We know that asking your body to perform for 7 days on a bike is no small feat—that’s why we’ve always had a wellness team as part of the BC Bike Race experience.
Listen as Wellness Team members and Registered Massage Therapists Andre Weaver and Brooklyn Luison share practical tips on how to take care of your body before, during, and after each stage of the race. Both are very familiar with the most common issues racers face over the course of the week.
Whether you’re looking for recovery techniques, stretching strategies, or ways to prevent common issues, this is your chance to learn how to stay strong and ride happy all week long.
Below is an AI transcript of the call. Please excuse any errors.
You lack one? Yeah. Hang on. Okay. GPX files are usually available just before the race, unless you’re looking to ride it in advance, I guess within the next 10 weeks. Generally we don’t like to provide those but they are available usually on trail forks. Then we make ’em available usually a couple weeks before.
Is there a specific ask around it for why or what you wanna do with ’em? I’ll be going on the the pro class and I want to beat everybody now. I’m just looking more for the long climbs and how I can sync that up with what I’ve got locally in Seattle. Yeah we will post up the profiles and then the details will be we use trail forks.
Do you use trail forks? Yeah. And I’ve seen er, previous year stuff too. Yeah. So you can get a lot of detail outta that. And then yeah, yeah I agree with, you wanna line up your training with the program, so those should be available pretty quick. So the what would you say?
A a real long climb is maybe eight kilometers and, yeah, 15, 20 minutes. Half an hour at the most. ’cause with the most of them there are some sustained climbs. For sure. Like Maple Mountain is a a good. It’s got little breaks on the way up. It’s a how do you say it’s a handmade trail climbing trail.
It’s called Xylem Story Trail. Yeah, maybe 40 minutes to the top, depending on your speed. And then Sobo no Michi in Cumberland is a dedicated climbing trail that’s also machine and handbuilt. And that’s probably 20 minutes, half an hour, and then you get a break. So there’s always little breaks on these single track climbs.
We’re working on Tzouhalem has A Grand Traverse, which is a handmade climbing trail, trying to make some, they come in 20 minute, 20 minutes increments, a little bit of a break, and then you might have another 20 minutes. But yeah, trying to get little breaks in there and take advantage of those breaks so you can catch your breath.
All right, thanks for that. When you say 20 minutes, that is obviously not gonna be 20 minutes for me. So like how long are we talking? Are we talking a three kilometer climb with three inches of elevation or we’re just finalizing the last little bits and I, I’ve just Nanaimo stages got it’s broken up nicely into, smaller climbs.
The Grand Traverse is one of the bigger ones. Maple Mountains, one of the bigger ones. Those are the two sort of big up-downs. But if you look at the full, let me have a quick look at Trail Forks here. Can I jump in here, Dre? Yeah. Jump in buddy. Yeah, so Tzouhalem won’t be the big climb to the top this year.
It’ll be broken up. I figured the longest climb is Maple from Richards through Richards so that’s day two and the race route are gonna be finalized in the next month, but we’re close. What on the website now is a good representation of what to work towards. It’s not much different.
Yeah. Thanks a lot. How’s the training going? Pretty good. A lot of our clients here are, I’m just gonna say is. Non metric units, two miles and two to three miles and a thousand to 1500 feet. I just wanna be protected for like a six mile climb and 3000 feet, 10 K and a thousand meters all in a hit.
Yeah. It’s, the profiles are more like sewing machines that we’re putting together. Yeah. We try to pick it up for sure. Where are you where do you live and train. Seattle. Okay.
Sounds like you need to make a road trip up to Vancouver Island to pre-ride. I think we’ll probably try to get up there for a weekend. And Dean, what do you know so far about for Prologue that you’re able to tell us? Any insider tips you can share with us? We’re working on, the first three days will be a triple crown, so the out the back of the grounds is a mountain called Provost that’s been made famous by the Downhillers and Stevie Smith and all the top guys train there. Now primarily a downhill location, but I’m missing something. Yeah, we’re wiggling. What is this?
We’re wiggling through the mountain, but it’s gonna be more of a four kilometre, five kilometre up on a road to a traversing down. So it’ll be definitely we’ll sort people out in their fitness levels and it, you can ride right out of the ground. So you do registration afternoon that first day, then you’ll ride right from the grounds out, the back up to provoke.
Really excited. It’s a new stage big mountain. So yeah. You all on the call. Yeah, I am emailing with Brooklyn to try and see if she is able to join us or if something’s come up and I’ve not yet had a response, so I do apologize to all of you. And I. Since we have you all, the best use of this time I can think of, like I say, is to field your questions.
If there’s anything else we can help you with I am gonna ask you all to stay on the call. Hopefully I do hear from Brooklyn within the next five or 10 minutes, and she is just caught up in traffic or something. But like I say, if there’s anything else you guys have questions with, now is a good time.
Is any to ask them. We’ve also got Dre on the call who can address your training questions. If you are in a place where you know, 10 weeks out you’re not sure how to make the best use of your 10 weeks or you have something you’re struggling with now is a good time to bring that up.
How about like travel bags? Travel bike bags? The last time I did this, we had our own place to stay, so we had obviously a place to store the bike bag during the race. What does that look like this year if I’m camping? If you can, are you also on the transport program or are you driving yourself?
Transport program. Oh yeah. So if you’re on the transport program, we’ll definitely take your bag for you. And then, so your bike bag will take from you on the very first day at, raise a check-in, and it’ll be available to you when we get to Cumberland. But note that bag is inaccessible during the week, so please make sure you leave nothing in there that you’re going to possibly need over the course of the week.
Excellent. Thank you very much.
Carmel, can you keep an eye on the chat and see if for questions coming in there that we need to address? Please? Indeed. I will. I saw something pop up, but it was it was Dre. Oh. Perfect. Perfect. We have a couple of people here on the call who have registered quite recently. Morgan is one of them.
Morgan, you new to BC Bike Race and also just to the, coming in a little bit later. Is there anything we can help you with in terms of your race planning or your race logistics?
Maybe Morgan’s listening at work and not able to take herself off mute. Yeah, he was chit-chatting with somebody. I had to mute him.
What about Liesel? I thought I saw Liesl on the call and now she’s disappeared. Let me see if Liesel’s still on the call. I was gonna ask Liesel to weigh in ’cause Liesel had come and done BC bike race in I wanna say 2017. And then we’ve been riding together a little bit here in Squamish.
And I think me talking about racing this year, she just had the worst FOMO and is now also racing. So she’s been a later entry as well to PCY voices. So we do have a question in the chat from Adam. How do the trails this year compare to that of 2021? Several racers we talked to in 21 said it was the hardest they’d ever done, and that would’ve been an Okanagan year.
So was it 22 was the super hot seminarian? You’re right. Moniera. Yeah. So if we use 2022 the difference was more that it was a little bit longer in the overall, and like the Tour de France, there’s a sort of a a program overall, but I think right now we’re in in a nice place with the distances and the technical that it’s, mostly blue square trails for technical with a few little pieces of black diamond. But they’re really smaller pieces. And then distance wise, I think we’ve hit the sweet spot where those were 50 K days on average, and I think now we average between 35 and 42.
And I know we don’t have the whole course dialed yet but are we still gonna be in that range of between 750 and a thousand meters of climbing every day? Is that’s a reasonable expectation? I would say more like between eight and 12 would be, the bigger days will be 12 and there’ll be a couple of those and then sort try to.
Bake a cake where there’s some undulation and rest, just like a climbing trail so that you can have some, like when we do the Campbell River Days, it’s a very different flavor, it’s a different style. We really want you to experience all of the goodness of the BC mountain bike culture.
That’s, why we’re taking it down to the wire to dial in the final stages. To really offer up, the best experience. So it does change. It’s not 1200 every day we’re going to, have the prologue is a warmup, shake out, get your legs going, get your bike figured out, and then we move into Maple Tzouhalem.
We’ve got a nice plan in place, but it’ll be a variety pack. Let me say too, like the 20 week, one year there was a lot of ADA and the trails are just very different on the coast. So there’s just, it’s a very different style. I’d say it’s generally more technical on the coast, wouldn’t you say? Would that be correct, Dre?
No, there was some super tech on the 21 year. Remember we did sir drops a lot and slabs, so there was some chunky rock, which is more whistler style. The island doesn’t have as many chunky, jagged rocks. It’s more, I’d say I describe North Vancouver as round rocks and roots.
Then you get up to Whistler and it’s jagged and I think TTA has a bit more rock gardens that are in the trail. I think it’s a bit more flowy on the island for sure. In how it’s different, it’s a lot of low angle. It’s generally a steeper angle on the coast than what you did in the Okanagan.
So that would be another way to describe it. It’s like everywhere in British Columbia, it’s different everywhere, but we in terms of effort, like distance and effort and the fitness side of things there were some big days in 21 for sure. Dre, I think the biggest day is gonna be day.
Day one after the prologue, looking at things so far. Got some distance to it for sure. A little grit to it too. It’s also one of the most technical days.
Is that too much information, Moniera? No. I love the information ’cause I feel a little bit like every little bit of information I can get that’s gonna make me be less scared when I get to Oasis better. So I like the. The overkill of information. Thank you. It’s useful for me. So what’s fun, just the more, ’cause I’m living near the Tzouhalem Mountain and last year we did Tzouhalem and Maple in one day with a transfer between, so this year we’re doing a full day on Tzouhalem and full day on Maple.
So we’re going deeper into each mountain, especially Tzouhalem. So it’s we’re gonna really explore Tzouhalem. More than one big up and one big down kind of thing. So we’re gonna be up and down and in the middle and around the outside and epic downhills almost all single track. So yeah, little bit more info mark’s asking similar to 23 for Tzouhalem or for Maple.
I think we have a completely redesigned Tzouhalem that we’re excited about. And then Maple will be similar. Yeah, maple is very similar. We’ll play the hits in Maple. And Maple is like the North shore where they’re harder kilometers. But Tzouhalem, we’ve got a new plan in place. It’s gonna be we got the hits, but we got a really cool design that woke up one morning with a, oh my God, epiphany.
We can do this.
That is pretty exciting. So I think I have not heard from Brooklyn yet, so I think it’s safe to say that she’s probably not going to be joining us. And I do apologize to all of you. I’m not sure if she’s stuck in traffic or if it’s a work situation that’s come up. But like I say, if I’m definitely happy to stay on the call and address questions that people have.
Not just with regards to, like I say, your waste planning, but also your training or any other logistics you might have want to address. So if there’s anything else now’s a good time. As any if, just on that side, man. If you are considering Brooklyn is a massage therapist, I believe.
And one thing that you know. Certainly you should consider, when are you going to get a massage? And if you do get a massage, it’s nice to say, okay I, I’m gonna go the first couple days, I’m gonna see how my body feels and I’m gonna book a massage. I’m gonna go the next couple days.
I’m gonna book a massage. I. And then we’re gonna finish off. But when you get a massage and you haven’t had a massage before, it can be it can throw the body for a loop. So it might be interesting if you’re, as you are in the training phase, is that you would look at getting some sports massage at home.
Now it’s like hot tubs, right? If you drop into a hot tub and you haven’t done it in a while. Then you come out as a puddle of jello, whereas you’re a regular hot tuber, then you know the outcome and your body is used to it. So it’s just like everything. We’re training our bodies, we’re training our stomachs so that we can eat the foods that we need, that we know work, drink the fluids.
We know that work and we peddle our bikes. So we have familiarity with it when in that recovery process. So you don’t wanna start stretching in the middle of the week of BC bike race. You want to have a little bit of a routine going into it. Finding, I guess you’re starting to find your aches and pains as you’re spending more time training.
So maybe now you’re thinking about what is my stretch routine? Get your body used to the movements that that if it’s quads or calves or what, where are those aches and pains and what are you doing to address those? Do you have a rag gun? Are you using a band to stretch your hamstrings?
And then I do recommend, if you could get on a program every couple weeks to get a massage. Then your body is learning to get tight in training and relax and get tight in training and relax. And this is, part of that consistent repetition is building your body’s response to the stimuli.
So the stimuli of massage can be. Greater or than you think in terms of your reaction, your body has to it. So I would certainly suggest maybe in the next 10 weeks try to get a few massages in advance and watch how your body responds to it. And then you train it so that during the race week you can get an effective use out of that resource.
Hey Dre. Said. And we know as an Olympian how you know how to. Work through a stage race, late breaking news. I happen to be at Andre Weaver’s house right now, and he just came in the door. He’s a 15, 16 time. Bike race massage therapist. And he has a quick 30 seconds to add and he’s gonna jump in right now.
And he’s a I know he worked on Dre. I know, that’s fine. He was my massage therapist and then he moved to the island and now I don’t have regular massage. It’s terrible. Get back over here. Hello everyone. How are you? Yeah, quick introduction. Andreas Weaver registered massage therapist.
I’ve been with the race. I think I’m covering over 13 years. I think this is my 10th official year with the whole program and I’ve been everything from logistics manager to wellness to lead to senior therapists, etcetera. I am the senior therapist of the group again this year, and I’ve been out it for 25 years.
And I have been through the rollercoaster with the with all the group and how people show up. And Dre was alluding to this earlier about getting your body ready for things. You’re spending time, you’re spending money, you’re investing all this capital in these races, and get used to the stimuli of what Dre was saying, of seeing how your body responds either immediately after a massage, within the hour or two or the next day.
And see, get yourself used to that and. Further to Dre’s point, then it’s not short what you’re doing and the effort is pretty large and your body’s gonna respond. Some of you have done this before and you know how the people won’t. And I can tell you from experience that I. The people that do take care of their bodies with massage therapy and the thumper and the hot tub and all the other things, generally farewell and get a lot more outta the experience.
For us, usually day 3, 4, 5, people start coming in, going sweet Jesus, what is happening to my body? And we’re there to support you. And that’s the thing. Everybody who’s, who is going to be at that race is a very qualified massage therapist. They’re licensed and everything else, and they’ve got a great body of knowledge behind them.
And we’re there for you to take care of you, to get you through the race. Sometimes it’s what our skillset is and sometimes it’s just mostly going, dude, you got this, don’t worry. We’ll get you to the finish. So avail yourself for the wellness department. Avail yourself for the services that we have, because it will make your life better.
For sure. And the wonderful thing about the job that we do is we get to interact with you guys to become part of your story to helping you to achieve your goals. That’s why we’re there. And I’ve had the great privilege of being able to work with a number of racers. To get them through those.
And it could be people who are, top tier or people in what we call the super wave right at the back. We’re there for their own reasons and I still talk with a few of them regularly. Wonderful people. And I hate Dean’s case they’re earthquake on the coast. It’s okay. Relax. We’re fine.
Just build it properly. Nothing. Andre, I have a question about massage. You know how when you have a massage, the therapist always says tell me if it’s too much pressure. It’s always too much pressure ’cause it hurts. El what? Tell me how I’m supposed to know what the right level of pain tolerance is.
Okay, so what I always tell my patients, my new patients, and when we work, when you are working with a massage therapist, you’re part of a team. We can’t tell what your pain tolerance is. Most people will have a scale with which they work. And the idea is depending on what we’re doing on that day, because how you present to us could be one, one way one day, and one day the other day we take a read, we listen to what we need to treat and how we need to treat it, and so when you’re talking about that pain tolerance. You’re working with your therapist and they’ll give you a scale like one to 10. So one would be nicking yourself. Shaving 10 would be the most excruciating thing you’ve ever been through. Ideally, you don’t go above a six. And a six is one of those points where you can feel the spot where it hurts.
It’s oh yeah, that’s the one, two breaths later. You’re relaxing into it and you’re fine. And another thing is that’s the upper edge, right? So you always talk with what your body needs and what you need. On any given day, you may be tired, but on the next day, your nervous system may be shot.
You may just, you’re like tapped out, I’m done. That’s all I can take. And you let your therapist know and you’re back and forth to get the absolute most using their skillset and knowledge, your tolerance and your awareness of your body about what you can do to best manage that. I hope that answers your question.
Yes, it totally does. And I think not only like on a six, on a range of one to 10, but also that thing where you can find release within a couple of breaths. Yes. And if it still feels like death, five breaths later, then definitely back off. I think that, yeah, that makes sense for me.
Thank you. A hundred percent. Yeah. The last thing you need is a massage where you’re fighting it because you’re already fatigued and then you’re going into fight in flight and you’re getting further fatigued. That serves no purpose. If you like a deep massage, you can handle a deep massage and you’re aware of what your body can take.
Great. Fantastic. Let us know. And then again, we’ll work with you and that’s part of what DRE was alluding to, is getting those couple of treatments in with your therapist, figuring out what works, what doesn’t work, what needs to be worked on, and then, we get you through it. And I’ll just add to that too, like often I go to my massage therapist when I do go and I, and he says, what’s the problem?
And I say, I actually don’t have a problem, you’re gonna help flush out the lymphatic system. You’re gonna help flush out the lactic acid. So that’s part of the assistance of what they can do is help that recovery for the next day. So if you come in with no aches and pains, but you want assisted with a bit of stretching or flushing.
That’s, getting that help that you need to be ready for the next day. So again, you can try that in advance, preparing your body and your knowledge base for when you arrive at the BCBR. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. ’cause I do find, like I know for example, I did a couple of massages on recovery weeks due when I, in my time in South Africa and oh my God, they hurt and I’d say, okay, that’s enough.
That’s enough back off. And.
No, I’m paying for this, so we’re gonna do it on my terms. But, I’m just talking to Alan as well, who was in South Africa as well, doing the Cape Epic, and he’s talking about how he’s massage therapist, really racked that pain dial up to perhaps a level of discomfort. But again I don’t know where the value lies, so one of the things is it depends on where you are in your training schedule. I work with a lot of marathons right now who are doing world Masters. A bunch of ’em are going to Boston soon, and, when, and I’ve done this with Dre. If it’s okay if I mention this Dre, just please let me know.
Yeah. When you are going through your training, you have recovery and build sessions and stuff like that. And so there’s points during when you’re going through your therapy and your training that you’ll do things, you’ll do things structurally, or you may need to do some, a RT. So you may have those points where, okay, something’s tight and we have to work through it, that’s great.
But as we approach race week or we get to the event level thing. Now you’re at a point with what is what you get and you’re not trying to rip stuff apart or change anything during the race week. The point is to keep you at peak and get you through, and then you can go and recover and then your therapist can go back and repair and stretch and do all the deeper things.
Yeah. And then, so during the race week itself, those sort of treatments probably not wholly advised unless it’s something that, that benefits you. And again, that’s the conversation that you have with your therapist, I would support Andre Minera that you setting the boundaries for, it’s not comfortable.
This is not the time for that work through. This is the time to flush the body loosen everything up and help me with the recovery process. This is not a time to break down some existing scar tissue and go through a deep tissue massage. I like it really deep, there’s a time and a place for everything.
You need to set the boundaries and you want to be coming out of that recovered and helping with recovery as the focus during the week, but on the lead up to it, when you’re getting a relationship with your massage therapist, yeah, as Andre said, on a recovery week, you, it is time to attack those knots with stretching and a RT and massage and that kinda gives you that understanding of, what you want out of that session when you get that session.
And can we talk about your pre race warmup, because I know Alan not Adam Walker has a acronym he uses for his warmup strategy, and one of them is being mobility and actually doing some mobility work. Can we talk about the warmup and how that contributes to, just getting your body ready for another big day?
A hundred percent. I think, Dre, you’re being the racer here, you’re probably best equipped to handle, an example of what your routine is, but Manera quickly. Yeah, absolutely. Mobility training. It’s not just about getting on the bike and going for spin. It should be a process, right? You can start with a light stretch, but definitely range of motion is incredibly important.
Most people forget that most of the time. When you have a muscle that pops or something like that, as we say a lot of the times it’s because you’re taking your joint into a range of motion. It’s not ready for and not ready for. It may happen on day five where I’ve been doing this all week. Why am I not ready for it?
It’s because you’re fatigued and going into day five. So it’s important to do if you have access to light band work, to do the, light band work and whatnot, and then get your spin on and get yourself warmed up and then head to the start line. Those things are really important and so is the post event taking the time to do those long stretches.
And moving yourself around and and hydrating and all the rest of those things. It’s all part of managing the body and yeah, dynamic warmup, mobility, warmups, super important. Particularly when you think about all the different ranges that your body’s gonna go through. Everything from riding that bike on a nice gravel road.
To hike a biking or to hurling it down stuff, or even hurling your bike into the bushes and swearing at it. And any number of things can happen on a race. It’s important to do those mobility things. And yeah, absolutely follow the advice, do the mobility stuff and do those warmups.
It’s very key. And yeah, it might be an extra 15, 20 minutes, 25 minutes before you hit the race line, but at least you’re ready to go, right? That’s the thing. I concur with Andre and I think what Adam alluded to was and what Andre’s just touched on, is the longer, deeper stretching should happen in the evening, away from the activity of the main focus, which is the event of the day.
So when you’re warming up your general premise is to get your engine going and to lube your joints with synovial fluids so that it’s prepared for the task coming. A little bit of a ride around. And then, in the mobility part of that, your range of motion and some quick little stretches.
You don’t want a long quad stretch while you’re on the start line ’cause you’re gonna. Take the elasticity out of the twitch out of your muscle. ’cause you’re basically about to go forward with some quick pedaling at the start, depending on your age and your objective through the day. I don’t think, and as you go through a stage race it gets, your body has a slow decline in your heart rate and your power output.
So there’s some numbers that start to change through the week. You can look at like by after day two 10, 10 beat, decrease to your heart rate each day for what you would be at your normal numbers. And that’s okay. If you have a correlation to put that to power, you’ll see, you won’t wanna hold your power, but your heart rate’s lower.
Maybe you’re pushing a little bit less power. This is cumulative fatigue, and that’s fine. But remember, you want to get through seven days. You’re not gonna win it on day one or two or three. It’s about. The big chunk and getting through to that final day, 5, 6, 7 in one piece and feeling good. In fact, you could be feeling better if you approach the whole thing with patients and care.
So warmups and if it’s 26 degrees out, we don’t really need to warm up so much. We need to, get our lungs moving, get the synovial fluids into the joints so that they’re ready. So a bit of mobility movement, a little bit of pedaling. And then. Like the whole notion of warm up, is it isn’t so much to get your body warm ’cause it’s not gonna actually change its temperature.
It’s to get your muscles prepared for what’s coming. So I think Adam’s, I probably should go back to Adam’s. I. Zoom call on that. ’cause he had a, pretty good breakdown on not the long stretches. Some, some quick movements, not, maybe not super quick, but some controlled dynamic movements that get your body prepared for the task at hand.
Perfect. Thank you for that, Dre. We now do have Brooklyn on the call. She had some trouble joining. Brooklyn, we’ve jumped ahead a little bit. We just so happened to have Andre on the call, which worked out perfectly. So he started a little bit. But I’m gonna hand it over to you. Take it away.
Alrighty. So you basically just want me to run down how. If this works yeah, we just want, we, we are just talking about getting your body ready for a seven day stage race and then also what it’s gonna take to maintain it and take care of your body so you can get through all seven days.
We have a range of people here from people who are, gonna be able to race really hard. And then there’s people at the back of the pack who just need to get through one more day. It’s a varied audience, but I think we all just need to make sure we’re taking care of our bodies through race week.
Absolutely. I think there’s before, sorry, before we do that, it looks like Andre wanted to. Saying something. Hello, Audrey. Hi Brooklyn. How are you? I was just gonna say I gotta take the opportunity just because I was able to pop in quickly. I just wanted to say thanks to everybody for allowing me to come in here and have a quick chat.
I gotta carry on with my day. I hadn’t planned recently planned to jump in, but it was what it was. So delight to have you. Hopefully I’ve been able to provide some information. I look forward to seeing all of you on race week. Ll see you then just Brooklyn’s been with us for two years now. Three years.
Three, four. Three, yeah. Three years. Yeah. Very good therapist, and she’s full of information, so enjoy the rest of the talk. You guys take care and have a great day. Thanks and welcome. Awesome. If I repeat anything that he said, let me know because I didn’t get to hear the beginning at all. Basically.
When you’re starting out to do the race. The three main things that I find is super helpful with that I’ve heard from feedback and in general is the first thing is definitely train. Can’t just go into this race knowing that you can’t do the certain kilometers. You might not have trained to do seven days in a row, but if you can get to three or four in a row, doing some longer rides might not be as intense.
But just so your body gets used to doing hard stuff multiple days in a row because it’s definitely a marathon, it’s not a sprint. And you definitely want to, the second thing is your nutrition is one of the main things that we find as therapists that there’s a lack of. So the first couple days might be super nice out and you’re just riding, you’re like, I’m feeling pretty good.
But you’re not getting enough water or enough sodium or something to do with nutrition. You’re not fueling enough. And you do the first two days and you’re feeling okay, and by the third day your body’s just depleted of sodium and everything. And so that’s when cramping starts to happen. We usually find the, at least the last two years Nanaimo was our day three and everyone was like, Nanaimo was the worst for how my body was feeling.
So a lot of people came in with a lot of cramping and not feeling the best. And they’re like, they would get on the table and just go, can you just please help me get me through the rest of this? And I’m like, okay. I can do quite a bit for you, but the main thing is actually getting the nutrients you need.
And so your body can actually fully. Function the next day. So making sure you have enough water with you and the aid stations have water, so if you can stop at all the aid stations, get as enough water as you can just so then you know that you’re fueled and you’re doing pretty good. And then the third thing is definitely to warm up.
A lot of people just shrug their shoulders and they go, okay, I’m ready. I’ll warm up on the course. And it’s what I heard when I first joined was definitely warming up and getting yourself ready. And another thing, we want to have good sleep. I know a lot of the times people are camping but just know the chicken.
There’s a rubber chicken in the morning that they wake you up with, and that’s the call to wake up and that’s basically when everyone wakes up. So if you’re out late and, sleeping definitely takes a big part in being able to function properly. Does anyone have any questions about that?
First?
I don’t know if I can see. No, not at the moment. Okay. So sorry. That’s okay. Any tips for getting good night’s sleep? What tools did you bring with you? I know with the base camps, if you are sleeping there, I know they provide a little mattress and the tent and then I think you guys bring the rest.
If I’m not no, we, if you need to bring your own sleeping pad, we used to have sleeping pad, but we don’t have to provide your own sleeping pad. Okay. Yeah, so it’s definitely a good sleeping pad and a good pillow that you know, that you’ve used before. And just being comfortable with camping. A couple people are like getting outta that tent in the morning is super sore.
And just making sure that you know what your sleep setup is gonna look like is always super beneficial. So for myself, I usually bring. Like a camping mat that I would do multiple, like hiking trips with previous or honestly, I have had people where they’re just like, oh, I just slept on my mat, like my little sleeping setup in my room, a couple weeks prior to see if it was comfortable enough.
And then I did a ride in the morning because you don’t wanna have yourself sleeping on the floor. Your hips get super sore and then you have to go ride multiple kilometers the next day and so on. I love that. It makes perfect sense, right? Like we train our bodies, we train our nutrition, we train everything else.
You should definitely train how it feels to sleep on the floor and then go to, right? That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And so I’ll talk a little bit about how the wellness set up is and like what we have to offer. So this year there’s 10 RMTs that will be on site. We. We can help you guys by giving you guys massages.
We do 30 minute massages each day. So what would happen is if you were like, ah, I would love a massage today, this might help me. We can, so we don’t book ahead. What we do is once you get off your bike that day, you guys come right up to our stand. We’ll have a tent with a whole bunch of massage tables.
And either Grace or JUULs, which is our management team for wellness they’re sitting at the front and as soon as you get off your bike, you go up and go, Hey, I would like a massage. And so either you can go right then or you can be like, Hey, I would like to go eat first and then come back. Can I book in a time for four 30?
And they go, absolutely. And then we’ll book you in. And if you have a certain person that you particularly enjoy that you’ve had a couple days prior you can actually recommend them or ask for them again, and we can do our best to get you in. The schedule changes super fast. And so basically it’s first come, first serve and if you have someone that’s supporting you and they’re just like, okay, my.
Wife or husband’s coming in 30 minutes, and I know there’s a lot of people here right now, they can book you a massage too. But we don’t really do it the day before because we just don’t know where people will be and what is happening for each individual person. And we basically massage from the time you get off your bike till sometimes 10 or 11 o’clock at night.
So most of the time you will have availability to get you in. And if you need any support taping or anything like that, the medical team right next door, there’ll be a medical tent and then there’ll be the wellness team. And so if you need support taping or anything to do with that manner the medical team will be able to do that this year.
And then with, I’m trying to get my words here, so sorry. Anything to do with any like bandages or anything like that, you can definitely go to medical. You can also come up to us and be like, Hey, I need this with any questions, and we can be like, okay, that’s medical, or that can be for us. We don’t do any cupping or needling, but it’s all manual therapy.
Any questions on that part? Can you talk about timing of the massage? Are you better off doing it right after you get off the bike or are you better off doing it before you go to bed and then take that sleepiness to bed with you? Like the, are there advantages to one or the other? It definitely depends on the person and how you would like to get massaged and so we’re mainly doing 30 minutes sports massages.
Flushing the muscles. And trying to get the body moving, getting lactate, acid outta there. But if there’s a certain complaints like say oh, my wrist feels super jammed today, then we can work specifically on that body parts. Other than that, you just pick an area of the body that you’d like to get worked on and we can work with that.
Or you’re like, okay, I just need to lay here for an. 30 minutes, then we are totally fine to do some relaxation stuff as well. Very person dependent. And if you’re like, I see an RMT all the time and I really enjoy this. And then you can tell the girls at the front desk there what you prefer. I. And they can just fit you with the rmt that they think is suitable.
Yeah, time-wise, it honestly just depends on yourself and how you feel. Sometimes people are like, I just need to lay on the floor for an hour. Can I book for an hour from now? Or sometimes it is just the case that we are getting super busy because 15 people show up to the tent right away, so then you might have to wait a half an hour or a couple hours just depending on the day.
Can I just add to that Brooklyn, that the, when you get off the bike, first of all, you might wanna get cleaned up before you see the massage therapist, but the food and the hydration, because as she Brooklyn alluded to, it’s so important to be hydrating every moment you start before the BC bike race all the way through it.
And that’s really gonna carry your body to its maximum potential. So again, when you get off the the course that day, whatever day it is, and you go and make your appointment and then make sure you have food you need to keep eating, that gas tank gets, goes up and down, and your job is to keep your hydration up and your food up at every given moment.
And if you. Before you do anything, you have to have the hydration and the nutrition, and then you’re taking care of the body sorry, the muscles to keep you going. So just keep that in mind. Yeah. Eating, drinking, eating, drinking, never stop. I’ve had, yeah, I’ve had people where they jump on the table and they’re like, I’m just gonna eat my granola bar while you do this.
I go, absolutely, because. Eating it now would be better than in half an hour when you’re starving. And when you say hydration are we talking like alternating electrolytes and water or are we just all electrolytes because of the amount of depletion going on? Nope. I think you need to be doing both and you might.
Find water is less palatable. So whatever’s gonna get that into you, you definitely want to consider, getting the electrolytes. The other thing that if the weather’s hot, you want to thin down your drink mix. A chalky. Whatever you’re having your drink mix for the day or afterwards is gonna be less palatable.
So as the temperature goes up, you really want to thin down your, in which case then you can put electrolytes, into a little bit of everything. So it’s just getting absorbed into your body. There is a I don’t guess a biological phenomenon where there’s a certain ratio of sugars and salts that.
Crosses the stomach liner into your intestines quicker and with less. So if you dump a bunch of plain water, your body has to put sugar and electrolytes into it to create homeostasis for it to be absorbed across. So the best absorption happens with a well orchestrated and diluted mixture.
And so while you’re training, also, you should be training your body to actually eat and drink at the same time. I find for myself, I’m an endurance athlete as well, and that is the hardest part is actually just the nutrition and the water intake. ’cause you get so excited, you’re on the bike and you’re like, we’re going.
And then you start talking to your friend from Mexico that’s going up the trail as well. And then you start chatting and then you’re like, I haven’t drank anything and it’s been an hour and a half and you’re like, I should be drinking a certain amount of water per. So many kilometers and so much time.
No, and it’s, you could recover from any one day or two day deficit on food, nutrition or hydration. But when you really need to ask your body to continue giving for seven days, I. You cannot stop that. Basically set your timer and do it every 45 minutes or 35 minutes, and literally after the race, before the race, you don’t stop.
You’ll find your appetite will go up and you keep feeding it as, like we talked earlier about, it’s like a paper fire, so you can throw a lot at your body and it’s just gonna keep eating and consuming and sucking it in. And then we can talk later about, you’ve now. Increased your stomach size and your appetite.
So a week after the race, your metabolism is going, but then it slowly returns to normal. And then you can slow down on that, but you’ve gotta feed it, feed the beast. Absolutely. And does anyone have any questions so far from the audience?
I can’t really see you guys no, I’m not seeing any hands go up. Also, keep an eye on the chat if somebody asks something there. Yeah. When I was talking to the wellness coordinator, she was when I was asking her like, what do I talk about during this? And she said, there’s a lot of questions regarding cramps that have been happening.
And so cramps are imbalance in the body usually unless you get a blunt force trauma and then that is more of a spasm. And it’s usually, symptom of either over training, under training or an imbalance in electrolytes is usually what comes about for that. And yeah. The areas of the body that I find that I treat the most at the BC bike race are the first couple days are usually like forearms and upper body.
These people. Are used to training their legs and stretching them out. And they do really good with that. But then they forget about all the jostling and the moving around of the arms and how much you end up gripping. ’cause you’re like, oh my goodness, there’s someone in front of me and now I’m gonna slam on my brakes.
Or hopefully that doesn’t happen too much, but I, it’s mountain biking so that happens. And so forearms get super tight, so make sure you do those little wrist stretches. And give yourself a little massage on your forearms or you can come to us. And same thing with opening up the chest, making sure you’re stretching your pecs and and opening up your front body because you’re always hunched over and the body gets stuck in like the hermit crab mode I like to call it.
And so by actually opening up your chest can help with. Recovery there, the body becomes a little bit more neutral in posture after being on the bike for multiple hours at a time. And then usually by day, like three or four people start coming in with a lot more quads and legs and low back.
So just making sure when you are riding, just taking note of where your body is on your bike and how your posture is definitely a big one. And every morning and throughout the day when the wellness tents are set up, there is rollers and yoga mats. And so anyone is free to come use them. As long as you just give them back.
And I know in the past couple years we’ve had all our yoga mats out and someone just decides we’re gonna do a little yoga class and then everyone can join. It’s super fun. And so we have that available for you guys. And so if you’re like, ah, my quad just needs a little attention for five minutes, that’s always a good thing just to hop onto.
Yeah. I’m gonna throw in one, one more thing because you talked about preventative and the sequence of things fatiguing. So you can get into the gym, lift those soup cans, tighten up your forearms. Great analysis of, the legs are trained, but your back and your, these other parts of the body.
But don’t forget about your undercarriage and the taint. Oh yeah. So put, don’t be putting on your shammy cream on day three ’cause you’re not coming back from that. You start day one with the shammy cream and lots of it. You don’t want chafing, you certainly don’t want it down there. And so get on that early preventative medicine.
That is one big thing that people come up and they go, I’m not sure if it’s my. Adductors or if it’s actually a little higher up, I haven’t looked at it, just got off the bike. And most, 90% of the time we go, usually go to medical. And get that patch up. I think that is their, that’s medical’s problem, not mine.
Yeah. We’re like, that’s not us. But that is one of the biggest things that they deal with is SAVI source. It’s actually crazy. It just, people are not, technically we’re not meant to sit on a bike for that long. For that long, like hard. Intense ride. And so trying to protect it down there best you can is always really good.
Now, like some people get all fancy with their shammy cream and that’s great and you should do that in advance to l to figure out, we talk about early season about going getting a race or two be into your legs before. So figure out what shammy cream you like and use it liberally. Again, you can recover from a one day mistake and fix it.
I personally just use Vaseline. It’s cheap and cheery and it does what I need it to do. Absolutely. Even deodorant sometimes works as well. Didn’t know that if you’re like in a crunch. Yeah. Yeah. Super good. I’m trying to we’re at five minutes to the top of the hour and so I’m thinking we do our giveaway.
Oh, I’d forgotten we were doing a giveaway. Yeah, we did put it in the email that we were giving away a massage during the call. Woo. Thanks for remembering Carmel. Yes. Good take Carmel. ’cause I know we were getting into Andreas Kessler’s Vaseline topic, but Alan, maybe we can quick answer your question after the prize.
Okay. The elephant in the room question, Alan. Okay. Let’s do our giveaway here. Everybody’s name is in there and we’re giving away a race week massage. There we go.
And if Lisa Lenon wins it, it’s not fixed, I promise.
Alright. Oh my God, I don’t think anyone has won as much stuff on these calls as Lisa Lennon. Yeah, Lisa, if Lisa shows up, you’re not gonna win. Just so you know.
I. I think it’s, it means you’re gonna have a great race week. I hope so. Thank you. Thank you, Lisa. I’ll make sure you have a coupon in your erase packet to, for your massage. And I also have your pets and your helmet, and we’ll get that to you week as well. Okay.
Alright. Congrats. So Alan to your question, 2027, so not too early to talk about, but it’s it’s not gonna be seven days. It’s not gonna be how it looks like now. Obviously we’ve got time to finalize all that, but it will be different. Equally awesome, just different. And we’re really focused on this next two years really celebrating.
So we’re looking at some exciting stuff for next year. And just all year long celebrating with alumni and memories and nostalgia. So like any good book is there’s a good chapter, comes to an end I know it’s a big question, but yeah, it’ll be in British Columbia, it won’t be seven days and it’ll be likely on Vancouver Island.
How’s that?
You mute? Okay. Awesome. Of course we’re still gonna be, we’re still gonna be around and we’re still gonna be, even if it’s in different format, I’m, I am gonna venture guests and say we’re still gonna have some of the best single track around. So it’ll be epic. It won’t be easy, never will be. And but anyway, we’ll just leave it at that and we can’t wait to see you guys.
Thank you all for your time. Thank you for being so accommodating with technical hiccups and with Brooklyn getting here late. Dean. Perfect. Timing that you were with, Andre was able to step in, especially since Andre and Brooklyn have worked together so well. That was a really easy transition.
Brooklyn, thank you for making it happen. We really appreciate it. And thank you to all of you our always who keep showing up for these calls. I am always available to answer your questions at info at PBC bike race. That’s just easier than telling you Moniera at BC Bike Race. ’cause then we’re gonna have to get into how you spell that.
So [email protected]. I’m always here to answer your questions. So excited to get into the start shoot with all of you in 10 weeks. It’s gonna be a fabulous race week. Thank you so much everyone.