Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Blue Tuesday

Back in town. Last week was epic desert riding but yesterday was great in its own rite. Josh and I hit the road for 4 hours of base training and the significance of this ride was that it was my first ride on the new bike. I had some lingering concerns about bike fit but they vaporized after the first mile. All I can say is THIS BIKE IS AWESOME!!! It was smooth, responsive and quick!

Riding out of Barton Park, we rode to Chelsea and made a stop at Zou Zou's. Paul Almand was just walking out so I introduced him to the new ride. He brought me up to speed on Sunday's race which he said was fast, fast, fast.

Next, we rode out to Munith and made a stop at that raceway diner. Blueberry pancakes. Hey, we didn't screw around the whole time! There were intervals and efforts thrown in there!

After bfast, we rode through Waterloo to M52 then up to North "T", Werkner, back to M52, Chelsea, Dexter...you know the drill.

After 4 + hours on this bike I felt fantastic. In fact, I drove home got the bike back out and rode another 1.5 hours with James and still felt great. The fit is just perfect and ride is incredible. Carbon is quite the material.

Riding around, I kept thinking about my wife. I am married to a patient and kind woman. She puts up with this biking stuff even though she doesn't quite understand the whole thing. I called her from the road and told her we were going out for a date tonight! We left the kids with older sister and went to the Prickly Pear for dinner.

4 comments:

dmo said...

Hey Darrell,

Congratulations on winning the most improved rider award for 2006 from the AAVC! Evidently you're too modest to mention it in your own blog, so I figured somebody should bring it up. :)
You definitely earned it with your carefully planned training regime and lots of hard work, on top of a good bit of natural talent. It was also a lot of fun racing on the same team as you last year. Too bad you were out of town and couldn't be there to accept your award.
But your family was present, and I got the impression that they're real proud of you. Bravo!

David

P.S. Darko Ficko is somewhat of a legend
in the Ontario cycling scene, and Francois Parisien is a former PRO road
race champion of Canada. If you can even come close to keeping up with these guys, you're must be going strong.

Darrell Anderson said...

Thanks David. You are too kind. The award should really go to the folk that drove me to race and train harder. That includes you my friend! I remember you zipping by me at Willow last year encouraging me as you passed. It was like you were saying, "C'mon, you can do better, follow me!" That was the mentality from my club mates all year. And what can you say about those hammer festivals at Runway? Geez, I didn't think I could push myself that hard. I think that is the key to maximizing improvement. You need folks who can really help you overreach. We certainly have those folks in our club!!

Thanks again DMO!

Zachary Maino said...

D,
Im with David, congrats man. You truly deserve it. You are a wonderful athlete, a great coach, one of the coolest fathers ive seen, and just a quality guy! Good Luck!

Zack

Darrell Anderson said...

Thanks so much Zach. I'll get that check right out to you!!! ;-)