The Cross Canada Cycle Tour Society August 2016, Volume 33, Issue #8
President’s Report John Pringle
Camping Tours are Alive and Well. Yahoo!
Just returned last evening from Fort Steele in the Kootenay’s, the start and finish of the recently run Southern Rockies loop tours (back-to-back tours were run because of participant demand: The first led by Al McLean [~16 riders]; the second, by Bruce Daykin [25 riders], who developed and created the original tour proposal). If cycling the Rockies with day-after-day of mountain beauty is on your “bucket list” this would have been the tour for you. But you may not have signed up because it was a camping tour. It’s been estimated that only about 10% of our membership will participate in camping tours. And understandable that is. One is much more busy than on a typical “motel tour” where you ride, eat a self-packed lunch, attend a long “happy hour”, eat a restaurant meal and then snuggle into a clean bed in a heated motel room. By contrast, camping tour riders pitch and break camp each day; are part of a cook team that plans and cooks meals for up to 24 riders; join wash-up teams daily; and do a myriad of wee tasks that help to make the domestic side of the tour run smoothly. The busyness tends to cut into happy hour time. And maybe the most difficult time of each day is getting out of a cosy tent about 6:15 a.m. on a cool or damp morning, only to walk some distance to a washhouse that may or may not be squeaky clean to perform morning ablutions. But interestingly, those who enjoy camping tours enjoy them a lot. Why?
Campfires. Great food. Comradery. Bruce Daykin and Phil Lambert entertained musically most nights on the Rocky Mountain tour. The “home cooked” meals were both nutritious and delicious. There’s always plenty of time for personal interaction though not always over a drink, but around the works stations where sounds of laughter emanate from the cook teams through to the wash-up tubs. One lad remarked, “I love washing dishes here. It’s so much fun.” So three cheers to Bruce Daykin and Al McLean and the 43 or so participants of the two southern Rocky Mountains tours who are keeping this wonderful CCCTS tradition alive. Of interest; on the second Rocky Mountain tour there were seven members new to CCCTS touring, and they each chose a camping tour. How’d they fair? For the most part very well. One “newby” said “… it was fabulous.” And we did not have great weather. The old timers who began this Club would be most pleased.
Welcome New Members
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Mike |
Mcdonald |
Lasqueti |
BC |
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Mike |
MacKay |
Stittsville |
ON |
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Rick |
Borejsza |
Surrey |
BC |
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Lynn |
Robertson |
Surrey |
BC |
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Rob |
Leeson |
Vancouver |
BC |
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Debbie |
Kinnear |
Vernon |
BC |
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Ed |
Kinnear |
Vernon |
BC |
Salmon Arm Bike for Your Life Century Ride – Saturday, September 17, 9:00 a.m.
Consider registering for this fun and colourful community bike ride now in its 19th year!
Choose from one of four non-competitive Ride distances (100K, 75K, 35K or 10K) on our quiet and scenic paved back roads.
A $30 registration fee provides: a well-organized event, Shuswap BBQ Lunch, entertainment, draw prizes.
Proceeds to the Salmon Arm Second Harvest Food Bank and the Shuswap Trail Alliance. ($18,500 over the past four years.)
On-Line Registration and Ride details at: http://www.bikeforyourlife.com/
Canadians ride ‘the indelible race’ across America
Starting pistol bangs near San Diego, ends on shore of Annapolis, Md
By David Giddens, CBC Sports Posted: Jun 22, 2016 2:02 PM ET Last Updated: Jun 22, 2016 4:21 PM
Canadian Hannah Spence is taking part in the Race Across America competition, one of the most respected and longest running ultra-endurance events in the world. (Photo courtesy Joseph lattanzio
As an endurance test, The Race Across America (RAAM) stands alone.
For raw difficulty, it is off the scale. An order of magnitude longer and lonelier than most people could contemplate. Talk to fans and witnesses, if you can find them along the remote stretches of this continent-spanning bike race. They’ll shake their heads and tell you, RAAM is something else. This is ultra endurance cycling that comes with its own category of injuries.
Participants develop pulmonary infections, calf and quadricep blowouts, and medieval saddle sores. They hallucinate. One racer from the early days of RAAM got a new injury named after him: Shermer’s Neck. A total failure of the neck muscles. A rider’s head just flops around like it’s on a loose ball joint. There was no diagnosis before RAAM, because nobody ever tried to hold their heads upright for that long. There is a fix for Shermer’s neck now. Riders attach rods to their backs and use them to hoist their helmets upright. Then RAAM being RAAM, the racers just keep pedalling down the road, like very determined bobble heads.
RAAM, which began on Tuesday for solo riders and on Saturday for teams, is one of the most respected and longest running ultra-endurance events in the world. It is seen as a pinnacle of athletic achievement not only in cycling circles but the greater sporting community as well.
Competitors hop on their bike and ride as fast as they can through the night, through the morning, afternoon and evening. (Photo courtesy Mark Keating )
The starting pistol bangs near San Diego on the California coast, and the race ends when riders cross the line at the shore of Annapolis, Md. RAAM is non-stop. Try to let that sink in: a continuous race for 5,000 kilometres. That’s 1,500 longer than the Tour de France (and they do it in less than half the time), plus 50,000 metres of vertical climbing. Take a moment to digest that, too: 50 kilometres of vert. Solo winners do it in about eight days. Two person teams win it in five.
How to envision such an ordeal? It’s bad enough for the teams, but put yourself in the solo rider’s place. When you go to bed tonight, have someone shake you awake one hour after shut-eye. As soon as they do, hop on your bike and ride as fast as you can through the night, through the morning, afternoon and evening. Up hill and down, out into the country and darkness and wind and heat and rain. When bedtime rolls around again tomorrow, permit yourself one more hour of sleep. Then back in the saddle for 24. RAAM riders keep doing that for another seven continuous days and nights. It really is very difficult to imagine.
The Toronto team of Paul Millar, right, and Spence are in many ways, perfectly typical contestants. (Photo courtesy Mark Keating)
Giving it their all
Professionals and amateurs come from all over the world to test themselves at RAAM. Many of them keep coming back. CBC Sports spoke to Paul Millar and Hannah Spence, a Toronto team who are giving it their all at RAAM right now. They are in many ways, perfectly typical contestants. They both have full-time jobs. They both have strong social consciences (their entry T200 — Team Coast to Coast, is raising money for the Coast to Coast Against Cancer Foundation).
They are both incredibly tough cyclists. Paul has competed in RAAM four times, making him the only Canadian (and one of four men in the world) to have completed the race in all of the men’s standard bike categories (eight-man, four-man, two-man, and solo). For this two-person team attempt, he is riding with Spence, an elite duathlete, and endurance coach. She has been crew chief on previous RAAM rides, but this is her first time clipped into the pedals. (full disclosure: Hannah was also my ultra and marathon coach for two years ending in 2015)
Just before the team went to California, Spence and Millar talked about their state of preparation. Their Instagram account is ready: teamcoast2coast, and they want Canadians to know they can be tracked round the clock at (as of Wednesday afternoon… they were rolling through Maize, Kan.)
Spence: “I’ve been RAAM crew chief three times, I’ve ridden across Canada twice, across Italy, across South America, raced World Duathlon Championships, ridden my bicycle on four continents and across several mountain ranges. For me, riding the Race Across America is a nightmare come true disguised as a dream!”
Millar: “RAAM sticks with you because of the accomplishment and how deep you have dig to get through. Yes, it’s about being in great shape, but truly it’s a mental journey. I like to say, it’s nearly ‘all mind.’ The pre-race meal and the glycogen is gone in the first few hours, after which comes the grit, the soreness, the exhaustion, the heat, the cold and the riding fatigue.”
Spence: “I’ve been asked countless times in the last couple of weeks ‘are you ready?’ And my answer is pretty much always ‘well, no, not really.’ Because I don’t think you can ever feel ready to ride this race. You’ll never have the confidence that you’ve done a good enough job in training to tackle the absolute unknowns the race throws at you, or the deep fatigue you’ll feel from day three onwards. That fatigue never ever lets up. You just can’t train for that. So, you experience it. So, am I ready for the experience? Yes. I’m ready. “
Millar: “Out there, wrapped in the experience, is a sense of camaraderie amongst the riders and the crews that is uncommon to a lot of racing. No matter how competitive, each team cheers for the other. Vans empty to applaud a disabled rider making a climb or a solo rider bleakly turning the cranks. RAAM is a race against yourself and what you feel you can do. This is the common bond and you carry it with you and somehow never return to the pre-RAAM rider that you were. It’s that special.”
Spence: “I’ve been getting ready for 10 years to experience this race as a rider. I have no idea how my body and mind will respond to the gruelling demands of eight days of 12-ish hours of riding day and night without more than two-three hours of sleep at a time – riding in scorching heat, along the shittiest of roads, at a rainy 2 a.m. shift when I’ve just nodded off, into soul-breaking head winds, up the unrelenting Appalachians and all with the deepest of fatigue in your quads. But I’m ready to find out.”
Millar calls the RAAM “the indelible race,” and gets downright poetic about the experience. (Photo courtesy Paul Fitzpatrick)
The Race Across America has clearly gotten into Millar’s bones. He calls it ‘the indelible race,’ and gets downright poetic about the experience.
“You never stop thinking about the vastness of the desert, the climb out of Sedona, Monument Valley and the Navajo lands. Ascending out of Durango across the Continental Divide at Great Wolf Pass in Colorado and then the tenuous descents into Kansas … you’re talking about 90 kilometre speeds into the bone chilling darkness!
“And then you find yourself in the windswept roads of Kansas. If the winds are with you, you get on your time trial bike and ride an effortless 40 km/h or you face a headwind that makes each turn a punishing grind, hour after hour. Somewhere in the dark or near sunrise, you cross the Mississippi and you mistakenly feel that you are closing in on the finish, but yet the Route Book still looks half-turned and that’s because the oldest part of a settled United States is also the most circuitous.
“Gone are flat, open, wide prairie roads and welcome to narrow, boiling, humid countryside of Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Maryland… the hills in the east are some of the stiffest. No matter how hard you try to use momentum to crest the one in front, you have to find the smallest gear to get to the top, swoop down the other side and do it all again until you find yourself on the lead in to Annapolis. “
Hannah completed the two man RAAM last week and her and her partner placed first in front of all the two men teams.
Check this out. A Victorian cyclist is creating art using his GPS while cycling around the area.
New Hub & Spoke and Trip Report
- Italy Apennines Tour 2016
- Glaciers and Grasslands Double Hub & Spoke
- Southern Rockies Tour #2 2016 The Rainy Ride
- Okanagan Hub and Spoke
Upcoming Tours
Upcoming Hub and Spokes
NEWSBRIEF
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