Mel's Blog
Aug 22, 2007
Looking back on the TransRockies and what we took away from the experience
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well deserved treats after a day of great riding in the mountains....do we really have to do this again tomorrow?!?!?
camping at Whiteswan.....now that is a room with a view
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So most of you now know that I just spent 8days crusing around the Rockies in an RV supporting Team Baja in the TransRockies Mtn Bike race. Throughout those 8days much laughter was had, good friendships were formed and some awesome Mountain Biking was had. So I will try to give you a visual picture of things.
Trever and Art, biking and hiking their Brains out for 2-6hours each day, Mel and Tracey, packing up camp, driving RV and Subaru, grocery shopping, sani dumping, fixing oil filter, avoiding wildlife and crazy logging trucks on dirt service roads, setting up camp, getting recovery shakes and sandwiches set for when Trever and Art finish riding. Mel thinking she has a strong enough stomach as she sets out to clean Arts chin which needs stitches - turns green and realizes that she is such a wimp when it comes to other people's blood and leaves Tracey to do any further First Aid(which there was some....). Watching the helicopter come in with the people they had to airlift out of the wilderness(very surreal). Meeting up with Lake, Art and Trever's friend from Oman who became my navigator(when he wasn't falling asleep!) when he unfortunately crashed out after stage 3.
So, after Stage 6 - 116km of backcountry riding at its finest, over a dinner of pasta and tomato sauce(yes...again!) we(Art, Trever, Tracey, Lake, Dan(Lakes partner) and myself) came up with the following training tips and lessons learned during this fabulous experience - Enjoy and hope to see you out there
Mel
Top 10 ways to train for the TransRockies -
- Weld your cycling cleats to your soccer boots
- Put the bike away and go get a 500lb home gym set and start them squats
- Go find 2 big rocks completely uneven and strap them to hiking boots and start climbing uphill - 4 weeks out strap wife or husband to back- by the way you can wear ankle supports for the first 2 weeks to avoid injury!
- To perfect river crossing purchase fins and practice crossing raging rivers forwards - no flotation devices allowed - temperature can not exceed freezing
- Place 2 long square buckets with ice water under trainer and pedal like #$^$#$#
- Practice throwing body down really steep embankments(helmets are advised)
- While on trainer have children practice baseball swings against shins - this can be enjoyable for all involved
- Never stretch - you might hurt yourself - you don’t want to waste energy
- Screw the odometer bring the pedometer
- Don’t bother setting your HR zones - if they are beeping you are alive, if they are not....well you figure it out
Top 10 things we learned at the Transrockies - we simply could not limit get this to 10 so in true Canadian fashion we went outside the limits, Enjoy!
- Queuing for the cold shower can be fun
- The finish is never where you think it is going to be
- Canadians don’t know what an altimeter is
- If they say it is "unrideable" they really really $#%$%^$#%#$ mean it
- If they say it is a "rideable" section they are $%$#%$^$% lying
- You will eat anything and everything - including some dirt, but Chunky Monkey Ben and Jerry’s really is the best!
- Advil can be handy, and don’t forget about the purple pills and orange ones and oh yeah the brown ones are pretty darn good too
- Shave prior to arrival to help medical treat any affected areas
- Definition of the rock garden....a good place to wreck your TransRockies experience
- White is not advisable - whether it is socks, towels and most importantly shorts -it is quite simply wrong!
- There is nothing like a little bitching to bring 700 of your closest friends together...was that really necessary ?!?!?
- Don’t forget you paid for this....wtf - eh?
- And because we are in Canada we will add another.... we will be back again -so...
Happy training....see above top 10 ways to train for next year.........Enjoy!
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-- F r i e n d s --
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