Michel Pelletier sends news from Trans-Alps

Hello everyone,
Just finished day 3 of our 7 days TransAlp Tour/Race. My partner and I are doing quite good considering that I totally forgot how big and steep these hills are in Europe and I was still “highly undertrained” for the speed I wanted to go up these hills at in order to follow the leading teams.

THANK GOD, my partner Paul is a stronger climber than I am and he his being a HUGE help in getting my overly heavy body up these slopes following these “ skinny legged riders”... :-) Yes Nola, your hubby is doing a great job as my partner. Am I ever glad I brought him along!!

We are presently in 12th position ( out of 180 team) within our Master Division and we are 64th out of the 492 team which are left after 3 days of riding. We started at 575 teams but the somewhat hard conditions forced a few teams to go home early!

The weather has been fine so far, only a tad bit of rain yesterday and today was glorious!!

You can take a look at the website: http://www.tourtransalp.de/englisch/index.asp

Tomorrow is somewhat of a rest day, only 91.19kms! This will be our shortest day of the tour! http://www.tourtransalp.de/download/profile09/etappe4.pdf

As you can see from the picture on the link I have attached, it isn’t actually a flat course but hey, flat courses are for whimps right!!

Wish me luck people! I am having a blast out here!!


Cheers

BodyAge Fitness
Michel Pelletier
604-220-7003
http://www.bodyagefitness.ca
TRAIN SMARTER – NOT HARDER!

Chicks Cypress HC

New PB 36:54 (my time, I'll update with official time when posted...)

This is almost 3 minutes better than my previous best time (39:40). That was two years ago in the BCMCA Cypress HC.

A bit different though, today was mass start on the road bike, the BCMCA event was ITT, sepearate starts and I was on the Time Trial bike.

Probably not too much difference though. There is an advantage to doing it on the TT bike, but today I was mostly on a wheel, so getting most of the advantage of drafting. Five or Six of one, half dozen of the other, not sure which had the advantage.. Certainly not enough to account for 2:36 difference.

I was using the Bontrager XXX Carbon rims. These are extremely light, running to about 1.5kg with tubulars mounted (Vittoria EVO CS), skewers and cassette. About 700gms lighter than the Bontrager Aeolus 5.0 with clinchers.

Update: official time 36:59, 11th Cat 4/5 out of 48 starters. There where 25 Masters Men and that would have put me 12th in that field, possibly 2nd in the Masters C field.

Best rides of the day where Sebastion Salas 30:00, Steven Villalobos 30:24. Best Cat 4/5 was Fraser Charles 32:50 and David Stephens 34:00.

Easy ride today

Today was an easy (57TSS points) ride out on Ford Road.... over the overpass to the Golden Ears Bridge etc... A bit fun coming back against 30kmh storm winds... But didn't push to hard..

Thursday I did Westwood in 15:04... which I think is a PB by about 1 minute. Plus 4x1m L7 intervals on the way home (standing, uphill).

Wednesday I was out to the track. 20 minutes on the pursuit bars setup. L3, just getting used to riding the bars. Then 3 (4?) 3 lap L5/L6 intervals.

Tomorrow is Cypress HC... Hope to take a couple of minutes (or more) off last years 42 minutes... The goal is under 38... We'll see..

BCMCA Pentiction RR

Up to Pentiction for the day with Dave Kosick and Geoge McLaughlin for the BCMCA RR...

This is an interesting route, 11km out with a turn around and then back. A little loop to the finish, repeat three times...

About 85m of climbing on the way out over 6kim, about 1-2% grade. You can't quite tell you are climbing, except from the effort. And our group hammerred up it...

Then on the way back a shorter but slightly steeper climb over about 1km, kicking up to 6% for a short bit, but then mostly back down to 2-3%. But for this one you know you are climbing and the group slows down for it...

Overall I think the climbing on the way out was harder... Except for our second time up the shorter steeper climb, I was at the back of our group (50+) as we caught up to a bunch of people on the 60+ group.. We stretched out and by about half way up I realized that our lead riders (5) had a big gap (about 75m)... So I had to hustle and bridge the gap while finishing the climb.

We also had a very strong headwind on the reverse part of the circuit... about +20km... And then a brief thunder shower during the last lap..

The 50+ field was fairly strong. We started with 14 riders and finished with (I think) about 8... Almost all the riders in the group where strong and helping to pull us along. So we kept away from the 40+ group... Unfortunately that also meant a strong field at the end for the finish sprint... I mistakenly ended up at the front, jumped to early to react to some other guys and ended up with about 6 strong riders sprinting over me at the end...

We averaged over 39kmh for the first two laps, and about 37 for the last (dropped a little in the last few km as people pulled up getting ready for the finish, we knew at that point we wouldn't get caught.)

Team Helijet

Team Helijet arriving at Nanaimo Municpal Airport.

Here are three of the Team Helijet members getting their gear unpacked.

This is really the ONLY way to get to a bike race :-)

BCMCA TTT

Off to Nainomo today for the BCMCA TTT, 64km... Bill Yearwood put together a team with myself, Dave Mercer and John Sullivan. Average age, just a tad over 60. We finished in 1:42:12. This gave us an age adjusted score of about 30 minutes (we beat or age target by 30 mintues.)

Second place was Duane Martindales younger team (average age in the 50's)... The beat us on clock time with a finish of 1:42:00... But where 4 minutes slower on adjusted time..

Third place was those young guys, led by TT specialist Don Gilmore, 1:31, but only beating their age adjusted time by 21 minutes..

Reasonably difficult 34km course out and back, done twice. 300m elevation gain (twice.)

We still managed 40.3 average speed.

Westside Classic RR - hung in there

A very enjoyable race...

Westside Classic is a 10km circuit, with one 1.2km climb up Camosun at about 4%. There are a few other short bumps, but nothing else that is very hard. And once you do hit the top then its about 7km back to the bottom of the climb... About 3km mostly downhill on 16th, and then about 2km mostly flat along SW Marine.

I raced in the Cat 4/5 race. A fairly large field (80?) Pretty much every lap I moved to the front for the downhill and worked at the front until Camosun. Then hit the climb first and sagged back through the field. I was climbing it in about 2:40-2:50. The front of the peleton was climbing it at about 2:20.

In the downhill in lap 3 I got off the front. Managed to TT out and get almost a minute ahead. Stayed off for just under 2 laps when a couple of riders caught me at the top of the climb. We stayed away about another half lap...

For the last 3 laps I still did a lot of work at the front along SW Marine. Not too many volunteers to come up and push through the wind. But I didn't actually find it that hard.. Well under my TT pace and certainly (for me) a lot easier than the climb.

On the last time up Camosun I let the fast guys sprint ahead. I think they did the last climb in just under 2:00...

Anyway, I met my goals, stayed with the group until the last climb. And the solo breakaway was fun...

VVV TT - 14:03

On Thursday I got the TT bike out and setup with the Bontrager Aeolus 6.5 wheels... Went out and did a relatively easy run out Barnet, my 10k practice TT. Time was 15:34, which was only 34 seconds off my PB... And I was not pushing the pace at all.

Today out to Iona for the VVV 10k TT... Warm, low pressure front, about 10km/h wind from the East (against going out). Managed a 14:03 (PB is 13:48). So not too bad. Probably should have taken out the Zipp Disc.

Michel Pelletier came in at 13:59 in his slick new skinsuit...

Afterwards we did a pre-ride of the WestSide course. Start time is 7:40 tomorrow AM..