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As many of you know, I crashed a couple of weeks ago. I’m still dealing with some of the side effects of the bail — my neck is sore, one of my shoulders has a low-grade separation, and my confidence has taken a bit of a beating — but I’m able to perform regular tasks without a tonne of discomfort.
So what does that mean for this site? For one, and most importantly to most of you, I’m going to move slowly back into the swing of things with this site. In addition to providing my regular batch of updates, I have a couple of products that have been reviewed and are waiting for a full-scale writeup.
Also, I have a couple of paths to follow that could lead to interesting things for this website. I’ll unveil this master plan in layers, so I must remind everyone out there that patience is a virtue. Thanks to everyone who offered their words of support — they helped me through an uncomfortable week.
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Yesterday I crashed my bike. I nosed in really hard on a fifteen foot gap jump before sliding off the trail and into a tree. Fortunately I was wearing my full face helmet and hydration pack — I’m sure those two pieces of gear provided some protection against a more serious injury.
My bike made it through the crash without too much damage and I was able to walk off the mountain with the help of a friend (who took care of my bike on the way down). I did take a precautionary trip to the emergency room at our local hospital to have x-rays taken and the verdict was a good one — a sprained neck and sore muscles all around but no broken bones. Given the speed at which I smacked the tree (I would guess it was about 20-25km/h) and how exposed my body was during the fall, today I count myself as a particularly lucky duck.
So what happened? The crash occurred on a trail I helped build and have ridden about 50 times this year alone, so familiarity wasn’t an issue. As many of you might recall, I have a new fork for my bike and that surely played a role in the crash (I need to turn up the high speed compression).
Regardless, I blame myself for my injury. I’m an experienced rider and I should have taken a pass on the jump or the trail in its entirety, especially since I was running a new piece of equipment and because I was a little fatigued from recent rides.
So this message is a warning to all of you riders out there: anyone can crash at any time and you need to be prepared when you’re out in the hills. When you do crash, you need to keep your wits about you and understand the implications of walking out or waiting for the local Search and Rescue unit. And it’s always a good idea to have friends to ride with.
As for me, I’m going to take it easy for a few days, let the swelling go down, and have my stiff neck checked out again by a medical professional during the coming week. I’ll be back on the bike as soon as possible, but I won’t be pushing it for a while. I’ll be as active as possible with this site, but my focus is going to be on getting healthy again.
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This post is a little off topic for this site (it covers a BMX dirt jump competition), but the subject matter is worth it. Check out the video footage gathered at the event (link below).
Red Bull has been at the forefront of the field of ‘extreme sports’ for some time now, sponsoring events like the Red Bull Rampage and the Red Bull District Ride.
Recently, the company put on a dirt jump competition up at Whistler Village. The event — called Red Bull Elevation — brought together some of the top BMX dirt jumpers in the land on a course that featured HUGE jumps for the riders to strut their stuff. For spectators the event was a blast, even if many of the people watching weren’t familiar with the particular names of each rider’s moves and tricks. Check out this video footage of the event.
At the end of the day, veteran Ryan Nyquist took home first overall, followed onto the podium by Corey Bohan, and Luke Parslow in second and third place respectively.
To view the video, you’ll need to have Quicktime 7 installed on your computer. If I knew how to convert the file back to an older version of Quicktime I would but, unfortunately, video manipulation is not my forte. If you’re interested in downloading a version of the video clip with a higher resolution, drop me a line and I’ll hook you up.
Note : Most of the content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons License. However, the contents of the Red Bull Elevation 2005 video do not fall under CCL licensing. All footage is property of Brent Tahk and can not be resold, reused, or redistributed without the written permission of Brent Tahk. The music is from Molotov’s Donde Jugaran las Niñas?
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It gets really nice outside and I’m spending more of my spare time riding than in front of a computer. And when formal work commitments (no, this site doesn’t support my swanky lifestyle) take precedence over writing entries for this site. And I’ve been getting ready to take off for a couple of days to relax and get away from computer geeks and the Internet.
It’s the lull before the storm though — Interbike is coming and new products are ready to be unleashed upon the cycling world.
See you in a couple…
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For many mountain bikers, the name ‘Whistler‘ is synonymous with the Whistler Bike Park, a lift-accessed playground with over 200km of biking trails and over 1200 meters of vertical gain / loss (depending on your point of view).
Every August, Intrawest hosts the Crankworx Mountain Bike Festival, an event that draws the attention of plenty of industry folks, racers, and spectators. What’s often forgotten in the mix is the fact that Whistler and its surrounding area is studded with other world-class trails like Comfortably Numb and A River Runs Through It.
Anyways, Marla Streb — who took first place in her category at the Garbonzo Enduro DH held during Crankworx — just posted an entry on her site about riding some of Whistler’s ‘other trails’. Check it out because it’s well worth the read and it gives those of you who aren’t locals a better idea about what riding in this place called British Columbia is like.
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I took a day trip to the Whistler Bike Park today. In the lineup for the lift, I asked my friend if he thought he could take the guy behind us on a run down A-Line. He looked back at the guy and his bike and said, ‘Sure’. And when I said that ‘that guy’ was Cedric Gracia he quickly took back his words…
Other things spotted at the bike park today? The new Trek DH bike, the Manitou Travis Intrinsic Triple (and Single), custom painted 2006 Marzocchi forks, fast riders, and a sun burn on my neck, legs, and nose…
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This entry isn’t a mountain bike entry per se, but it is interesting and it does illustrate what serious (and I mean SERIOUS) training can do for the body. Researchers from the University of Texas-Austin put Lance Armstrong's training regimen to the test, analyzing the changes in Armstrong’s physiological responses to cycling-based activity.
What they found does not raise any questions about doping; instead, the researchers indicate that Armstrong’s ‘transformation’ in 1999 (the year of his first of seven consecutive Tour de France victories) was a result of a marked change in the cyclist’s output capacity:
An independent physiologist familiar with the study commented: ‘This study shows that long term training has a lot bigger effects than we thought. They followed Armstrong – a well-known hard trainer – and the changes in his efficiency over seven years are really quite amazing. We wouldn’t be surprised if some major physiological changes happened, but here’s a real quantified example.’
He added: ‘Generally there are two ways to improve efficiency: Train your maximum capacity to be very high, or train your sub-maximal capacity to be very efficient. In Armstrong’s case, he did both. In the lab they measured his performance against standard oxygen consumption and by the end of the study he was much more efficient utilizing the same amount of oxygen. But on the road,’ he pointed out, ‘it means he can go faster and get more guys off his wheel.’
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