Mountains beyond Mountains

Mountains beyond Mountains, not only is this the title of a popular Arcade Fire song, it is also the way it feels as you are driving through western Canada. It really does seem as though there is an endless supply of these towering piles of rock. This is how I felt as we were driving through Alberta and British Colombia on our way to Kaslo for a short high volume camp. This was of course my first camp with the Alberta world cup academy and I was anxious albeit a bit nervous to get it underway. The camp, as I said, was a short one (two full days and three nights). The idea was; drive down to Kaslo (about a 6hour drive), do two full days of high volume training including a 200km bike ride and drive back to Canmore. The main event of the camp was of course the long bike ride. Mike Cavalier (the director of the World cup academy) had been training hard for this bike ride so that he could not only keep up with the athletes but push them throughout the ride. The loop we were doing started out with a 47km ride through the kootenay’s from Kaslo to New Denver. The first 25km of this were uphill. On this stretch people got spread out into groups. I ended up in the second of four main groups. We worked well exchanging the lead on the hilly ride from New Denver to Nelson (a 100km stretch). In the last 30km before nelson the long ride started to take its toll. A couple of big hills and a constant head wind made for little rest. On top of that since the groups were more spread out than expected we went three hours without having any support from our team vans that were following us during the ride. I ran out of water and began to feel tired. When we finally did meet up with a support vehicle about 20km after Nelson I had had enough and called it a day. I had done 170km and for those who are interested averaged 31km an hour on a hilly route. Although I didn’t complete the entire 215km ride I was happy with what I had done. Besides I need room to improve next year.

View from the ferry across Upper arrow lake on our way to Kaslo

Pate decided to test out his new toy on the drive to Kaslo. The Nish giving his approval.

The other highlight of the camp was a game of baseball. Although this was not part of the training it was taken quite seriously by most of the team. I had never played or watched baseball in my life so after being briefed several times on the rules I did my best to not let my team down. Although I did make a costly mistake (running between bases when the ball was still in the air and ended up being caught) I did achieve my goal of hitting the ball ( I was so excited when I did this that I forgot to drop the bat and ended up running with it to first base). All in all Kaslo was a successful camp. I biked farther than I ever had, saw more mountains, enjoyed beautiful weather (it was 30degrees and sunny) and hit my first baseball. Right now I am back in Canmore, where it is far from 30 degrees out, enjoying a much needed rest day before the hard training begins again.

Other things I have been up to since my last update… well the team did a 10km road race in Calgary. For me it went well. I ran it in 37:18 which is far from my best (35:11) but for this early in the year and at altitude it was a good test. I also went to Banff to watch a crit race. This I thought was pretty cool as I am a big cycling fan and like nothing better than watching 40 riders battle it out on a narrow course in slippery conditions (yes there were several falls). Well, that’s all for now. There is supposed to be a video of the Kaslo camp made soon. As soon as it is I will post it here.

Banff Bike fest Crit race. Photo credit: Lucas Jungmann (jungmann-photography.com/)