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Rise of the road warrior

Cycling never strays far from its roots
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Whistler's Ben Chaddock knows the feeling of rolling at high speed, be it pinning his mountain bike down a singletrack or the burst of acceleration in a road race.

He loves both. Here's the difference:

"In downhill (mountain biking) the adrenaline is like having a pot of coffee thrown in your face," says the 26-year-old Chaddock. "It's intense and carries a lot of risk but it's over quickly. In road cycling we get the same pot of coffee but it's fed to us as a slow drip over six hours. It's a sustained adrenaline and the risks all come at the end when we're trying to get our front wheel over the finish line."

Chaddock is one of the few who has crossed over from mountain biking to road racing; that's not to say he's hung up his mountain bike for good. He's just found a way to unleash his passion in a different two-wheeled sport. Now he's doing it for Team Exergy, based out of Boise, Idaho.

But when he's not training or competing, he takes every opportunity to get on his mountain bike.

Whistler is an epicentre of mountain sports after all -where the golden age of the bike park blossomed. Clocking over one million unique visitors last month it is surely a testament to the growth of the downhill discipline. But the new sport on the rise in the Sea to Sky corridor returns to the roots of cycling itself.

Harness the world's most efficient form of transportation, modify it to be light as feather and aerodynamic as a fighter jet, and you have the modern road bicycle. Skinny tires with rock hard air pressure, frames and components made of uber light alloys strewn with carbon fibre, skin tight clothing for slicing the rider through the air. No other human powered machine comes close to the efficacious road cycle.

Add the comeback story of Lance Armstrong, who beat testicular cancer and went on to a seven-year domination of the Tour de France, and the average North American begins to take notice.

Canadian cycling legend Steve Bauer is no stranger to the Tour, having led the race and donned the illustrious maillot jaune (yellow jersey) for 14 days over the course his career. He also brought home a silver medal for Canada in the road race event at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Bauer now manages Team Spidertech, the first Pro Continental road cycling team to grow out of 100 per cent Canadian sponsorship. Sixteen of the 19 riders on the team are Canadian, including 28-year-old Whistler rider Will Routley. Bauer has also spearheaded the "Bauer Power Line," a scouting program designed to identify, test, and recruit Canadian junior hockey players to the sport of road cycling. The success of such recruitment is what will eventually achieve Team Spidertech's goal of representing Canada at the Tour de France.

It seems more and more possible as the age of the road warrior rises up to North America.

 

Whistler's Road Warriors

In a valley with the world's premier bike park and scores of world-class cross-country trails one has to wonder why people are embracing road cycling?

Team Whistler President Tony Routley (Will's Dad) began riding mountain bikes over 15 years ago at the local Loonie races. Over the years he progressed through provincial and national series races for which he travelled all over Canada and the U.S. One of the feathers in his cap is two podium finishes in the fabled La Ruta de los Conquistadores in Costa Rica. Seven years ago he picked up a road bike with the intention to train more effectively for his XC racing. It wasn't long before he was working his way up the ranks of the road racing community.

"When I started training on the road there was almost no one else in Whistler riding road bikes," says Routley. "Now there are more people riding [road] than ever before. You have far more control of your training in terms of routines, VO2 max (peak oxygen uptake) workouts and your recovery time is much quicker. Mountain biking is incredibly hard on the body and it can be difficult maintain a regular training program without risking injuries. A mix of road and mountain biking is a great way to stay competitive in both sports."

And you certainly can't argue with his results. Routley, 55, has an impressive XC race resume including gold at the Masters World Games in 2005, 2 nd at UCI Worlds in 2006 and six wins in the Masters category of the Test of Metal.

He started Team Whistler as a race based team and now has 20 competitors and a total of 80 riders. On Tuesday nights he'll get a typical turnout of around 30 people, which he splits into ability levels. Once groups have a safe number of riders they'll head out for a couple of hours and practice sprints, hill repeats and riding safely in a peloton. Beginners are offered tips on training, technique and nutrition.

Despite the increased interest in the sport, Whistler hasn't seen a lot of new pavement since the road improvements leading up to the Olympics.

"Even though its a lot better than it used to be (before the Olympics), we're still quite limited on where we can ride," says Routley. "The Callaghan Valley and the Westside Road (Alta Lake Road) are great and don't have a lot of traffic, making them great for novice road riders. It gets more exciting when you start heading up to Pemberton or on the new stretch of the 99 (to) Squamish."

Chaddock knows the roads around Whistler better than most, using them as his training ground when not travelling with Team Exergy.

After competing as a downhill skier at the NORAM level in his youth, Chaddock got serious after he took the reins of the road cycling team while studying at Whitman College in Washington State. After leading Whitman to victory in collegiate nationals two years running, he had chance to ride for Rubicon-Orbea last year, one of the top five elite amateur teams in the U.S. After a couple of breakout results he was offered the chance to sign professionally with Team Exergy. He has had a satisfying 2011 season; finishing his first pro year with three Canadian Championship medals.

One of Chaddock's responsibilities on Team Exergy is to support veteran sprinter "Fast" Freddie Rodriguez. Chaddock is sprint specialist himself and working and training with Rodriguez has boosted the learning curve in his first year as a professional road cyclist. If Freddie wins a race, Chaddock will relish in the same victory and he receives an equal share of the prize money.

"During races I stay with Freddie in the peloton the entire time," explains Chaddock. "In the second half of the race after we've burned all the domestiques (the support cyclists) I'll start going back to the team car to get his water and drafting for him. Until the last 5km of the race when he starts charging and taking all the risks, my job is to help him in any way I can."

While the disciplines of mountain bike racing focus on individual competition, road cycling is as much a team sport as football or hockey. The victory in a road race credits a single rider on the podium but the prize money often gets divided evenly amongst the team. The domestique (literally French for servant) is the support man who courageously helps his team-mates at the expense of his own performance. In parts of the race he will be burdened with up to ten pounds of energy food and water bottles he's been handed from the team car. The domestique will push to the front of the peloton to hand out the precious provisions to his comrades. At the end of the service he will take equipment no longer needed by his teammates back to the team car. He will repeat this for most of the race and timing is always of the essence. If the domestique fails to reach his team-mates in time before a sprint or a climb, he will be forced to slug it out with the extra weight or miss the hand off completely, which may blow the team's chance at making the podium.

The excitement of a road race comes from the subtle movements of the peloton. The main pack of riders in the race cluster together, drafting behind one another to reduce wind resistance and pedal effort. If executed properly, riders in the peloton can save up to 40 per cent of their energy for hours at time. The wind too plays its part in the peloton's shape, stretching the riders out in a strong headwind and moving the riders into echelons in a crosswind. Will Routley, who switched to road riding after competing at the MTB World Championships at age 21, describes the tactical element of road racing.

" Race tactics and drafting are everything," Routley says. "A road cycling race is often like a chess match at high speed. Even in a six hour race I am constantly calculating and analyzing: who is in the break, what is the time gap, how far to the next climb, what is the wind direction, why is this team all positioning together at the front of the peloton? You have to be hyper aware. If you mentally relax, it will certainly cost you. But if you make the right decisions all day, and conserve your energy, you can win a race. This is why I like road racing so much, it is physically the most demanding thing I have ever done, but at the same time, your strategy and instincts are so important."

 

Everyday Cyclists

 

But road riding isn't all about tactics and competition. The term "GranFondo" has no direct translation from Italian, but can be accurately defined as "grand ride over a long distance." Known to the French as the cyclosportive , a GranFondo is the cycling equivalent of a city marathon. Non-competitive and open to everyone, GranFondos are friendly races, held to give amateur cyclists the thrill of a mass start and dedicated road service throughout the designated course. Thousands of cyclists ride together to challenge themselves physically and enjoy some of the world's most scenic vistas.

The inspiration to have such a grand race here in Canada came to Neil McKinnon in the summer of 2007. On a training vacation with friends in Italy, the trip included participating in the magnificent Nove Colli event.

"I was standing there at the start of the Nove Colli with 13,000 other riders of all shapes, sizes and athleticism," recalls McKinnon. "Everyone was in a festive mood, relaxed about it being a friendly ride but excited about what lay ahead of us. Feeling the nervous energy in the air as I stood in that throng, I asked myself: 'Why don't we have this in North America?'"

That was four years ago, before the Ride to Conquer Cancer events had gained their popularity. There were actually no real events around that time that didn't require a racing license to participate. Watching Lance Armstrong bring home another yellow jersey to Texas was as immersive as it got for amateur roadies in North America. Upon returning from Italy, McKinnon and his team began thinking of venues to hold the first Canadian GranFondo and were immediately drawn to the Sea to Sky Highway.

"We knew that in order to create a world class cycling experience we had to connect two internationally renowned cities on a route that was both spectacular and compelling," says McKinnon. "Riders had been dreaming for years of riding the scenic stretch of road from Vancouver to Whistler, but that was never really an obtainable goal. There was always construction, the surface wasn't really conducive for road riding and worst of all, it was scary."

So what happens when you offer every recreational road cyclist in Vancouver, Squamish and Whistler the chance to ride up the highway with their own closed lane? Last year's inaugural GranFondo had 4,000 people sign up in the first three months of registration, selling out six months prior to the event. This year it sold out with 7,000 riders in the same time frame. As GranFondo steadily grows to rival the European tours that inspired it, McKinnon and his team have been meticulous in monitoring the performance of the event.

"We want to allow 10,000 riders in 2012, but we'll only do that if we're sure we can maintain the experience of GranFondo," he says "After each race we do a complete debrief and look at where the pinch points were, whether we need extra staff at the aid stations and what we can do to improve the experience for next year."

The 2011 RBC GranFondo Whistler has a core team of 21 year round staff, over 850 volunteers, 85 support vehicles of which 37 are motorcycles.

 

Making Cycling Safer

 

It's an unfortunate reality that cycling on roads in Canada is considerably more dangerous than in Europe. A big part of this is due to the differing road designs, but also the cultural acceptance of road cycling in European nations. People there have been driving their cars past packs of cyclist for generations. Motorists slow down when overtaking, they smile and wave as they pass the cyclist with plenty of room.

But then it's always been a European sport.

Road cycling culture has its roots in the motherland of Western Europe. France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland have over a century of road cycling tradition. In Europe, road racers are considered national heroes much like star hockey players. The three Grand Tours of Spain Italy and France; ( Vuelta a EspaƱa, Giro d'Italia and Tour de France ) attract millions of roadside spectators, many camping for weeks ahead of the race to get front row standing room. The international viewership for the Tour de France is one of the highest in the world for sporting events, in the league with the football World Cup and the Olympic Games.

Back home in the Sea to Sky it's a different story where road bikers en masse are just starting to show up more and more on the highway.

Tony Routley says that around the Olympics there was an increased awareness of athletes on the road, but recently it has been regressing back to how it was.

"Some motorists are great and give us a room and some will speed past dangerously close," he says. "The biggest danger comes from commercial vehicles. Those drivers seem have the opinion that we have no right to be on the road."

Routley has had his share of altercations, usually after being passed dangerously by a transport truck, or in some cases, run completely off the road. Remaining calm in such situations can prove difficult.

"It's easy for a cyclists to lose their cool after being passed with just inches of space," he says.

"After all, it's a matter of life and death. "

 

Meghan Winters is the Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University, and is part of the Cycling in Cities research program. Her recent work has investigated what factors encourage or discourage use of bicycles for urban transportation and the types of infrastructure that increase or decrease the risk of injuries to cyclists.

"We've found from investigations in various cities in California and Europe that areas of higher cycling modal shares have lower injury and fatality risks. This suggests that if you get more people cycling in the community, it will be safer for each of those individual cyclists. This can happen for a few reasons. Cities with the higher modal share typically have more established cycling infrastructure, such as dedicated lanes and paths. Cyclists are also drivers, meaning when they are using the road in their vehicles they can better anticipate the behaviour of other cyclists. Finally, people are more likely to be looking for cyclists on the road if they see more of them around."

 

But infrastructure doesn't come cheap. Winters explains that by approaching the problem long-term it may be in Canada's best interest to make the investment sooner than later.

"From a benefits versus risk perspective, there have been consistent findings everywhere that the health benefits of riding your bike far outweigh the risks of injury. From the perspective of benefits versus cost, we've found that the investment into dedicated cycling infrastructure returns approximately four to five times its value with both individual and public health benefits."

 

What kind of health benefits? Cycling is associated with improved physical and mental health, reduced obesity and reduced risk of cardiovascular diseases. The ancillary benefits include reduced emissions and noise, which is always on the radar of urban communities.

 

But in the competitive realm, riders are always willing to take more risks. Ben Chaddock had several friends in the racing community that died on roads from something as simple as dropping a water bottle.

"In their panic they veered straight into fast moving traffic," said Chaddock.

"It's crucial to remain calm in a situation like that. Don't get flustered. If you drop something just slow down, pull over and then go back for it. No amount of training is worth dying for, getting home to be able to ride the next day should be every road rider's top priority."

 

Road cycling is indeed here to stay. The experts and the advocates have shown that with more of us out there, the safer it will be for everyone. Motorists need to start sharing the road and keeping an eye on the highway shoulder, especially during the spring to fall months. With such mass participation events as the GranFondo, the entire Sea to Sky corridor is reminded that once a year, the highway belongs to the road warriors. Every other day of the year, we will all have to share.

 

 



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