: Meeting a protour rider, learning madison, hanging with friends in fine hotel rooms (thanks Accent Inns), hoping the rain turns to snow for skiing. Fabulous meals, each rider (w help from family) bringing one. Riders David, Evan, Duncan, Chris, Liam, Brenna, Ethan, and Alex are here. Bernie Pauly, and Alex's mum Nancy helping out.

Day one included Ethan learning to get his feet in the pedals and his first ride above the blue, getting the first falls out of the way; Chris Macleod dueled a camp-mate for space on the apron and lost, but mostly pride and not skin. Duncan Grant got taken out from above by Nigel from Courtenay riding too slow on the banking. He slid at least 75 feet from near the top of the banking, but bounced up and rode after checking out some very minor scrapes. Still went in the hot tub last night too.

Liam, Duncan, and Evan learned the madison sling, working up from riding with one hand behind the back, through pushing a team mate, to the full on hand sling.

One of the highlights was a casual q and a with Olympian and Protour rider Svein Tuft from the Greenedge team. Svein spoke about his start as a avid outdoorsman who rode a mountain bike to alaska on a mountain bike with a trailer loaded with climbing gear and his dog. Then discovering, while working in a bike shop at 23, how fast those legs would propel a light race bike , and vaulting from beginner to nationals road race break in one season, then Tour de L'Avenir in 16 months. (Note to self: work on base fitness).

He also spoke well about long term health, the importance of cross training in winter for bone and joint health, nutrition, the role of a domestique (do the first 250 km of Milan San Remo at 400-500 watts to keep it together for the sprinter (a dude well-named Farrar too! If only...), then call it a day.

How you can feel like crap and still win (US Open, in 4 inches of snow, but won solo, while other guys were shaking themselves off the bike with cold).

Use the winter to train fat burning: IE eat less during training rides, and keep the intensity lower. (applies more to senior male road riders, but also to grand fondo riders). These pathways spare the use of glycogen, the exhaustion of which is the "bonk".

And an interesting thought: he was asked what the worst part of training was, and he said the best part was the training. When he quit for a year (reputedly in disgust at the doping) he found himself going just as hard in his skiing and hiking, and figured he might was well get paid to go hard.

Day 2
First racing last night; Duncan had a nice solo win in his category's scratch race, Brenna had two wins, scratch and points in hers, Chris M. scored in two of the points sprints in his second race. (As an aside, the normally quiet Chris was quite talkative after his races; I think this works for him.).

Liam and Evan stepped up to B racing (there is a, b, c, and youth/beginner), and had an extraordinarily fast scratch race to get accustomed to the not-quite-national-team field. Breaks went early, and it was single file for the whole race. Both finished decently but were blown by the full day in the camp, then chasing the whole event.

Alex and David were out with aches in knees. Alex was seen by a physio recommended by our LifeMark friend, and they diagnosed tight hamstrings as the cause and she has to work on stretching those. David has an occasional knee issue that was exaggerated by going to a lower gear. Back up to normal size today.

In the camp, Brenna and Alex had the top two youth female times in the flying 200, Alex tied with a speed skater from Prince George for fastest, Brenna a 10th behind. Good field too, about 15 riders. Will add the other riders times; didn't see those.

Big thanks to Nancy and Bernie. Nancy had her van towed while she had Alex in physio, then her iphone gps had such a workout the battery died and got lost getting back to the velodrome. (Still managed to two trips to bike shops for parts to patch the rental bikes.) So, because we didn't have enough seats to get back to the hotel to eat, Bernie cooked the dinner at the hotel (rice and turkey curry) and bring it back to the velodrome to eat between the camp session and start of racing. Meals on wheels or what!?

Youth riders came from Kamloops, the Island, Prince George, the valley, and squamish. Race fields were 20 + for B , 10-15 for C, 10-15 for A, and 10-15 each for youth boys and youth girls. Confirms my bell curve theory of tripleshot attendance too.

Day's 3 and 4
Well I've left it a bit late to remember lots of details, but days 3 and 4 were just as good as day 1 and 2.

The more experienced boys rode their final drill in madison Thursday, a near race-pace drill with 6 riders in the pace line. The relief riders had to find their partners, and get a relay back into the same place in the pace line. It involves putting yourself in front of the pace line at a significantly slower speed, hoping your team mate will catch you and sling you up to the speed of the pace line, so you don't have to close a gap.

I didn't see all of the drill, but was aware this tight pace line was sticking together pretty well. Then I happened to look up as Liam coming in for Evan. Evan was about 4th wheel, and the pace line was going over top of a slower rider, so they were high on the banking. Liam came down to Evan as planned, but just then the pace line slowed, and Evan had to go up over the guy in front. (what you are supposed to do on the track, as the elevation gain scrubs off your speed.)

But it meant he was busy steering, and couldn't grab Liam, went past him, and moved up track across Liam's front wheel, overlapping him half a wheel+. I was resigned to a full-on swan dive for Liam from the top of the banking. ("How am I gonna explain this to his mother?") when Liam pulls this wild pull-back like fixie riders do in skid competitions. He pulled his bike back (picture pulling the bars back so your crotch is up near the stem...while pedalling a fixed gear) then threw it forward on the opposite side of Evan's back wheel and took up his place in the pace line.

I've only once in my life seen someone do that in a race to avoid getting taken into a curb. And that was a criterium master who was picked to go to four Olympics. Holy heart in my mouth. If your kids ever want a bmx, trials or fixie bike, or just time to play around on a bike, let 'em. Just might save his neck.

The invited pro Thursday was Will Routly, national men's road champion and member of the Spider tech team. He told a great story of getting his grade 10 career planning form back from high school (he's 28 now). The form had three places to fill in career options. At 15, he had written "Pro Cyclist" in the first blank, and had crossed out the other two.

Now that might sound like testosterone-poisoned recklessness, but then when he was asked by one of the juniors, "what's your plan for after cycling", he said he was glad he'd been asked. He has taken a number of courses in a business degree. "And I make a big effort to meet all the sponsors, and give my best effort to do my bit in reports, product reviews, and promotional photo shoots and events. And it means now that I feel I can ask almost any one of my sponsors and get a job. They know me now, and they know I've been paying attention, and they trust me to do the right thing."

Back to racing: Brenna and Alex were getting a little tired of winning, believe it or not, so tried some different stuff like suggesting attacks to campmates. Clara Mackenzie was one who accepted the suggestion and had a few good goes. This is a quite a contrast to the tentative racing we saw at provincials, and a sign of real development, not to mention a nice effect our girls are having on the field. And best of all, they've both decided to race C next time.

The now madison-expert boys were actively lobbying for a madison to be added to the race program Thursday night, but the organizer hadn't seen them ride and declined. In the end, the four days of camp plus racing took it's toll and Evan and Liam dropped back to a c race on the last day. But they raced well and took some chances. Earlier Liam went for the first sprint in the B points race and got half a lap and the first place points, but didn't ease off, spent a few laps off the front and was cooked by the time the bunch caught him. After dangling at the back for couple of laps as the pack jammed, he was gapped.

I yelled to Evan that Liam was off, mainly so Evan wouldn't make it any harder for Liam to catch up. But Evan thought I meant go back for him; he dropped off the back, gathered Liam up, but then over-gassed it and dropped him again. Liam gave up at that point, but Evan put his head down and chased back on to the flying pack. Three times:shock:, before he caught it for good. It was like the scratch race at the provincials. He had just long enough in the pack to recover a bit before the last sprint, then mistimed the last sprint by leading out too soon, missed the jump, but wound it up through the pack to get fourth. Even the cynical announcer came over to check the result and congratulate him. Mike Buckowski, father of national team rider Kyle Buckowski came over and said Evan's sprint was awesome, and to keep doing whatever it was he was doing.

David took it easy on his knee, but pounced on a bargain track frame, an Argon Electron 18.

Gotta go, more later.

Thank you very much to Nancy and Bernie who organized the food for the track camp, and so much more. We were the envy of the other camp riders, and even the national team rider and coach who shyly asked, if we had any left over food,and if we wanted it disposed of, she and her roommates could oblige. (Ah the sacrifices of an athlete.)

Bernie even cooked a meal at the hotel, then , when physio duty took the van away and we couldn't get back to eat, brought the hot meal to the track.

Nancy also made two trips to the physio for Alex and David. (Note, Jeff sugested we should check seat set-back and make sure we copy our road bike settings onto track bikes to avoid injury. Other riders had similar problems)

Nancy also made two parts runs for tubes, washers, and rim tape to patch up the rental bikes.

And thanks to Bernie for bringing home my Craigslist bargain bike for Una.

And a plug for Stefan Fletcher at PISE Lifemark Physio who responded right away to my plea for advice on physios with Metrotown physio, when the locals didn't know who to suggest. They turned out to be great, and fixed Alex's knee in one treatment, and convinced David to try skate skiing as part of his treatment.

Pick the Tripleshot riders from the photos:
http://www.canadiancyclist.com/dailynews.php?id=23195