Rest day Number 2

Mountain biking in TN.

So hmm yes this is my first blog entry for real.  If you found this blog you probably know me some how or probably i posted it somewhere and you are visiting from there.  You'll have to bare with me as I may stumble through posts and such.  I figured this would be a good thing for me to do a blog over this year to sorta remember the things that come up in this year.  I thought I would start into this blogging thing on my rest week to give myself something to do and think about while trying to keep myself busy.

A little background in my little cycling career.  I started mountain biking in 1999, with my future husband on  Fridays during summer at the office we worked at for my coop semester.  We mountain biked for many years together and raced a few citizen mountain bike races together and separately.  Some of the races that we did was The Squeezer race, The Lake to Lake race and Harrisburg to Ancaster Race (half the Paris to Ancaster).  We mostly mountain biked in the Milton area, at Kelso and Hilton Falls Conservation.  Milton was great for being able to ride from home to get to great trails but we then moved to Dundas.  Dundas is great for the recreational mountain biker but we were getting heavy into the cross country type mountain biking.  So Dundas was great for stringing along a good 65k home to home ride but in the end we started traveling a lot to go to trails to ride.

After about 6 years of mountain biking, many crashes, some thoughts of changing over to road and a back injury that didn't seem to want to go away resulted in my husband and i switching over to riding the road. 

We found our pretty red matching road bikes at the spring bike show in Toronto many moons ago.

My husband and I have been riding the road now for about 6 years and putting in many many kilometers on the bikes.  Then a couple of years ago I decided that I wanted to start trying road racing.  We decided what better way to start in road racing then to start dipping our toes into the local club races.  We did their time trials, hill climb repeats and pursuit road races.  Then last year we started on a road cycling team to really race.

During last winter I started with a coach over seeing my program.  I saw many changes over that winter with my strength growing and many hours on the trainer.  That spring we invested in some power meters to help better connect my training with my coach.  I raced most races with power which helped build my goals and better help my coach understand what I was capable of. 



I started doing the regional races and ontario cup races.  I also did my first stage race last year (Green Mountain Stage Race in Vermont) and I was happy just to finish it.  I represented 2 different teams last year and this year I will be racing for the city club.

I guess now I can call myself a racer and not a cyclist. :-)


Now I am going to fast forward to this year to this winter.  This is my second winter season training with a coach.  Every thing is planned pretty structured and I love every minute of it.  Spending many hours on my trainer from short rides to long 3hr sessions.  As i entitled this my rest day 2 i am on my second last recovery week before the season starts.

I can't believe spring is almost here. 

I have one more 6 week block before the race season starts. 

Hope i am ready for the season.


Shell :-)