Anyone have a spare small bike I can borrow??

What started out as a great easy Friday ride and coffee did not end that way. All's good with me...but not this...

If anyone reads this that's in Tucson...let me know if you have a spare small bike for a week please that I could borrow!

Winter training continued

As my winter training continues, I'm starting to configure into good form. I've never been in such good shape, and I have never enjoyed riding my bike or training so much. I often sarcastically get "oh tough life" from people when I talk about moving south for the winter to train, but matter of fact, it really is. It may be "the life" right now, but it's hard work to train over thirty hours a week. After a couple rides this week, I've almost face planted in my glass of recovery milk, and almost drown in the shower.

I have been a little unlucky with three flats in the last two shootout rides, so hopefully with some armadillos this weekend I will be a little more lucky! I have been hitting up Lemmon multiple times a week..but I'm a bit of a whimp for the cold right now...so two times up the bottom portion beats riding into the snow at the top... I do miss the giant cookies, chili and hot chocolate at the top however!

This is my first winter putting everything I can towards cycling. It feels great being away from the ice and the cold, and I'm looking forwards to see my progression transfer into my racing. I still have many weeks to go until my first race, but it will allow me to achieve my desired fitness. I still have a ways to go, but without a doubt I am gaining strength everyday. I've been trying to work on the mental side of training as well here, the confidence and the motivation.

This is the first time I have consistently trained with a power meter as well. I had never been much of a number person when racing or training, because frankly it can be fairly distracting if it's not approached in the correct way. I use watts and heart rate for guidelines and to make sure I am adequately training the correct zones. I have been able to monitor progress which has been a huge help, as well as see where I need to most work.

As my winter is shaping up, and moving on very quickly, my race calendar is pretty much set now. I have a full busy calendar, with my team...formally now announcing the name is Specialized Mazda. I will be racing Specialized equipment, and road and time trial bikes, which I am really looking forwards to, as I believe they are the best bikes in the world. I have also never ridden/raced a time trial bike, so I am looking forwards to it!

I am not sure when I will be returning back to Winnipeg, as everything right now is playing by ear. No plane tickets booked for a while. I am off to a training camp in South Carolina mid-Feb, and then i will be returning back to Tucson.I will be attending some races on my own in California for the whole month of March now too and then I hopefully will have the opportunity to race in Europe in the spring as well once again. Up until road nationals at the end of June, I will be kept busy racing almost every weekend with racing in Quebec, eastern USA, and the NRC circuit. Once July comes around, I will be headed off to France and whereabouts in Europe with Specialized Mazda for Bretagne, Tour Du Limousinfeminine, as well as other local kramesses. I will be returning back to Winnipeg in August, and attending a couple more NRC races to finish off the road season.

As for the next couple weeks, I am really pushing the long endurance miles on my bike, and getting into starting threshold intervals. I will continue to enjoy the gorgeous weather here, the huge population of cyclists and of course, my favorite, coffee ride days. There's nothing like sitting in the sun at Le Buzz before a ride just to relax. I've met lots of people and some great riders so far, and will continue having fun and training hard here in Tucson! I might get in a hike or two as well in the next bit, the mountains are so intriguing here.

My take on training has slightly differed. I am more focused than ever on getting fast, and I'm looking ahead to all the places I can be taken if I'm stronger. Training like this is like a job, just one that I am strongly passionate about, not like working terrible retail like when at home, so everything must go into it. Training doesn't always just have to be quantified by watts or Kjoules, or heart rate zones, but also on feel and and instincts.

Always can shoot me emails at speedskate_17@hotmail.com, or like me on my athlete facebook pagehttp://www.facebook.com/KarleeGendron

Time to grab some coffee, buy some bananas and probably catch up on about 15 days of school work I have put off...whoops.

Karlee

Toques on in Tucson?

Well, the first week rolled on by pretty fast with some great riding, and now I’m already into the second week of training!

I finished up last week with a great ride with Gord Fraser and Chris, and attempted my first ever Shoot-out ride. I learnt a lot from riding with Gord Fraser, and got some valuable tips on training and racing that I’ll definitely take with me throughout my career.

For those of you who aren’t familiar, the Shootout ride is a “ride” (race) that happens every Saturday morning at 7:30am. Lucky enough, I’m staying the furthest possible point away from where the ride starts, so I get to wake up at 5:30 every Saturday from now on, and brave the +1 temperatures. The ride usually has a turn out of around 100+ cyclists, with many pro continental teams and men, which insures a fast pace. This last one, there were a couple BMC guys, realcyclist.com, the entire Exergy team, and so on. The ride is more like a race though. Most people take Friday’s as a recovery day here, so they can win the shootout ride climb!

About 30km into the ride, we crossed Valencia st., and one of the Garmin guys beside me started to count down from three, right on time for when the pace jacked up! The group slowly splintered as it was really fast! It ended up being a really good ride, long and tough as well.

Chris then left that day, and definitely took the warm weather with him, not impressed, along with the sun. It has been pretty chilly here, especially in the mornings! I feel I need a toque! I’ve had to start my days with arm warmers and knee warmers, and even long fingered gloves some mornings...this is not the way I’m going to win the Manitoba tan line competition, so the sun better show up again soon! I think Chris is winning...

On Monday I had a great ride out South and North of Tucson, including Saguaro park Monument, which is a fantastic hilly 8 mile loop through cactus fields!

Tuesday, started out as my favourite ride. I was headed up to gates pass. I was feeling really good, pushing a lot more watts up the climbs than I normally can. Gates pass was breath taking on the back side of the mountain.

From there I headed up to McCain loop, and then started to head back home. The back side of Gates pass is very steep, my 39X25 wasn’t the best choice for all this climbing, that’s for sure! The bad luck sort of started after the descent. I couldn’t find Broadway st., so I headed up to North Tucson. At this point I didn’t know where I had ended up, either than I was in the ghetto. Luckily Mt. Lemmon was a great directional source and I knew the general way I had to go. My ride was just over 3 hours at this point, and I was having a good day on the bike, so I wanted to ride longer. I managed to get in just over four hours, until BAM, I got t-boned by a SUV.

I was just about to cross an intersection on the bike lane, beside the curb. A purple SUV sped in front of me, with no signal light, thinking I was going to turn, and hit me right in the side of his vehicle. The car hit me at a pretty decent speed, and threw me right off my bike. I got the wind knocked out of me, so I sat on the street for a moment or two, while the car who hit me sped right off! What an A –hole! I’m pretty sure though he’ll regret speeding off when he sees the huge dent and scratch on the side of his car, serves him right! I ended up just with a very un-true wheel, trashed bar tape and a ton of road rash. I’m pretty sure I lost 3/4 of the skin on my palm.

I got my road rash cleaned up, and carried on with the 10km towards home. It was an eventful day, but in the end of it, still a great long day on the bicycle!

It's starting to get a tad bit boring here, but I can ride my bike 6 hours a day so I can't really complain. I'm loving the cooking too, I got a fantastic cookbook called Survival of the Fittest," for anyone wanting some good recipes, they're geared towards cyclists! I made some delicious sweet potato, mango pork curry the other day, mmm!

An easy day today now, but I should be back at it tomorrow!

Karlee

When life gives you lemmons, make lemmonaide

As 2012 rolled around, I was quickly off to Tucson, Arizona to begin my 2012 season and carry on with my winter training.

The trip down to Arizona was long, with a plane ride and two shuttles, but I eventually made it. I couldn't wait to hop on my bike and start some getting in some endurance miles. The past couple weeks had been slow trying to brave the indoor roller training by myself, which we all know that a 30 minute ride is nearing death from boredom.

Tuesday Morning, January 3rd, was my first ride here. All prepared, cycling pockets loaded up, I was ready to brave some Tucson heat and the mountains. First up; Madera Canyon. I was a little timid about having a 160km day up first, being my first ride and all, but I had tow truck Chris to draft. I was just hoping I would make it back home without having to tie the bungee cord I rode over to Chris so he could tow me home if I completely bonked. Luckily I never had to use it! The ride out was pretty flat, but the roads were pretty rough. I'm glad I brought my kevlar tires for inside the city limits! Once we got outside of Tucson, passed the Cactus fields, we made our way into what seemed like a pecan forest. All I saw for 50km was rows and rows of pecans trees, enough pecans to feed the world I'm sure. Once past, we started to ascend up to Madera Canyon. It was one of the most gorgeous climbs I have done. We figured it was about 8-10%, which did not keep my legs happy. Once I got to the top, I was almost cracked, but the breath taking view made up for all the hurt. The descent was fun, but once we arrive back on the flat roads, but body was not happy with me, that's for sure. I quickly felt like I had been beaten with a baseball bat, everywhere. Arms, legs, chest, and neck. My heart rate wouldn't drop below 170bpm no matter how slow I went. I tried to stretch, but the antagonist muscles would cramp up, so that didn't work out in my favor. I had never hurt so much before from riding my bike...but whatever makes me hurt, just makes me stronger. I JUST barely made it home. It was a very tough six hours on my bike, but once I ate and threw on my skins, it felt like a great day on the bicycle, except for my aching bum.

Yesterday, Wednesday, we toughed out Mt. lemmon. I was anxious to see what the climb was all about. I started off climbing really well, but I slowly faded with the strong winds after about and hour and a half of straight climbing. I learnt today that when life gives you Lemmon's you can't always make Lemmoaide when you are suffering, which is quite dissapointing (yes mom I'm intentionally spelling Lemons wrong so you don't have to email me with my spelling errors on that). My back is doing well too. I think all the yoga is really helping. I am trying to keep it up as much as I can on my own here as well. It gave me no problems yesterday, even with almost three hours and 8000ft of climbing. My legs on the other hand, they're a different story. I felt pretty destroyed once I got to the top of Mt. Lemmon, but we found a famous giant cookie to re-fuel. The descent was breathtaking and cold. I carried a lot of warm layers up to the top with me, as they have more snow up there than Winnipeg does. We ripped down the mountain, reaching up to 80km/hr. It was a tough seven hour ride, but I was starting to feel a lot better on my bike than the previous day. Homemade pizza, a movie and lots of sleep finished off the day.

Today we had a great recovery day. We started off our day trying to make some pancakes. The first mistake was adding a cup of extra water to the mix...which eventually just made for fourteen extra pancakes, which we of course finished. The second mistake was definitely the frying pans fault. They looked more like hockey pucks we were making, and the kitchen was a big cloud of smoke. I never have much luck with making pancakes for some reason.. After our long ritual Skype calls to teammates, we headed off for a ride at around noon. We road to Agua Catalina Park. I saw my first pond of water in Tucson thus far. It was a gorgeous park full of palm trees and cati! I only got a couple thorns stuck in my fingers today...just preparing myself for lactate tests. From there we headed off to Le Buzz cafe to sit in the sun, work on our tanlines (Chris is turning into a Mexican), enjoy some coffee and meet some other cyclists. We've met a lot of cyclist so far, a few from Canada, and a lot from the U.S. It's interesting to meet so many people all here for training. Maybe we'll hit up some Mexican pawn shop tonight to see how much they'd buy our bikes for, or to see if we can buy some Mexican shoes so we will fit in a little better.

The days here go by fast, eat, sleep, ride, eat, see Mexicans, and sleep. Riding 6-7 hour days doesn't make much time for anything else, but a recovery day here and there will allow me to catch up on school, writing my blog to keep all of you updated, and anything else there is to do. Keep checking back, I will try to write as often as I can! Tomorrow we have another long ride, and the shootout ride on Saturday morning!

Karlee

Here's a guest entry from...

So this is the first guest appearance on Karlee Gendrons blog. So i am gonna set the bar high. Your probably thinking "Oh who is this that's writing in Karlee's blog. I will give a hint, I'm tall, smart, good looking and fast on a bicycle. Well when Karlee arrived in Tucson she came baring gifts. By gifts i mean pictures of Tom Boonen and Emilia Fahlin the two best looking cyclists in the world. Anyway the first ride we did was out to Medera Canyon. About 75km south of were we are staying. 75km doesn't sound like much but it is also 75km back as well. For those of you who don't like math that is 150km. The profile for the day was up for 75 km (first 50 gradual, last 25 slowly getting steeper) the top was the steepest part about 10% for the last 3km. Probably the best 3km of climbing i've done. It was beautiful, brand new roads and no traffic and the legs were moving good. So no complaints. But for Karlee this was her first ride back after slacking over Christmas break. Even though she could draft me, she starting hurting on the ride back from the climb. I was holding a respectable pace and whenever i looked back it was like a zombie was following me. The good part was it was all downhill home (Maybe not looking like it though) so it was faster than getting there. But she blew up pretty hard with 20km to go and we slowed down through the town. I was impressed she made it though, I thought she would have died long before!

Yesterday Tom (Karlee) and I decided to climb up mount Lemmon. Actually we didn't, jay told us to and we did not have anything better to do (we didn't feel like hanging out with the mexicans in the pawn shop). For those of you who don't know what mount Lemmon is i will fill you in. It is a very long climb (40km). I climbed up it then turned around and did the last 5 miles with Karlee again for some extra training. At the end of the climb we climbed more to the ski run because of a lack of anything better to do and the shared a large cookie which gave us enough calories to get home. After a long day we made another great meal and then just lazed around letting our legs heal after a couple long days. Luckily Keebs didn't bonk yesterday and the ride home wasn't a struggle for us. We picked up 907kg, not grams, of pancake mix on the way home, which made us a nice breakfast this morning.

Today we started off by skyping our good friend Ari Robinson and we talked about the large mexican influence in Tucson, girls, food and cycling. We are very cultured young people. Then we went for a nice coffee shop ride and saw the first water in Tucson and some ducks with mad afros going on. Then we visited a coffee shop were we sat out in the sun working on our tan lines and talked to a surprising amount of Canadians and cyclists. Now we are getting ready to make dinner and watch some movies. We are also really scared for our ride with Gord Fraser tomorrow, he is one of the few men in the world who have beat Mario Chippolini in a sprint. Anyway hope you enjoyed Karlee's first guest appearance, i will do it again in Penticton.

-Phillipe Gilbert