Exploring my hometown

I came back home last Monday after being gone for a little over 5 months. Back to the land of French speaking and Maple Syrup! I have to admit, even though I was really excited to see my family and friends here in Quebec, I was a little worried I would quickly get bored with my training.

Actually, David and I even thought of staying in Colorado, camping out of our Sprinter (camper van) for a month. However, the idea quickly went away, because as much fun as it sounded to keep travelling and discovering new places, I thought it would be really awesome if I didn't suck all summer. I want to perform in the races I'll enter and being home would allow me to rest and recover much better between the training sessions. So, we came back home. 

Where I live, in St-Jerome (in the region of the Laurentians, about 30 min North of Montreal), is a great place. There is a 200+Km dirt bike path that passes right in my backyard and there are a couple of very fun trail networks pretty close to home (which you can get to, or connect, from the bike path). But somehow, I was still a little worried about where I would be doing all my intervals and whether or not I would get bored of riding the same thing all summer long.

The long dirt bike path 

Here's the thing: In the Laurentians, there are no long climbs. Don't get me wrong, there are A LOT of climbs; just no sustained climbs where you can do intervals on. And that bothered me...I was really starting to wonder how I would make it happen. How did I do it in the past? Also, with no big mountains close to home, and no long trail descents, how would I keep working on my downhill skills?

Well, it turns out that I was only seeing it the wrong way. This week has been amazing. Probably my best week of training in a while. To keep things exciting, David and I did what we never do at home, but always do when we visit a new place; we looked at the map. It sounds ridiculously obvious, but for some reason, I rarely take time to look at the map when I'm home.

3 hours on the road? Go there. 2 hours? That loop. 5 hours? Lets connect a few loops...etc. I know the places, so I never bothered checking the map.

But lately, I received a new Garmin Edge 1000 from the team, so I decided to take advantage of it and use it to its full potential. David and I sat down and spent quite a bit of time exploring the map and building some amazing rides that we put in the Garmin.  

So, after all these years, I think I've finally figured out what you need to truly enjoy and appreciate riding in the majestic region of the Laurentians, QC. 

• A map: Look for the smallest roads.
• A cyclocross bike: The roads are broken, but with 32mm tires and 45 psi, it is smooth as butter. Plus, it will allows you to explore dirt roads and some small trails. 
• A mountain bike: We have really cool trails. 
• A pair of CxFever socks: It always helps to add spice to your ride.

We did a couple of 5+ hours rides on the CX bike exploring the "backcountry" of our hometown. We found some amazing roads, a lot of them on dirt or gravel, swerving through thousands of different lakes and rivers. We had to cross some small creeks, shoulder the bikes a few times and connect from a road to another by using some shady trails, but it was awesome. Hundreds of kilometers of places I had never seen before, right there in my backyard! No long climbs, but countless fun steep little hills. 

One of the many rivers

Between those long rides, we hit our favorite trails and smashed some great training rides in there. I had forgotten how much fun the trails are here! No tremendously long downhills, but fast, twisty, rocky, full of roots and steep singletracks. Plus, they built some new trails, so we get to discover new stuff. And there is actually a new long and fast downhill!! 

In the end, I'm pretty damn excited to be home! I feel like I have so much to explore again. It was so refreshing to train here and discover new routes that it made me realize how lucky I am to be living here. All I want to do now is to invite my friends to bring them on some rides and show them what we have here. 

We might not have big mountains or huge mountain pass roads, but we have many forests with fun trails in them and an infinite amount a beautiful freshwater bodies surrounded by dirt roads that are just waiting to be discovered. And I'm excited to start discovering more of them. 

Cool ball of catepillar I saw on a ride.

That time I never came back from a ride because I lost 75000 calories..?

Riding in the trails last fall after the first snow

It's pretty here in the fall

Following the pimento!

Pancake Training Camp

Have you ever tried that Whole Foods pancake and waffle mix? It's been my main source of fuel for last week's training. 

Crack an egg, smash a banana (optional, but better), add 2/3 cup of milk, 1 cup of the pancake mix, mix it all up and cook it in the pan. Bam! That's it.  

Basically, it's a recipe for happiness. Add some fruits on the side and maybe drizzle a little bit of maple syrup or spread some peanut butter on it for an extra kick and your all set and ready to attack the day's training in full force. 

That's pretty much how all of our days started last week. We downed our 2 pancakes, found some routes we wanted to explore, got dressed and hopped on the bikes. In Prescott, we rented a cabin at the top of Spruce Mountain, which is a 4 miles steep and rugged dirt road that access some sweet trails and great views. There were maybe a total of 20 cabins along the way to the top of the mountain, but we never saw or heard anyone. The cabin was solar powered, had gas appliances, running water coming from a well, no cell phone service and a kick ass working wifi. In my books, that's what I call a perfect setup - it was ideal to train hard during the day and come back to the cabin to rest and relax. Travelling can be hard and tiring sometimes, but when you have the right set up for yourself, I find it highly motivating to get away for a few days and it makes it easy for me to crank out some big training and take good care of myself. Everyone has its own preference about that, but I know it works well for me. 

We spent 5 days training in Prescott and exploring the amazing trails that the National Forest has to offer. We got to ride on the new Whiskey Off-Road course (which is awesome), smash some good training on the road with Chloe and tackle a few of our old favorite trails. It was really fun to hang out with Chloe and TJ and get to know them a little bit more as well as discover their local playground. I wish I could've stayed longer to explore the countless paved and dirt roads and to have some more adventure rides on the amazing trails and climbs of the area... There are a few long rides I was looking at online that I absolutely want to adventure on. So I guess I'll have to come back! 

Orbea bikes soaking up the sun and the view at the top of Spruce Mountain after a big ride in Prescott

I love the desert and cactus, but I have to admit that trees are pretty amazing too.

I got the opportunity to follow US National champ Chloe Woodruff on some hard intervals on the road - it was awesome! She also showed me around some of her local trails. Thanks for the tour Chloe :) 

After a few days, we switched from big mountains and trees to gigantic red rocks and tacky red sand as we drove up to Sedona for the weekend. Sedona is another gem of trail network in Arizona; there is something for everyone out there. The only thing about Sedona is that the scenery is so incredibly beautiful that it can be quite hard not to look up and take in the beauty...However, I'd highly recommend looking at the trail, because it would be a bummer to fall off a cliff or to not fully enjoy what the singletracks have to offer. Again, that's another place where I will have to go back. I found that even if we were sometimes going over the same trail, I could always challenge myself to do it faster or find a new line to make it more challenging or just simply more fun. We got to do 2 long rides (Oak Creek sector and Dry Creek sector) and one shorter but oh-so-fun ride with Chloe, TJ, Catharine, Keith, Ryan and Dave. Just starting to explore the area of the slick and red rocks paradise got me hungry and excited for more. 

We finished our week with the Beti Bike Bash race at McDowell mountain in Phoenix. The race was at 8AM, so in order to save some time and belly pain, I opted for oatmeal instead of the pancakes. It was the second time I got to race there this winter and once again, it proved to be great. Extremely fast and flowy singletracks with punchy climbs and a few false-flat head wind sections to smash your legs...exactly what I needed to finish the week on a high note! The event was really well run and the energy around it was good and contagious. I took the win and got out of there feeling happy, strong and a little tired. But it definitely made me excited for some more racing, which luckily will happen fast enough as I'm heading to Fontana, Bonelli and Sea Otter in the coming weeks. 

I had no idea that this drop was coming in as I did not pre-ride the course and the 2nd lap was different than the first one! Nice surprise though :) Photo by Kenny Wehn  

Arizona has so much to offer for riding, as much on the road bike as on the mountain bike and I'm glad I got to explore it a little bit more. Two years ago, I rented an RV with friends and we visited Prescott, Sedona and Phoenix to train on our mountain bikes. We had a great time doing that trip, but this time around my abilities allowed me to enjoy the trails a lot more, yet I could still challenge myself as much as I had done back then - just on a different level. I would not have had the guts nor the ability to ride with Catharine or Chloe back then. This week, though I truly enjoyed the opportunity and I think we all benefited from challenging each other. It's fun to see the progress that was made in those two years, mentally, physically as well as technically. 

Next time, I'll probably add Flagstaff and Bisbee to the list of places to discover; I heard they are well worth a visit! Right now, though, I am back in Tucson and back to my traditional breakfasts. Pancakes are delicious, but if they become to regular, though they'll taste as good, they might become slightly less exciting. Now that I think about it, I see breakfast pretty much like I see my training environment; changing it up from time to time keeps things exciting and refreshing!  

It was great to diversify our training scenery last week, but now, I'm happy to be back home as I rest up and prepare for the upcoming 3 weeks of racing on the road in California - Should be a good time! 

Dave and I doing our best impression of Dumb and Dumber... We seemed quite content after the Beti Bike Bash race and a good week of training. (I swear we didn't know Kenny Wehn was taking our picture haha)