Recovery on the Road

The life of a racing cyclist is a traveling one which has me living out of a suitcase for most of the year.  My husband and I do a lot of camping and choose to live simply.  This simplicity shows up in how I pack for months on the road with my professional cycling team TWENTY16 RIDEBIKER.  I pack my liquids and extra clothing around my bike as my only checked baggage. Then I take a backpack with one spare set of clothes and a shoulder bag of my essential cycling kit, pedals, shoes and helmet.  I don't pack much, but what I do pack is important!!

A big part of being a full-time athlete is resting well to recovery the body as fast as possible for the next big effort in training or racing.  Here are a few of the essentials that I take with me wherever I drive or fly to for racing.

I always wear compression socks or leggings when I fly or drive.  Sitting for long periods of time restrict the blood flood to your legs and feet.  Compression on the lower extremities protects against swelling.  I wear a long pair of compression socks from Sock Guy or a pair of full leg tights from ec3d.  After training, when there is no soigneur or chance to get a massage, wearing a pair of compression leggings improves recovery by minimizing inflammation. 

SockGuy creates all the fantastic fun socks that I wear on the daily, to ride and to live in.  This tall thin pair I wear comfortably under my pants when traveling by plane or car.

It takes a few minutes to pull these babies up because they are really tight but that's what I choose to do after a hard ride.

Then I kill-two-birds-with-one-stone by packing my 40oz MOBOT waterbottle that doubles as a foam roller!  The tagline here is Suck And Roll!  (You drink from a straw out of this waterbottle - which works superbly when driving!!)

Next up, I do a lot of yoga to compliment the many hours of riding a bike.  I have tried to travel with a regular roll-up yoga mat stuffed into a backpack that cannot close.  Now, I take with me a YOGO mat, a flat-pack yoga mat.  This mat folds up and fits in the bottom of my backpack.  During layovers or at my team hotel I lay out this mat and move through my asanas.  This mat has a couple other benefits 1) It is the most grippy mat I have ever done socked (or no socked) yoga on! 2) you can hang the mat up by its clips to wash and hang dry it in the shower!

I have my Global Relay backpack packed with my YOGO mat and my MOBOT.

Working together with the yoga mat, I bring with me a warm and cool set of yoga training clothes by Inner Fire.  These items are my most bright and colorful clothing options.  I wear them to yoga or to catch some extra attention at the campsite!  In my warm wardrobe I bring my Inner Fire Aurora leggings, to remind me of the sky I grew up under: Alberta - the land of the living sky.  In my cool wardrobe I bring my Inner Fire Bloom Shorts.  I love their wide waist band which makes being a #bendybikeracer a more comfortable person to be!  I found the brand Inner Fire because I have a passion for Canadian made products and brands.  Inner Fire not only is a Vancouver company, but also is working with sustainable materials made from 100% recycled bottles!  Isn't that fantastic!  So when you are meditating on how to make the world a better place you can smile when you think of your clothing for a change!  Inner Fire sells their products on both amazon.com and amazon.ca AND if you enter the code AlisonJa you can get yourself 15% off!!

Handstands have always been a favourite posture of mine.  Often I get this overwhelming feeling to be upside down!  This feeling is strongest whenever I am sitting in an airport during a layover!!

I do a lot of poses that open the shoulders to combat the rounded posture of a cyclist.

My husband and I lived on the road for 3 months traveling around California from training camp to races.  To break up the long drive we stop for me to yoga and/or for Alex to take pictures of the places we are in!

Made responsibly to make a difference!!

Remember, rest and recovery for your own body adds peace and patience and focus into other areas of life.  So, wear your compression, drink lots of water, roll out those tight muscles and breathe deeply through a few yoga poses!!

Alison Edition: 2015 Global Relay Canadian National Championships

Thursday Time Trial – June 25, 2015

                The Canadian Championships TT would be my longest TT of the year at 30km.  The day was windy and the course was two laps of descending at 70kph and climbing up a near 7% grade.  I was able to negative split my laps while maintaining a consistently hard pace.  When I finished I had the best placed time but I knew that there were several key contenders after me.  In the end I took home 7^th place and a greater understanding of what level of pain one must embrace in order to be a champion.  Congratulations to Carol-Ann on her win.

Photo by Velo Palmares

  

Friday Road Race – June 26, 2015

                The road race course itself was selective due to the wind, a steep climb in the 3x15km circuits, with a longer climb out of the circuit toward the finish at 110km.  The Canadian field is strong and the hunt for the Maple Leaf jersey was fierce.  It was all about playing the game of tactics and riding hard.  We had a beautiful day to ride and I had a great time rolling on Quebec’s roads.  It wasn’t a perfect race but I grinded the gears to 4^th place.

Photo by Richard Wooles

Sunday Criterium – June 28, 2015

                The Sunday crit was a West Coast crit due to the rain that came down for the race.  Rain is not a problem for a BC winter riding gal like me and I had been looking forward to the punching crit course all weekend.  The course was fast, it climbed to the finish, rounded two corners descending, and then climbed again.  It was a dynamic race and I came into it with a plan.  A few breaks went and were pulled back, but the winning move was a break of two out of which I was able to take the win on the uphill finish.  The win was really sweet because my parents were there to watch it happen.

                I really enjoyed my debut riding at Canadian Nationals and am really thankful to have the best equipment to use courtesy of our sponsors Felt Bicycles, SRAM, Zipp, Speedplay and Fizik.  A huge thank-you to Twenty16 p/b Sho-Air for taking a chance on me this year and developing me as a cyclist.  Thank you to the supports of CyclingBC, Richard Wooles and Julian Base for the technical and managerial support, and running around for us all week, it would have been much more stressful had I been there on my own.  Thank you to my coach Alison Testroete, and also Felicia Gomez for working with me this year – we are looking good!  And yes, thank you Bruce and Phoenix Velo Training Group in Mission, BC where I got my cycling start.

Super happy that my parents could cheer me on to my first Championship win. Photo by Richard Wooles.

2015 Canadian Crit Champion

Full Results here.