It's been quite a while since I've posted anything here - exactly a month actually, and though the usual trend on blogs seems to be to apologize for this kind of thing, I'm not going to. I've just been very busy, haven't seemed to have the time. If you feel really sore, tell me about it and I'll try and see what I can do.
So I've been pretty busy the last month. I've been training like crazy. After the OWL camp, I took a bit of rest, then went directly into a 10 day intensity block which was… hard. A bit of rest, then another high volume and high intensity week, which I completed up at mont saint anne, with the CNEPH folk. Also a hard week.
Here are the highlights of the month:
The second beaver chase:
So as I mentioned in an earlier blog post, every year Nakkertok does 3 or 4 beaver chases - a low key 3.75 mile semi off-road running race out in Kanata. So around the end of the first week of july, I did the second beaver chase of this year. The first one I had done had been fairly good, I had beaten my personal best from last year, but I didn't feel great, and Nansen Weber had set a new course record. So going into this race, I really wanted to have a good race, as well as beat that time, which was 20:57 I believe.
I started the race feeling pretty good, sticking in behind Mike, who always leads out races very fast. Around 2 km in, I felt the pace was fairly easy, so I broke. With the tour in full swing, I did a true road biker's break - I sprinted as fast as I could for as long as I could to get the biggest gap possible, then I tried to hold it. And thats exactly what happened. I got about 30 seconds on Mike and Aidan, and held it till the end, gaining a bit more time and finishing with a time of 20:31. This felt great, because I had bested my previous best by a good 45 seconds. I felt great during the race, it was a lot of fun.
The grand prix bike race:
5 or so days after the beaver chase, Aidan and I went in the Grand Prix bike race. It's an 86 km bike race around the gatineau park, and I was pumped. I had never done a bike race before, and didn't really know what to expect. Turned out to be the most fun I'd had in a race in a long time. Right off the bat I got dropped by a lead breakaway group, and had to bridge the gap. After that, I played around at the front of the pack - maybe not the smartest move but definitely the funnest. The tactics and little sprints made it so much fun. Very rarely was I every out of breath in this race - what was slowing me down was the lactic acid in my legs. Near the end, I would tell them to push down and they simply wouldn't respond. A group ended up getting away on the last lap, and Aidan and I finished within feet of each other in a very tired sprint to the finish (but he won). All in all, completely awesome race.
Aidan and I in the final uphill in the Grand Prix. Aidan is hidden by another biker, but he's 3rd wheel in this picture. Nice hurt face, eh?
Training with CNEPH:
Louis invited Andrew and I up to CNEPH to train with them for a week, and see how they train and such. We had each been offered a position on CNEPH, but decided to train with Nakkertok instead, so this was offered to us to at least give us a taste of what its like on a training centre. All in all, its very similar to what we do here. They train "officially" together as a group a bit more, but the training was practically the same, doing my training with them worked out famously. The guys up on the centre are fast, and its going be a blast competing with them this winter.
Andrew and I on our way up to MSA. With our glasses and compression socks, are we cool or what?
Training with them did make me appreciate how lucky we are in the gatineau area for rollerskiing - whereas I can go out any time I like and rollerski on any of the probably 60 + km of pathways, plus the 30 km of parkways we have, they have to either ski on the main roads, or drive 40 some minutes to a relatively short pathway. Not that it was that bad, but it is very easy to rollerski here.
A pretty fun downhill up in St-Ferrol Des Neiges. The B team guys say they don't go down it, but when I was skiing solo down the road nobody told me there was a sketchy corner at the bottom of it, so I just bombed it. The second and third times down weren't as bad, I knew what to expect, so I filmed this. Notice near then bottom theres a car in the other lane - you gotta make sure you don't go into the other lane, that could hurt.
Fitness tests with CNEPH:
Obviously this fits in with the week with CNEPH, but it stands out a little. CNEPH do fitness tests on rollerskis, more or less standardized, using the same skis to skate ski and double pole up an uphill and see how they're times compare over time. It was interesting because stars like Alex, Fred and the other senior members of CNEPH have done these tests for a number of years now, so you can compare your times to theirs. The skate test went pretty well, I clocked in 5 seconds behind Étienne Richard, and 10 seconds behind where Julien Nury and David Greer were last year.
The double pole test was a little unreal. I felt really good in it, I was able to push as hard as I could the whole time without feeling aerobically tired, and it was my surprise when I got to the top that I had set a new course record for CNEPH, beating the previous record set by Phil Widmer (3:49) by a good 6 seconds. Now the senior guys on CNEPH are the guys I strive to be like - Alex is a huge idol to me. Just to be near them would have be great, but to actually surpass them in something, even if its something like double poling uphill (I'll do great next time there's a race that involves double poling up steep slopes) - it felt really good, if not a little unreal.
So that brings me to the end of last weekend. Immediately after getting back from that, I set out on a sea kayaking trip with my wonderful mother, and also had a blast.
This last month has been really busy, but it has been a ton of fun. It was definitely one of the better summer months I can remember. Until next time!
