What is field work, really?
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| The terrestrial crew (I was on the aquatics crew) |
Going out and getting dirty? Yep. Fun/ Yes. According to plan? No.
This week I was sent out to a wildlife research station to stay for two weeks in Algonquin Provincial Park. The station itself is pretty hilarious. It’s been around for seemingly hundreds of years and you can feel (and see) the history of this rustic station around you. It turns out that my dad even went here! Sure enough he's in some photos on the wall.
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| Second from the top left, a "Turtler" apparently! (also known as Herpetologists) |
The station is on a lake, known as “The Sass” comprises numerous cabins for sleeping accommodations, labs, and storage, some picnic tables for eating, a general kitchen and oldschool style cafeteria. Everyone at station is super nice, though it seems to be more of a drinking station with a research problem! Breakfast is at 7:30l, but you don’t see many people then, lunch is at 12:30, and dinner is 5:30. Food is unlimited. People go about their days by waking up, running their morning errands (canoe to get turtles, check plots, look at birds, etc.), eating breakfast, maybe some lab work until lunch, hanging out on the dock until dinner, eating some food, cracking some beers and maybe some more errands and social drinking. Everyone is super interesting to chat with and learn about their work, and super laid back. I like it here, though there’s no internet or phone reception.
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| The lab - right in front of the lake |
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| The cookhouse! I gained weight from the unlimited food and the fact that I had no bike.. |
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| On my time off, I would canoe and get turtles out of the traps! |
Being a guy who’s been put there for 2 weeks means I have to work basically nonstop to get done an insane amount of work in a short period time. Unfortunately my week went like this: it started out working out in the field, then processing the samples all night – until 1:00am sometimes [that was the night that I found my tent flooded too]. I love field work, and all of the adventures in the forest [not so much the lab work at night] – but it’s tough when I was getting almost no sleep and no ride time, by Saturday, I was much more worn out than I was willing to acknowledge, which is unfortunate because I decided to make my very first appearance in the pro/elite field.
The course is at Buckwallow Cycling Center is known as the toughest venue on the Ontario Cup circuit, much rockier and rootier than the other races and with no real down time. Typically I take a good break in the singletrack, and open up in the doubletrack – but in Buckwallow you’re pretty full throttle the whole way. Getting a bike over the rocks and the roots requires some serious upper body strength, and with five 9km laps, you get pretty worn out. Additionally, though the trails at Buckwallow can be pretty flat ground sometimes but super twisty. If you’re feeling pretty fresh these factors just make the trails more fun, but as you tire, it’s hard to pick “the good line” through the trail, and if you’re not on “the good line” you are wasting more energy and time, which gets stressful too.
So I showed up at the course on Sunday morning, having not shaven in about two weeks (I actually can manage to look scruffy now), and been out of internet and cell phone reception for the week, to suprise the world with my debut on the “pro cycling” scene of Ontario. It was a great feeling to put my new race sign on the bike, double digits now (representative of elite riders), and how do you spell “badass”? With “ELITE” at the top of your race plate. It was a bit of a situation that got me into elite, I asked if I was allowed to race elite, and got a phonecall back saying I was now a pro/elite racer and that’s how it would have to be for the rest of the season. Well, okay. Let’s do it.
I knew that going into the race thinking I was in bad shape would obviously make for a very bad race, so I pushed it out of my mind that I hadn’t trained or slept for a week and that I was out in the heat. A foolish thing to do. In hindsight, I was in no shape to race but getting caught up in the moment causes you to ignore things and just jump in so to speak! The pace started out about as fast as my old category, but once we hit the singletrack it was evident I wasn’t racing the expert category anymore. The riders in the pro/elite field are well rounded guys, not just cardiovascular machines. After a couple of trails, I found the pace unsustainable (especially while I was puking along the way!), I was simply not strong enough to that day handle my bike through the trails at that pace. By halfway through the first lap, I was riding my own race, but I kept my chin up and kept at it. By lap 2 I started to accept that it wasn’t just the elite pace that was killing me, and my heartrate monitor confirmed this. I was running at about 75% of my maximum heartrate, and would be right out of breath. By lap 3 I was finding myself at the end of trails with no recollection of how I got there. It was foolish of me to race, and the last half of the race (laps 3-5) I rode – not raced. Until on lap 5, where I saw another rider ahead of me a few turns in the trail! I picked up the pace (ever so slightly), smiled to myself, and worked at bridging the gap – nobody passes me in my last lap, and if you’re in my sights that late in the race, I’m determined not to lose the hard work that I had done. I caught him, and put some time in between us, managing to finish the race, and not in dead last either! There is no way I would enter a race and then simply not finish, rather finish dead last than not at all, at least I’m proud of sticking it out.
It’s tough to make the plan now, can I race elite for the last few Ontario Cups? I don’t feel as though my performance on Sunday was a real indicator of how well I can race in the elite 5 lap race, but that’s not to say that I think I am ready for sure yet. I’ll work hard though, with hopes of one day earning a decent position in that category, but until then I may just be that guy who tried his best. It’s tough though, to build yourself up in less than a year to the level I am trying to compete at, while still attending University and being involved in the student and cycling communities of Guelph. Either way – it’s time for secret training!
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