Copeland Forest DH

Here are a couple pictures that Brother Fras wanted to see. They are from a ride earlier in the season with Alain and Mark when Alain brought his new camera to try out. If only he had been able to round up some better subject material.

This first shot is from part way down a fun downhill trail. There is a ladder bridge that goes out to a log with a roll down on the back side. If you hit it with a bit of pace it can be a drop which is about five feet down and maybe about ten or twelve feet out.



This next shot is from further on where the trail goes through a tightish right hander into a steeper section which is pretty fun. I am doing a funny looking lean into the turn but it is a cool shot where it is all frozen except for the front fork and wheel which look like they are working hard. Undoubtedly it is due to my fat ass rather than any excess pace I ought to be carrying.



Thanks to Fras for the new elbows which fit great and look cool too.

An interesting thing happened while we were hanging out at the ladder bridge trying to figure out where a picture might look good from. A group of riders came through flying down the trail and half way across the bridge one of them says, "Trevor - Trevor Charles..". It turns out it was Steve Mitges who had recognized me mid stunt somehow and Jany was right behind however so concentrating on the ride that she kept straight on. We met up again later and caught up a bit so it was fun to see them again. They looked as strong as ever and are an inspiration as athletes and all round dudes.

O-Cup #4 Albion Hills

I think that this race was only a week after the Canada Cup at Hardwood. I decided to skip the midweek race there in favour of going and pre-riding the course at Albion so on Wednesday after school, my colleague and fellow Team Thornton Ice Cream Parlour member Mark Harvey and I went down to Bolton to ride. This was in the face of looming unstable weather but we figured that we could rise above anything the heavens could throw at us.

When we got there we met three women who had been out riding and one of them had a titanium full suspension Kona - very nice. We asked them where the course was marked out and they directed us towards some marker arrows. As we rode we noticed that the arrows were pretty sparse and that some intersections were left unmarked. The trails were pretty good although a little wet due to rain fallen earlier in the week.

As we rode we eventually got to an area which was better marked and realized that the previous section we had been directed to was not actually part of the course. We finished a lap on the actual course and found it to be very fast and flowy and guaranteed to be a very fun race course. When we finished the lap, we popped out in a parking lot away from where our car was parked. The weather was closing in and there was a regular rumble of approaching thunder. I decided to squeeze in another lap and Harv headed back to the car.

As I rode, the thunder became pretty much constant and soon large lightning strikes became visible as the sky darkened almost to the point of being like dusk. When I got to the point where the course did a road crossing I decided to bail out with about a quarter of the lap to go as the lightning was now regular and some fat rain was starting to fall. This is where my route finding and sense of direction fell apart.

Initially I turned right onto the road and went a way with out seeing anything I recognized until deciding to turn around about (unbeknownst to me at this time) one bend before I would have come to a point where I knew where I was. I rode back the way I had come past the race course exit point and on all the way out of the park. The only positive thing was that I was moving away from where the main storm activity was occurring. Eventually I got to a sign for Palgrave and came to the realization that I was no where near where I needed to be, so I turned around for the second time and started to reluctantly head back into the thick of the storm. I then passed another mountain biker who was headed toward me as he escaped the weather and got some directions from him. Sure enough I figured out that I had been going the right way in the first place but never went far enough.

Now that I was headed in the right direction, I just put my head down and pedaled as the rain came down heavier and the sky was lit with a regular flash of lightning. These are about the only weather conditions that I really dislike riding in as the lightning is a real hazard but there is not much to do other than push on as there are no particularly good spots to shelter and the faster you go the sooner you are out of it. When I finally got back to the parking lot I was a little shocked to see the car was gone. My immediate thought was that Mark had made good on his 'threat' to head back to Barrie if he didn't see me in 30 minutes. Then I figured that he had probably headed over to the other parking lot where the race course dumped out to save me the ride back. A good and generous plan if it hadn't been for the fact that I had bailed off the course early. Coupled with my short excursion outside the park as I incompetently tried to find my way back, he wouldn't have passed me on the road and we completely missed each other.

After the worst of the electrical storm and rain had passed I headed back out and over to the other course parking and we met up on the road half way there. As it turned out we just got a little wet and all ended well so it was just a bit of excitement and adventure to spice up an otherwise mundane week.

As I said, the race course was super fun and fast, with flowy single track and high speed double track. I have a few pictures of myself below from the race that I found on some of the race day photo websites.




The next couple are from another site and I think that I like them a bit better over all.




The last cool thing that I will mention about this race was that it was the third time in quick succession that I serendipitously met Jany Mitges after not seeing her for a few years. Jany is obviously some sort or machine as you can notice the stark difference between her picture and mine shown previously. While I am huffing and puffing my guts out onto my handlebars, she has the apparent presence of mind to do a little mugging for the camera and thow up a 'peace bra'. At least I have something to aspire to.



Overall, I thought the race went pretty well for me as I finished ninth and rode well without any leg cramps and could barely walk at the end. I definitely didn't leave with anything left in the tank and it took a couple of days for the soreness to leave my legs and back.

Anyway that is it for now. The next post will just be a couple DH pics from earlier this year.

See Blog Name Above

This last year would refer to the 'Black Holes' bit in the Blog name. I will try to get back to this with a bit more frequency - Even more than once a year? - why yes, but why not? Anyway over the next couple I will try to update the bike racing situation for those that are clamouring for news.

Mansfield O-cup #1
Disaster. Totally sick. As in a virus - not as in 'Totally awesome'. 15 minutes back of the leaders. Disaster. Should probably have stayed home except that there was a flat out ripping double track downhill that was worth the price of admission.

Woodnewton O-cup #2
Skipped it. Still sick. Yup, the virus thing. Don't think that I missed much as I heard it was a deluge and too much of the course was over grass. How about some singletrack instead of some one's lawn.

Hardwood Hills O-cup #3 / Canada Cup
This is where things have started to get back on track although it was a very shaky lead up on the week before. To elaborate I was basically over the sickness - yes same one - and felt like my fitness was coming around. I had recently started riding on a tubeless setup that I was putting to the test on the Wednesday night race before the big weekend. This is where I was initiated to the limitations of the Stan's setup with low pressure in non UST rims.

While going pretty fast down some double track with a nice roller in it, I got a bit of air and kicked the back end out a little. Upon landing I heard this super loud BRRAAAPP sound and found myself with almost no pressure left at all in the back tire. This was awkward but I made it back to the car and pumped it up again and it felt OK. Unbeknownst to me there was some dirt trapped between the rim bead and side wall of the tire which caused to to slowly lose air over the next lap. I found out going down a trail called coffee run where I lost pressure again through the tire burping as I was pushing hard over a rough rooty section. Back to the car for more air. I then did the race and everything felt basically OK but when I went out for a last bit of a lap on the Canada Cup course I came to an awkward spot that has a little root drop that doesn't have a great run up and an off camber landing with a weird root in the middle. I was going too slow so I tried to half wheelie drop it but ended up sort of doing a bit of a table top nose dive right into the root on the landing. The front tire jack knifed and exploded off the rim, and I hit the deck pretty hard in a shower of Stan's sealant. Great way to prepare for the race.

After the disaster that was the C - Cup last year, I sort of figured that this might be an omen that I should cut my losses and not even show up on the Sunday. However, my lovely wife Jodi let me get back out on the Friday before so that I could attempt to reclaim my mojo. It went much better and I figured out a couple sections of the course that were very advantageous relative to how I had been riding it previously, and yes, there were tubes back in both tires. I would still like to try the tubeless set up more but I think I will wait until I have some proper rims and run a little more pressure.

So on the Sunday race day it went pretty well and I enjoyed the course better than last year. It was still strenuous and a little technical but there wasn't quite as much gut busting technical climbing and it was a little more fun and flowy over all. I have found a picture below which was part of a super fun bit that went down some really fast double track into single track and over a couple wide A-frame planks where you could get a bit of air.



I ended up finishing 10th overall which I was pretty happy with and best of all my race wasn't limited by cramping legs which is where they all ended last year. It seems that the Hammer Nutrition product called Perpetuum is working pretty well for me so I will likely stick with that for the foreseeable future.

In the next couple days I will try to get together a report on Albion hills which was an awesome race.

The Bike News

Well the last little while has not been too great on the bike front. After an awesome weekend of riding three weekends ago, I have mostly felt really lousy up until a night ride I just got back from tonight. As an update for the interim I will just hit the highlights.

On the Sunday after my last entry, I had a brilliant 80 km road ride which included a 5 or 6 km section of flat gravel road. I think that from now on, any worth while road ride needs to have at least one solid "spring classics section" in it just to spice things up. Boonen doesn't shy away from the rough stuff so why should the rest of us. Also a lot of the roads around here inexplicably turn into gravel for km's at a time for no apparent reason. Maybe they just run out of asphalt and then forget to go back and finish it off.

After that great weekend I had another Wednesday night race up at Hardwood where I felt pretty good but the results showed that I didn't actually go any faster. I ended up 1st in my age group for the course I did but there were not quite as many people there that time as in the week previous.

The next ride I did was an easy one where I felt like crap and could never really get my legs going. I'm not sure if I was a bit sick or was fighting a virus or something but all was not well for the next while.

Last weekend I managed to get to the Canada Cup race at Hardwood where I wondered if I should quit biking altogether. My legs where dead and I ended up 24th out of 37 in Master Sport. I was hoping for top 10 so it was a bit of a stink fest. Below is a picture of me struggling up a modest climb near the back of the pack off the start.



I was taking a whizz up behind the chalet when I heard over the loud speaker that there were 5 minutes to the gun so the start box was pretty much full when I got there and once again I was starting from the back; not that it mattered at all that day. The whole race was a silty, dusty, powder fest with so much dirt hanging in the air you could barely see the course for the first 500 metres. There were lots of traffic jams since the field wasn't very sorted out before the single track. Before the end of the first lap I already felt like my legs were ready to go home so that was not a good sign. I don't know if I pre-rode the course too hard the day before (Saturday) after biking to school on Friday and my legs were just tired or something else was going on. Anyway I spent a lot of the race in my granny ring since it was a pretty strenuous course with a lot of climbing. By the end, my drive train was ghost shifting and / or not shifting due to the amount of powdery dust so that wasn't so great. By the end I finished it off and ended up glad that I was there. I did win a draw prize for the first time ever of some cool Mace downhill gloves. They are a bit too big so I will either try to shrink them in the washer/dryer or save them as light skate ski gloves.

This most recent Wednesday night I got out to another midweek race at Hardwood which had the weather conditions all the opposite way. It was nice and cool but raining like a freaking monsoon. It was pouring down buckets and sections of the trail were little rivers. The crowd was a lot smaller due to the conditions but it was still a fun race except that by the end of the race my rear brake lever was pulling all the way to the bar with no stopping power whatsoever. This was weird as they were brand new pads that I had just put on right before the Canada Cup on Sunday. I sort of thought that I lost all the fluid out of the system and that I would have to buy a new lever or caliper. On further inspection after the race I found that the pad was worn down all the way to the backing plate - IN TWO RIDES!! After some research on line I realized that they must be resin pads instead of sintered metallic ones. I guess the resin pads are cheaper and quieter but disappear in the wet. My own assessment would be that they are worthless crap. Seems to defeat the entire purpose of discs if you ask me. Anyway I went back to the shop where I got them and the guy said he would get me some better replacement ones so that was cool. Anyway I finished second in my age category in that race despite the braking issues and more drivetrain problems.

This brings me up to tonight where I had a ride in which I finally felt pretty good so I don't want to jinx it but I feel like I might be getting out of this slump. I will not ride tomorrow and try to do the O-Cup in Midland on Sunday and hope that I feel a bit better for that. I have replaced my derailleur cables and have new brake pads so hopefully my bike works well too. I will give another update after the race.

I have included one more funny picture of Mason below. This is how he was sleeping when I went into his room this morning. It doesn't look too comfortable to me but I guess it works if you are just a little guy.

Bad Aisss

Thanks to Cam and Fras for my new birthday pedals.

I just tried them out for the first time. I got out for a ride this Saturday afternoon to the 8th Line trails near Hardwood. It was an amazing ride. I spent about 2 1/2 hours on my bike and the trails were in amazing shape.

I hadn't been up there in about at least a year and remember thinking that they were in need of some care which they have evidently now received. It looks like a fair bit of hard wood logging was done in some areas but they must not have been using a big skidder like when they do the pines because the terrain wasn't destroyed like it usually is after the loggers go through.

The ride was only briefly sullied by some fat people on horses dropping big piles of crap all over the trail. The only problem with multi-use trails is that when you have a 1500 lb animal hauling a fat ass rider along the damp soft ground, it works a little bit like a roto tiller on the trail bed. I would like to stop in front of them and take a dump on the trail myself to see their reaction.

About 1/3 of the way through there were also some sportsmen on four wheelers who were firing a paintball gun randomly into the woods. Semi retarded sportsmen with a fully automatic paintball gun - what a combo.

Anyway,after putting those little blips behind me, I settled in for what would be an almost magical ride where the trails flew by surrounded by a sea of fresh greenery and blooming trilliums carpeting the ground as far as you could see. The conditions were tacky with great traction and the sunny sky was full of fluffy clouds. Cool temps and no humidity made it about as good as XC conditions get in a rolling Ontario forest. Blasting through bar width pairs of trees at speed using the force to ensure safety made for the best mountain bike ride yet of this season. I will definitely get back there for more riding as soon as possible. I will also try to remember a camera so that I can get a few shots on the trail.

May your riding be fast and loamy.

Uncle Fras in the House

I am just posting a few pictures from when Uncle Fras was here in Barrie with Grandpa and Nanna on Thursday. Thanks a lot for coming up guys, and thanks for the baby's Birthday presents Car and Fras.

Uncle Fras helping Mae-Mae learn how to drive the car-car.



Now he is ready to set off on his own once he has the sunglasses on of course.



Opening up one of the big Bucky Balls (scale around 100 000 000 000 : 1)



Babies opening their first Play-Doh (moments before Mason tried to eat it and then had a break down when Uncle Fras suggested a different course of action.)



Brenna and Fras opening the Dr. Seuss book.



Brenna looking at the Dr. Seuss Birthday book with Mom in the background.



Thanks again Car and Fras and Grandpa and Nanna for the gifts and a fun day.

Midweek Racing

So I made it out to the Wednesday night Trek Mountain Bike series at Hardwood Hills tonight. It was a nice way to get a good hard sprint type ride in midweek.

Since last post I had a really good, hard, road ride on Monday evening that was an excellent test of my knee with no pain whatsoever so that was positive. It was probably close to 70 km (I don't have my computer mounted on my road bike yet) and the ride which initially got my knee into difficulty about a month and a half ago.

Below is a picture of the steed at Hardwood. It was actually taken post ride but it looks like it could sub in for the before shot so that is what I will pretend.



There were a ton of people there with close to 300 participants from very young to older. It was a nice relaxed atmosphere and the weather was perfect with cool temps and no humidity.

The format was different than what I was used to. Rather than divide people up by age and ability over the same course, you race all age categories at once over a course of your choosing from a beginner 6 km to a tougher 15 km loop. I didn't really know this so when they told me to select my course, I just ticked the box which said 'Serious ... 10 km'. I figured there would be a couple laps with other people in my age group. As it turns out there was a field over 70 strong of all categories just doing one lap. This made for a pretty short race but it was fun.

I ended up 2nd out of 7 in my age group and 11th out of 74 overall. My time was just over 30 minutes which gave me an average speed of just over 20 km/h which doesn't seem too bad for a mountain bike race. The terrain was non technical and started with a long double track climbing section probably close to a kilometre long. This helped spread out the field before the single track. Once in the single track I only passed a handful of people and rode most of the loop on my own. Near the end I passed a hardman on a single speed when he went over his bars trying to fend off my vicious onslaught. I actually felt kind of bad because he was totally ripping it considering he only had one gear on his machine. Such is racing.

It was pretty fun but I think that next time I might try a longer distance to get a better workout. Now that I know the system I won't be subject to the same confusion and find myself doing only a medium distance when there is more pain to be had for the same price.



Above is a picture of the finish line on the left and some of the people recently finished on the right. Nice long shadows as the sun is going down. On the left you can see the dark, damp, wheel sucking mulch that hardwood has a penchant for spreading on this section of the course. It feels like riding through peanut butter (not fast). I guess it would be soft if you fell in a sprint for the line. Anyway, overall it was a good experience and now that I own the plate, I may as well try to do some more. I will also try to get down to Mississauga for some Monday night crits if possible.

Over and out.