The article basically surmises that elite athletes in sports like running and cycling focus almost entirely on motivating themselves to do better and improve. Recreational athletes, on the other hand, try to almost distract themselves from the challenge in order to simply complete it. The more an athlete can tolerate pushing themselves and straddling the line between performance and all-out blowing up, the article suggests, the better they do.

Sounds simple, I know, but the article makes it sound like a science.  :)

Steve and I actually talk about this a fair bit when we discuss cycling or running. I was a lousy recreational runner for many years; I would run a 30-minute 5k or 6k every five days or so and tell myself I got some exercise. The problem, though, was that I really wasn’t pushing myself to get any better, nor was I really achieving what I set out to do (lose weight).

About this time last year I joined a gym, and got much more serious about getting in shape. I started running several times a week, and still do. I run the same distances, largely, that I ran before, but I’m always trying to run them hard and fast. By always pushing myself to work harder and exert myself further, I have found the results have slowly started to come. But it sure takes a lot of time and dedication, and falling off the path for even a couple of weeks means the results start to unravel a bit!

Flash forward to August, and a lot of that physical activity never happened. I tore a ligament in my right wrist during my first week of hockey, courtesy of an awkward collision along the boards. And I never really got out on either my mountain bike or road bike, largely due to busy weekends.

One thing I have done consistently, however, is run. I drag my sorry ass out of bed two or three times a week at 5:30 AM, and run 6.5 kilometres. I then do the same on weekends. I could definitely stand to do this one more time a week, and plan to do so as fall arrives. I’ve lost about nine pounds doing it, as I now weigh in at 164. My ultimate goal is to get to 160. (I suppose some context would help – I’m 5″8).

I’ve been tracking all this running via dailymile.com, a pretty kick-ass tool that measures how much you’ve been working out, connects and compares you to your friends, and allows you to develop a social network based on common workout interests. It’s really a lot of fun, and provides some interesting insights into your workout habits. For example, according to dailymile, I ran about 72 kilometres in July, and last week burned approximately 5.21 donuts.

One thing I can’t seem to do with dailymile, unfortunately, is track snowboarding sessions. I’m sure a day of riding on the mountain burns plenty of calories, but there’s no ski/snowboard category to file workouts under; only “other”. This is too bad, as I’ve always wondered – approximately how many burned calories is a session of freeriding worth?

On May 8, Ross is going to attempt to break the word record for a solo crossing of Ontario on a bicycle, while raising awareness and donations for a childhood cancer charity at the same time.

Here’s the full details from the press release:

TORONTO, April 21 /CNW/ – A world record may crumble as Ross Rader gears
up to ride from Ottawa to Windsor in less than 36 hours. Setting out at 10:00
AM on Friday, May 8, Rader will attempt to break the world record for a solo
crossing of Ontario on a bicycle. The current record of 35 hours, 43 minutes
was set in 1987 by Ron Dossenbach of Windsor, Ontario.

Rader is making the cross-Ontario attempt to raise awareness and
donations for childhood cancer charity Coast to Coast Against Cancer
Foundation. “More than 1700 kids are going to be told that they have cancer
this year,” says Rader. “I’ll ride to the ends of the earth if it will make a
difference for even one child.”

Departing from Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Rader and his support crew,
with Ultra Marathon Cycling Association (UMCA) sanctioned officials, will
travel almost 800 kilometers to City Hall in Windsor, Ontario. Along the way,
Rader will pass through Kingston, Toronto, Brantford, London and dozens of
small Ontario towns.

Rader will be supported by a crew of six who will follow him to ensure
his safety and provide him with nutritional, mechanical and mental support.
“The crew is going to set the pace, they are my fuel and the ones that ensure
I break this record,” Rader says. “Without their support, I’m just a guy on a
bike. With them, we’re a machine built for the sole purpose of smashing this
world record.”

For more information or to make a donation, please visit
http://www.crossontario.ca or email Ross Rader at ross@ultrarider.ca.

Best of luck, Ross! Steve and I will be joining Ross and hundreds (maybe thousands?) of others in August for the Tour For Kids ride in Ontario.

So now that winter’s done, what am I gonna do all summer?

I’ve signed myself up for a litany of physical activities in an effort to lose 10 pounds. I put on a good few when I tore my ACL, and I’ve never lost it. I can make excuses until the cows come home, but the fact of the matter is it’s due to not enough physical activity and probably too much bad food. I’m hoping a ridiculously active summer will help me lose weight. Eating better will help too.

Here’s what I got planned:

• Ice hockey Mondays, roller hockey Tuesdays, ultimate frisbee Sundays;
• The Sporting Life 10k down Toronto’s Yonge Street in May;
• The Ride for Heart down the Don Valley Parkway, a major Toronto expressway, in June;
• Tour for Kids, a 4000-600k cycling ride in August;
• Weekly cycling rides on my road bike;
• The occasional mountain bike ride down Toronto’s Don Valley Trail.

So I’m planning on a busy summer, and you’ll be hearing all about. Thing is, summertime also means Hoegaarden and patios. Hopefully I can work all that beer off! Hopefully Josh will be here too, and the two of us will also cover next year’s snowboarding season. Because it’s never too early, right?

I have made a resolution this winter to really notch up what I do on two wheels next year. Some of you may recall that I made a significant (well, for me, anyway) investment in a road bike toward the end of the season. I would say I actually got it out on significant (50k+) rides about half a dozen times before it got pretty cold outside.

This year I’ll have a full season to ride, and I’m looking forward to improving my skills and generally getting fit. I’d really like to lose 10 pounds or so, and a great way to do it would be spending the summer cycling long distances. I got a few 80k+ rides in last summer, and I thought I did pretty well. This summer I plan to ratchet the challenge up a notch by participating in the Tour for Kids.

Tour for Kids is a ride some of my friends have done for a couple of years now. It’s a two or four-day ride around Southern Ontario in support of several organizations which are dedicated to helping children with caner and their families. At this point it looks like I’ll be participating in the four-day ride, which means I’ll do at least 400k in four days. Because the rides are split into groups based on abilities, however, some folks could end up riding more than 800k in that same period (guys like Steve, I bet).

The schedule looks like this:

• Day 1: Ride from Richmond Hill to Peterborough
• Day 2: Ride around the Peterborough area
• Day 3: Ride from Peterborough to Haliburton
• Day 4: Ride from Peterborough to Richmond Hill

Anyway, you’ll probably hear a bit more about this and other cycling/mountain biking adventures in upcoming months. Stay tuned.

As 2009 gets underway, I thought I would take a moment to look back and highlight the most popular posts of 2008, just in case you missed them.

• ACL Recovery: One Year Out, and My Final Post on the Topic: I am amazed at the legs this article has. Some of you may remember I posted quite frequently about my ACL injury, surgery and subsequent recovery; this post provides a bit of a timeline for my recovery, a year after the surgery. I believe there are north of 50 comments on this article now, as new folks keep rolling in to post questions about what to expect during the recovery process, tips on knee braces, and more.
• Pemberton (Music) Festival: Some Tips and Hints to a Good Weekend: Having been to Pemberton many times, I posted a few thoughts on how to best enjoy the crazy music festival help up there this summer.
• Sure Your Board Is Good, But is it ‘Good Wood’ Good?: Josh takes a look at Transworld’s top snowboards for 2009.
• Ride-along with Steve: Reviewing the Fuji SL1: On the cycling side, Steve weighs in with an article on the Fuji SL1, a high-end (and apparently popular, given the traffic to this article) road bike.
• Snowboard Biding Buyer’s Guide: Josh puts together another killer article on buying the right snowboard bindings for you.

So what about 2009? We plan to introduce a couple of new advertisers, some promotions/contests, and are trying to increase the amount of content we produce to make sure there’s an interesting reason to read us daily. We hope you come along for the ride!

According to a litany of articles, the answer is a resounding yes.

• According to a recent article The Guardian, some women in their 20s never fully recover, even after successful surgery.
• A source in this ESPN.COM article surmises women are twice as susceptible than men to suffer an ACL injury. Kee1.com says women are actually eight times more likely to tear their ACL.

But why? There doesn’t seem to be any cohesive answer, though this New York Times article blames anatomy.

These statistics are shocking. I had no idea there was a problem, let alone this bad.

The ride essentially follows the lake out to Oakville, pauses at a really nice coffee house named The Greenbean Coffee House (note to Coffee House: get a website!), and then heads back into Toronto. The ride is generally flat and follows well-paved, wide open roads. It was a great complement to the other rides I’ve been doing that have been filled with rollers.

Steve put together a map of the ride here.

Looks like tomorrow I will be mountain biking in the Don Valley, an area we’ve mentioned several times before.

I was expecting to breeze through 100 kilometres on this ride but ended up hauling my ass home in a state that probably more dilapidated than my previous ride of a similar distance. The culprit? Rolling hills. Lots and lots of hills. Whereas on my previous ride I was only met with a few challenging hills, this ride had one at every turn: conquer a hill, ride down the back end at some crazy speed, back up another hill, repeat. It was brutal. But it was an amazing test of strength and will (and I quickly found I had little of the former and a bit of the latter!).

I noticed a few improvements, though: my quads didn’t hurt at all when I got home, which was great. I was able to handle most of the hills pretty well. And I’m getting the sense that most novice riders don’t tackle 85k rides with rolling hills, so I felt pretty good about it. 

At first, I wasn’t quite sure I would be able to handle it. Before the ride I headed to Mountain Equipment Co-Op, every Canadian’s favourite destination for outdoor gear, and bought a pair of cycling shorts and sunglasses with removable lenses. The shorts were about $50, the glasses about $25. Cycling lesson #1: I can save a hell of a lot of money by shopping at MEC.

The day of the big ride, I headed about 7k to Jane/Rutherford Rd. just north of Toronto to meet Steve, who biked up from downtown. We headed west, up Islington, and through the Kleinburg/Caledon/Brampton areas. There were hills, headwinds, detours and a flat, not to mention some pretty slow riding by yours truly — but at the end of it all I survived. My quads were burning, I was hungry as hell and I needed a nap, but cycling lesson #2 was: cycling is way easier (and more fun) with other people, IMO.

This weekend it’s supposed to rain, so I’m not sure I’ll get out. I regret not getting this bike earlier!