Rock Mountain Bicycles Demo Day!
Poutine, Subzero Temperatures, and Intervals… Home From the French Land Called Quebec
In the spirit of a good adventure, I decided to mix things up from my normal Spring Training, and head to an area of Canada where you are not meant to ride your bike outside during the springtime. Very excited to load up my Rocky Mountain Solo road bike into my new Evoc travelling bike bag, I jumped on a flight to Quebec City with a good amount of Spandex, and Honey Stinger gels to keep me going. I arrived to a balmy – 2 degrees with overcast skies, and hit up the local bike shop to ask where was a good 4-hour ride I could do. In broken English I received the answer, that most roads still had snow on them… Great! I headed out ready to battle the elements and ride out of Quebec City to Mont-Sainte-Anne, where I was sure it would be warmer. Alas, 50 km into my ride the heavens opened up, and it began puking snow. With 70 km still to go, you better believe it was not my most memorable experience on a bike. Have you ever seen a grown man cry? I made it back to where I was staying hypothermic, but in once piece to a lovely picture from my good buddy of the sun in Squamish, with the caption “How’s the North Pole?” Hmmm… Back to the training drawing board.
I found an indoor computrainer cycling facility called Velo Concept Performance, and proceeded to make it my home for the next week. I met some super hardcore Quebecois road racers, and did the majority of my training with them. These guys meant business, and it was go time all the time while we were on the computrainers. I would have rather been riding my mountain bike on Squamish trails, but I couldn’t deny that I was getting in some hard specific training. Eventually the weather took a turn for the better in Quebec standards, and my new indoor training buddies planned a ride outside the day before I was leaving. We did a beautiful 150 km hilly ride throughout Quebec City, and the surrounding countryside. Although the theme of the day seemed to be “... lets see if we can crack the BC mountain biker” I really enjoyed the beautiful scenery, sharp punchy hills, and the good riding company. All in all my solo Quebec training camp was a success!
Sitting here in the Toronto Airport, waiting for my connecting flight back
to Vancouver, I am thinking about the trails back home, and how excited I am for
another season of racing and all the adventures that come along with it!
Greg over and out.
Hit the Road: April 12-30
Start Your Season Tent Sale: April 12-14
Blog Post Numero Uno
Welcome to the Corsa Cycles Blog! The team are now ‘bloggers’ and they promise to keep this page fresh and updated with tales tall or small. A stale blog is almost as bad as a messy front yard- unattractive to the passerby's and slightly embarrassing to the owners.
This piece will be the Maiden Voyage and I’ve been practicing my letters and words, but not much grammar as I slept that portion of Mr. Demers class. So I’ve been putting the letters together to make words into sentences and hoping that it will eventually end up somewhere. I was debating writing a piece about Spring riding. But it would lead to discussing the rain but it would probably come off sounding crotchety and would leave you wondering, “why the hell do you live here?” And anyways...it’s sunny out today.
So since this is the Corsa Cycles blog I thought maybe it was suiting to write how I ended up running the show (ya right - we all know Sandra is the boss.) It all started when a 13 year old kid wanted some sick BOMBER forks for their Rocky Mountain Fusion. I saw a pair hanging on the wall in Corsa and instantly wanted them! Thank god Dave was there to talk me into some Rockshox... and I was able to talk him into a job. It’s still claimed he thought I was 16 and a boy. But one day a week I started sweeping floors, cleaning his car, cleaning the bathroom, taking out the garbage and generally doing the things that Dave does now. I don’t think I said much at all for the first few years, I was 13 after all and had somehow found myself getting life lessons from Mike Carney.
There were some pretty good days at the old shop with past and present staff. I still have a video clip of Pat hurling himself off the loft into a stack of cardboard yelling ‘hardcore parkour.’ It was based off this video and I can only assume Dave and Sandra were down south at the time.
I remember Mich going up to the loft to nap off his last night adventures, or losing his bet against Dave and having to streak at our Christmas party from the Super8 back to the shop. I’ll never forget ‘white lightening’ bounding across the school field and into the Nesters parking lot... no matter how hard I try.
So 10 years later, regardless of what brand of bike I’m riding or my yearly schedule I’m pretty damn lucky to have been able to keep sneaking my way back into the shop. It’s proof that your local bike shop is more than just a store. (BOOM! you just got cliched!)
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