Training… with no gym?

21 01 2010

What are you to do? With winter weather, for some, generally comes the winter get-away vacation. If you’re lucky the place you visit will have a gym, but what things can you do in the event there isn’t?

I won’t pretend to be a certified personal trainer here, but I can offer a few tips:

  1.  Have a chair? Do some chair dips!
  2. Push-ups. These can be made as easy or hard as you want them to be! Incline, decline, bent knee, clapping… the list goes on!
  3. Get down on the floor! Do some abs! Planks, reverse lifts, crunches…  you get the idea.
  4. Biceps? Try some large water bottles or other objects.
  5. Take a walk, play some volleyball or swim! You can still take advantage of all the great weather/scenery and get some exercise at the same time.

Need to know how to perform these exercises properly? Check out your local gym or community centre or, for those wanting to go at it on their own, use your favourite search engine to find some!





Friends for Life Bike Rally Launch Party

17 01 2010

The Friends for Life bike rally launch party is fast approaching! Anyone who is interested in joining the ride should definitely make an appearance to learn more!

Join the bike rally participants on January 27th from 7pm-10pm at:

The London Tap House
250 Adelaide Street West
Toronto, ON M5H 1X6, Canada
(416) 205-1234





Winter Off-Season Training – What Are You Doing to Stay Strong, Lean and Road Ready?

16 01 2010

In many coutries around the world the winter season offers some training challenges for cyclists, do we gear up and brave the snow covered or icy roads in order to ensure we stay in shape for the spring or do we keep ourselves locked indoors?

After researching different training methods I’m finding the opinions on this subject are varied. Some say you should spend your time weight training with low weights and high reps, others say to spend your time on the stationary bike alone and additional sources say the best way to stay in shape is a mixture of the two.

Personally, I can’t stand the stationary bike so either way it is definitely out of the question for me! I’ve been spending the majority of my time training using the blended approach I mention above, substituting the stationary bike for the elliptical or treadmill. I’ve been making pretty good progress so far, spending about one hour with weights and the other hour with cardio, increasing time and distance as I move along.

With the cycling season fast approaching, it doesn’t leave much room for experimentation, but I’d be interested in knowing what works best for you?





Hairshirt Classic Double Century

14 01 2010

The desciption of this sounds just awful! A hairtshirt was a medieval form of monasterial punishment and penance. Essentially monks wore shirts woven of very coarse horse hair, which caused them to experience extreme discomfort. As wrong as this may be, I think me and my TREK have just found one of our pre-Montreal goals!

A century challenge is a ride of 100 miles! By simple mathematics a double century ride would be 200 miles or 322km! Crazy you say… a little maybe, the furthest I’ve gone to date is 135km.

The Hairshirt ride, organized by Toronto Bicycling Network,  takes you from Toronto to Niagara and back! It departs at 6am on June 27th and you have until midnight to complete it!

It’s still a few months away, but if anyone has any tips as far as training for this I’d really appreciate it!





12th Annual Friends for Life Bike Rally

12 01 2010

On July 25th, 2010, the 12th Annual Friends For Life Bike Rally particpants will embark on their journey to raise over $1 million for the Toronto People With AIDS Foundation. For six days, cyclists will ride 600 KM+ from Toronto to Montreal while being supported by an amazing crew that will transport gear, provide route support, serve nutritious food and administer a variety of wellness treatments.

Check out the promotional video, which is an edited version of the documentary made about the Bike Rally a few years back:

Interested in joining the fun either as a rider or road crew? Check out my links to the Bike Rally site!





The Beginning

12 01 2010

It’s January 12th and it’s only a little more than 6 months until my 600km+ journey begins with the Friends for Life Bike Rally in support of Toronto PWA! I’ll be taking part, along with hundreds of other riders, in the 6 day journey, Toronto to Montreal, from July 25th to July 30th, 2010.

What this means is that my training and fundraising needs to start very soon in order to be ready! I’m setting some steep goals for myself, both physically and financially, and hope to surpass each of them! It feels quite daunting at the moment to think of myself riding my bike all that way, but the funny thing is that even before I leave for Montreal I’ll have finished many more times the distance in training rides.

This blog will be tracking my various activities over the months between now and the ride, and beyond.  For now, while the weather is cool, I’ll be focusing most of my energy on indoor activities, weights and cardio, which I hope will assist in prepping my body for the upcoming task.

I plan to share the sights and sounds of the training rides and the bike rally itself so I’ll be posting updates that will, at some point, have video feeds and photos from all. I hope to share as much of this experience with you as I can and who knows, maybe next year you’ll join us!








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