Rolf Devinci

A few pics from my week of vacation.

Last day of vacation so I figured an easy spin out to Tantallon and back would be prime on a quiet Sunday morning. Once through Lakeside the road opens up and is a nice stretch of sweeping pavement through Lewis Lake to Tantallon. With no real concern for average speed I spun out a small gear for the most part in an attempt to improve my spin. Threw in some harder intevals just for the fun of it but it was, in essence, a recovery ride pace.

Under fickle skies I participated in the 2010 Provincial Road Race Championship hosted today by Al Huebeck and the Lunenburg Bike Barn. The weather was unpredictable with everything from sunshine to fog combined with stiff breezes. The route is a classic but parts of it were quite chewed up with lots of chop and some huge potholes. That certainly adds a fear factor to the festivities. Cat C once again had the largest peleton of riders numbering in the low thirties which is a nice turnout. Most all clubs were represented with Valley Cycle and Stove fielding a large contingent with some racers sporting their new kit. Racing stalwarts Cyclesmith also had their usual strong riders in the fold. BPCC had four racers with the balance of the pack made up of PCC, Hub,Sealevel,LBB and independant participants. It's good to see lots of diversity at the races this year. The first 10KM along the Lahave was into a cross wind, Grimm's road was a tailwind and the home stretch back to th...

Good Lord! Hard to believe the Provincial road race championship is this coming weekend! Held along the scenic Lahave river the Riverport event is one of my favorites but I'm far from(feeling)race ready. Have not been doing a whole lot of cycling lately. Most of my riding has been commuting to and from work with a longer ride in Saturdays. It will be interesting to see how I feel doing 80(ish)race kilometers on Sunday. Managed to compete in two of three races this season and have had best performances in both so, maybe, Riverport will be no different. In a masochistic sense I'm looking forward to the one big climb on the course to see how well I manage the three climbs this year. In previous races I always get dropped on Grimm's hill.Always! Lets hope the daily commute home via the Fairview/Clayton Park hills are,in fact, disguised hill intervals and the shorter efforts of commuting will see me through races. Time will tell.

Managed to get in a good training day yesterday on the best Saturday of the young summer. As a result this morning I did a nice easy recovery ride down towards the coast. Quiet Sunday traffic meant it was a pleasant morning on the bike to spin out the legs. Home to the back deck with a carafe of coffee enjoying the singing birds while admiring my green thumb handiwork from Saturday afternoon. Managed to plant some veggies in my modest garden plot and pot some flowers for the decks. Yeah...I know. A nice morning but not very paleo. At least I drink my coffee black and I figure I deserve the honey after four consecutive days on the bike. To be honest I'm one of those who thinks honey is paleo. In fact I think our primal ancestors would have gone to great lengths to acquire honeycomb whenever possible. I figure they would have discovered eventually that smoke confuses honey bees which they would have used to facilitate any raid on the hive. I think the afternoon will bring a relaxi...

Got out to Lawrencetown to watch the duathlon held under foogy and damp skies. At least the rain held off till after the race was over. Sure made me want to get back running again. The orthotics are feeling better each day so I might just try a short run this week with the goal of building up my distance and ability for the Riverport Duathlon in the Fall. In the meantime I posted some pics of the action. See the Picasa link on the right hand sidebar. Enjoy!

After another couple incidences on the club ride last Saturday I've decided to cease(group)cycling on parts of the Waverley road as part of the official club ride. A combination of several groups on the route, increased competitiveness between those groups and heavy traffic has made me skittish. Our success as a club is also our weakness in that membership is growing as is the overall fitness levels of our riders. Whereas that is a good thing it comes with a price. That cost is the increased blurring of the group's abilities;no longer do we have fast, intermediate and slow groups but several groups that can ride at a high(er)level. From my perspective this increases the competitiveness of the club ride, means riders are jumping from group to group enroute, the "chasedown" seems to be the new game in town and packs are merging on the busy roads creating logjams with traffic. As a result I've decided to step back and stop riding with any group on the particularily...