This article was written by Christie Hurrell and originally published in the UBC Report –

Worried that getting around the city could be the toughest event of the 2010 Winter Games?  Thousands of athletes and visitors, along with road and parking restrictions, will all contribute to increased congestion in Metro Vancouver.  A UBC research team is encouraging people to use their bikes to get around, and they’ve designed a special web-based tool to help cyclists plan hassle-free trips.

The route planner, located at www.cyclevancouver.ubc.ca, was first launched in spring 2008 and has become popular with local cyclists (and pedestrians, who find it useful for planning walking routes).  Now, it is being updated to reflect all known Olympics-related road restrictions, so that cyclists can find efficient ways to get to their destination.  The Olympics edition of the route planner launches this month, and will be available throughout the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

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The City of Vancouver has just released its 2008 / 2009 Cycling Statistics Update. The report contains a lot of details but Frances Bula on the State of Vancouver blog has summarized the important points nicely:

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- just over 40 per cent of people who live in the Downtown or West End walk or cycle to work. (For the city as a whole, it’s 16 per cent; for all of Metro, eight per cent.)

- in all of Vancouver, cycling accounts for 3.7 per cent of trips to work. Cycling actually decreased slightly in the Downtown and West End between 1996 and 2006, according to census stats, but walking trips there went up in the same time period.

- The Point Grey/Kits, Commercial Drive and lowers Main Street neighbourhoods had the highest rates of cycling to work, up to almost 12 per cent in some of them. I’m not surprised, since I live on a bike route in the Main Street area and see great herds of them go past my house every day.

- Summer peak hour counts along the bike routes show the highest traffic around Ontario and Prior, where the two most heavily used north-south and east-west routes intersect. The count there just over 700. the 10th Avenue route the next heaviest, with about 500.

- No numbers for the Burrard Bridge per se. In fact, the map in this report makes it look as though there is no bridge. Interesting.

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The full report can be read here.

Yup. Really. Sam Whittingham, from BC’s Quadra Island, recently broke the self-propelled human speed record in the Nevada desert. Sam peddled his custom made recumbent bike to a top speed of 132.5 kilometers an hour. Chris Keam witnessed this attempt and writes about it on The Tyee. The first few paragraphs are included below, for the full article please visit The Tyee website , where you can also watch a video of Sam’s attempt.

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Sam Whittingham of Quadra Island made history in the Nevada desert on Thursday, pedalling the tear-drop contoured recumbent bike — the Varna Diablo III — to a world record speed of 82.3 mile per hour (132.5 kilometres per hour), claiming the $26,748 deciMach prize as the first person to do so, and cementing his position as the fastest self-propelled human on the planet. (Further down in this story, you can watch a video by Chris Keam and Earl Cassorla of the historic event.)

"I’ve been knocking on this door for years," said Whittingham, before a Thursday morning attempt to crack the deciMach barrier. "I want in!"

In that session, Whittingham went on to post an 80-plus mph time for the second time in his very successful career racing the specialized streamliners. So very close, but still not the new record Whittingham and bike designer Georgi Georgiev have been chasing ever since they were the first team to break the 80 mph barrier in 2002. Then Whittingham did something he’d never done before. He elected to try again during the evening session. In a sport where the athletes often collapse in an oxygen-deprived heap shortly after exiting their streamlined, fully-faired recumbent bikes, it was a risky move. Two runs in one day could have left Sam’s body without enough time to fully recover and destroyed his chances to post competitive times on the last two days of racing.

Continue reading ….

A man from BC, from little-known Quadra Island to be exact, is aiming to be reach the fastest speed ever through human power alone. Sam Whittingham has built a bicycle that he hopes will break the world speed record of 130 kilometers an hour at the upcoming Human Powered Speed Challenge in Nevada. The following article is courtesy of Chris Keam and the Tyee.ca , a great independent online news portal….

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Cyclist Sam Whittingham aims to shatter his own human-powered record.

Forget about the Jamaican sensation Usain Bolt and his stroll to Olympic gold. Bolt only managed a paltry 27.3 miles per hour (43.9 kilometres per hour) for 30 metres during his record-setting 100 metre run. The speediest man on the planet is actually Sam Whittingham of Quadra Island, British Columbia. And he’ll be attempting to go faster than 82 mph (130 km/h) at the Human Powered Speed Challenge in Battle Mountain, Nevada, Sept. 15 to 20.

Whittingham will be inside the Varna Diablo III, a purpose-built "HPV" (human-powered vehicle), designed by Bulgarian-born sculptor and inventor Georgi Georgiev of Gabriola Island. It’s so fast that other riders buy the previous incarnations, knowing he has struck aerodynamic gold. Georgiev, however, is quick to point out he’s no engineer… and simplicity is the key to the Varna design. The man who pilots Georgiev’s very slippery bike believes the secret to the machine is one of observation and imagination.

"If you had Georgi’s brain you could build this thing mostly from stuff in a hardware store," says Whittingham. "It’s a very organic shape. If you look at nature you’ll see these same kind of shapes, and that’s where Georgi gets his inspiration."

Continue reading on the Tyee.ca ….

Here is an amazing interview about stolen bikes that reveals insight into who steals them, how do they do it? (high end vs. low end). The dynamics of the organized crime around it, and how some bike store owners and employees are involved. The interview also includes a segment with Igor Kenk – the Toronto guy who was recently busted with nearly 3000 bikes and his rationale behind his business. How he uses a loop in the judicial system to feed his crime.

http://www.playlistor.com/play.php?pl=Dx3hp9H7wzut9i9

Treehugger has just posted an article on their website on how to help prevent your bike from getting stolen. How? Forget heavy duty locks. Instead try making it look as UGLY as possible.

10 tips to "ugly" your bike:

1. Remove any flashy stickers or brand name labels from your bike.

2. Buy second hand so the bike already looks worn.

3. Repaint it with a cheap matte black or army green spray paint. Don’t be modest with the paint. Over-spraying is a good thing. Not on the gears, chain, or brakes though.

4. Decorate it with ugly stickers, possibly a car air freshener, or fake animal fur.

5. Attach a milk crate or a rusty rack for carrying stuff.

6. Fake rust your bike with modern spray paint from the hardware store.

7. Tear a hole in your saddle (when it’s raining cover with plastic bag).

8. Add some duct tape to the frame.

9. Consider adding some streamers or spokey dokeys.

10. Visit U-G-L-Y Your Bike , a great how-to guide that offers step-by-step tips to keep your "first class ride" from the hands of thieves.

The following article is written by Guy Dauncey and originally appears in the June issue of EcoNews .

Two wheels on the road, the summer air in your face – it’s a wonderful way to travel! When we look at the urgent need to eliminate our carbon emissions, plus the end of cheap oil and the benefits of being healthy and fit, cycling has to be one of the most important transport initiatives we should be investing in.

Coaches, transit, light rail, electric vehicles, ride-sharing, walking – these are all part of the answer.

But cycling should have a special place on the list, because it brings so many benefits. In Copenhagen, where 36% of the population commutes to work by bike, cycling has become such a style that they have invented a verb, “Copenhagenize”, to capture what’s happening. (www.copenhagenize.com)

And just look at the economics of it. They know from their health statistics that physically active people live five years longer and have four fewer years of lengthy illness than those who are non-active.

They know that cycling for four hours a week – 10 km a day, a typical Copenhagen bike ride – makes a person physically active.

Continue reading on the EcoNews website …

A recent article written by Jack Christie in Vancouver’s Georgia Straight talks about the reopening of the Kettle Valley Railway Trail near Kelowna after forest fires in 2003 destroyed 12 wooden trestle bridges. This is something all British Columbians should do at least once. Here is the beginning of the article.

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The trestles are back! The trestles are back! Phoenixlike, 12 wooden trestle bridges on the Myra Canyon section of the Kettle Valley Railway Trail near Kelowna have reappeared after vaporizing in flames during 2003’s forest fires. At the time, the loss seemed irreplaceable. Five years and $13.5 million in provincial and federal grants later, the Myra Canyon Trestle Restoration Society (www.myratrestles.com/) plans to unveil the new bridges on June 22.

Continue reading…

By STEPHEN REGENOLD, published in the New York Times last winter

HE mass perforation of Brownie Lake began at noon, when eight rolling tires, thousands of shiny screw tips and the fast-pumping legs of four bike riders were set in motion on a dizzying figure-eight track of ice.

“Round and round we go,” said Jay Henderson, known as Hollywood, whizzing by on a plane of ice, jockeying for position on a tight turn in the course.

Pellets shot off spinning wheels. Four riders cranked and wrangled, a trail of tiny divots left in their wake. The track they rode, a double-loop path on the frozen surface of a lake in Minneapolis, glinted in the afternoon sun.

“Coming on the inside,” Mr. Henderson hollered, squeaking by a rider, his elbows out.

Ice bike racing, a subgenre of the subgenre of winter cycling, is a hybrid discipline where spiked tires bite solid ice on twisting, circuitous courses cut from a mantle of snow. Riders pedal hard on straight-aways, then slide and fishtail through the turns. Frozen lakes and rivers serve as the medium of the sport, which mixes elements of a sprint road race with a dirt bike rally.

Like its cousin sport of ice motorcycling, ice bike racing appeals to a niche of hard-core winter riders, irreverent renegade types and cycling gear aficionados who thrill to toy endlessly with homemade spiked tires.

Organized races started up five or more years ago in places like Minnesota, Alaska, Ontario and Manitoba, some being underground affairs with just a dozen competitors.

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Written by Gary Kingston and published in the Vancouver Sun, Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Sydor in thick of competition before her induction.

Most of the athletes in the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame’s class of 2008 have long ago called it a career, but Allison Sydor just keeps on pedalling. And pedalling, and pedalling …

The Hall announced its latest inductees on Tuesday, but Sydor wasn’t able to make it. The three-time mountain-biking world champion, now 41, had just got back to her Victoria-area home after competing in Portland, Ore., on the weekend in fast-growing cyclo-cross.

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A great article written By Gina Kolata for the New York Times.

When Helen Betancourt, an assistant coach at Princeton, was preparing for the World Championships in rowing in 1998, she suffered an overuse injury: stress fractures of her ribs. She competed anyway, but then had to take five months off. Like most athletes, she did her best to maintain her fitness, spending hours cycling. Finally, she returned to her sport.

“I lost half my strength,” she said. And rowing just felt weird. “It was like I had stepped off another planet.”

Yet a couple of months later, much faster than it takes to get that strong to begin with, Ms. Betancourt felt like her old self on the water. Four months of rowing and she was in top form. It shows, exercise physiologists say, that training is exquisitely specific: you can acquire and maintain cardiovascular fitness with many activities, but if you want to keep your ability to row, or run, or swim, you have to do that exact activity.

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A great article from Forbes Magazine. Written by Rebecca Ruiz.

Jerry Armstrong’s body began failing him at mile 75. The 30-year-old San Diego native felt tendinitis in both knees and severe ligament pain in both ankles, which caused his limbs to lock up. He struggled to imagine how he might finish the 100-mile ultra endurance race known as the Angeles Crest, which takes runners through the San Gabriel backcountry in southern California. The former tri-athlete had readied his body for the 21,000 feet of climbing by running 70 to 100 miles a week for a year, but this was his first 100-mile race.

“People told me to treat [the race] with respect,” Armstrong says. “I thought I was. I was humbled by the race.” With the help of a good friend who served as his pacer for the last 25 miles, Armstrong power-walked the final miles after dunking himself in a cold stream to decrease the inflammation of his tendons and ligaments. He finished 23 minutes before the race’s 33-hour time limit.

“Some people might say, ‘Oh, hey, you barely finished,’ but for me it’s about the adventure, not the finishing time,” he says. “It’s about managing your body, solving problems and working under stress. It’s not about running as fast as you can.”

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Article written by Gale Bernhardt and sourced from Active.comDaylight hours are dwindling away, which makes riding your bicycle outdoors more of a challenge. Add bad weather to the equation and all but the toughest souls are forced indoors.

One indoor option for winter riding is a structured spinning class, where you and your stationary-peloton pals gather at the gym to be motivated into sweat rivulets by an encouraging instructor. With music pounding in the background, athletes spin the cranks as fast as possible. The instructor encourages, “More tension! Stand up! Down! Up! Hold it, hold IT!”

With red faces, burning legs and ponds of sweat below each bike, tired and tortured athletes might wonder if spinning classes are helping or hurting their athletic goals.

You must first establish goals for your training before you can decide if your spin class is helping or not. Then decide how substituting indoor cycling—and more specifically spinning—for outdoor cycling fits into those goals.

Multisport athletes have to be particularly cautious that very difficult spinning sessions do not take away from possible gains made during running and swimming workouts.

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