Biking Bros

We are Dwayner(Svein) and The Young Man(Christian) and this is our word

Watched a very interesting movie the other day called “Bigger, Faster, Stronger”. It’s a documentary about America’s obsession with performance enhancing drugs, mostly steroids. The movie was pretty interesting and featured some real characters and their crazy frame of minds. It’s mostly about big gym rats and their steroid use but features a short interview with Floyd and his crazy home made altitude chamber/pipe, contraption. Recommend a viewing.

Looks like the Vancouver area might now have one of the highest concentrations of pros living in the area of anywhere in Canada and maybe even the US. With the Symytex boys now having all found teams we have riders from Garmin/Chipolte, Healthnet(or whatever their new name will be), Kelly Benefits and Jelly belly. So that makes riders from 5 different pro teams all in this area, our own little mecca, thats pretty cool.  

Arrived home from and amazing 5 days in sunny Waikiki to the good old BC rain and cold, a bit of a shocker, 25 and sun to 7 and rain. Should have stayed there. Amber and I had a great time though, relaxing on the beach, snorkeling in Hanauhma Bay, hiking up Koko Head mountain and getting out on scooters for a little touring. My legs were abosutely shattered after the hike at it went straight up the mountain on an old railway, at least 2000 steps straight up, and being a cyclist doing anything other than turning our legs in circles really make them hurt, especially 4000 squats. I’ll post a few pictures soon.

Have been back home here in BC for about a week now just relaxing and catching up with the boys from our former club, Symtrex. We spent a couple day hanging out, hiking and BBQing at the Bodega Ridge Resort on Galiano Island and we all had a blast (thanks to Jeese Keefer for having us over to his amazing place). Was nice catching up with the boys, not having seen most of them for some months now there was some good stories, and hearing about where all the boys are going next year. Happy to say that almost all the guys have reached deals to ride on solid American teams and the rest are close to singing, not sure if I can divulge any details as to who went where but I’m sure that will all be anounced soon enough. Tomorrow Amber and I are heading to Oahu for 5 days in the sunshine before slowly starting back into the training, weights, core work and easy riding. 

So here I thought the only real rule in cycling was no drugs but as I found out on the eve of one of my anticipated races of the late season, that is not so. Apparently there are also rules about which races stagiares can and cannot ride, basically you can ride anything but Lombardy. Even though I was able to race such prestigious event such as Paris-Tours and Giro Piedmont I guess Lombardy considers itself to be head and shoulders above the rest of the racing world and thus has to much stature to even consider letting a lowly stagiare race on its gold paved roads. Ok, maybe that’s just the frustration talking there a bit and there probably is a really good reason I wasn’t allowed to start, just seems a bit crazy that we stagiares are not allowed to race when all that results in is teams not coming with full rosters, having unmotivated riders being forced to be there with half the peloton calling it quits by the second feed zone. Anyhow Giro Piedmont on Thursday was an amazing race, the most scenic I may have ever done, rolling along the twisty roads of the hilly country side. We had a pretty good day there with Steve getting up there for the sprint, 12th for a guy who’s not really a sprinter is pretty solid. Now it’s pack my bags and get on a flight back to BC and my Amber for some off season relaxing.

The guys have been doing pretty good lately and its getting them noticed. Christian sat down with Daniel Friebe the features editor from Pro Cycling Magazine and that interview will be in the next issue with a sidebar on stagiares. Svein’s been doing pretty good recently too, Cyclingnews.com’s european editor Gregor Brown sat down with Dwayner in Italy and that feature is currently running on cyclingnews.com.

You can download and read the the Pro Cycling articles, we’ve got them here in PDF: Dan Martin’s interview (PDF 509 KB), the Stagiares feature (PDF 490 KB).

As some might know Dave Zabriskie has his own line of chamois cream called DZ Nuts, well after yesterdays Paris-Tours I can truly say DZ is nuts, haha. If you saw pictures of the race you will have noticed Dave wearing his speed suit(super high tech skin suit), super aero Zipp 1080 wheels and if you look extra close you can see that he dropped his stem almost 2 inches. It all started some what jokingly that Dave was going to attack off the gun and go for the long haul in the break, though he didn’t initially make the move it was only a matter of time before he snuck off the front of the pack and make the junction to the break.  When I say he snuck off the front I am really being quite literal, it was probably one of the slowest attacks in history and in his words “I have been trying to teach guys how to attack for years now”. Read the rest of this entry »

Looks like the folks at Felt are taking care of business, some images of what my bike should look like next year, Svein’s TT bike should have a similar paint scheme..

It’s official, Garmin/Chipolte is now Pro Tour after having their status granted for the next 4 years. With that said the first race of the year will be Tour Down Under, which I have already been told by director Matt White I may be doing. Not even done the season yet and we’re already talking racing for next year, hahaha.

It’s raining here in Girona today and I am playing the waiting game in homes of a clearing that will get me get out there and stay dry for at least a little while. This time of year is always hard for the motivation, we’ve been racing since January and are counting down the days until the last race, Giro Lomardy on the 18th. At this time of the year the training gets a bit more easy going and trying to stay somewhat fresh tops the list of goals, so mostly just steady ride, no huge volume, maybe a few efforts here and there to keep the legs open, with only 11 days left and 3 races in that time I basically just need to keep the legs spinning. Also at this time of the year when it gets a bit cooler and the body is constantly trying to recover I seem to hungry all the time, basically telling me it’s had enough of being on the limit of starving for the past 9 months or maybe it’s just the boredom speaking as Amber has returned home leaving me little to do but sit around the apartment. Anyhow, maybe I’ll have some lunch now.