Bikes and Code

I like my bikes.

This probably isn’t a surprise. I also like working and earning money so I can do fun things like eat and ride bikes. When you do not live in the same place that you work, there is a certain class of individual who enjoys bikes and feels that one of the better ways to travel from home to work and vice versa is with said bicycle.

This is the subject of today’s chat.

When I moved to White Rock, I knew that I would most likely be riding my bike to work on a regular basis. I did the usual searching via google and came to the conclusion that not too many people commuted by bike from my neck of the woods to Vancouver. The distance was mildly intimidating, from my work location in Gastown, I was looking at somewhere in the ballpark of a 60km ride one way to get to work. This isn’t an everyday ride for someone like me.

Fortunately, the bus system in the Lower Mainland is pretty good. Bike racks that can take two bikes are found on all buses, which is a great shortcut. My commuting career started by taking the bus to just over the Oak Street Bridge and riding from there. Later I expanded to routes through UBC but knew I was just delaying the inevitable and had to make the attempt to ride the whole way. I have now done the White Rock to Gastown ride enough times that I can make some recommendations to anyone who is interested in doing the same thing.

First, some links:

Cycling Route Planner

White Rock -> South West Vancouver

The Cycling Route Planner is a great resource for general cycling routes. However, I would note that it is far better suited to getting around Vancouver itself. The suggested route it comes up with from White Rock is a bit questionable, though certainly plausible.  The second link is my usual route to get from here to there. Once I hit Vancouver, depending on how I’m feeling I will go through UBC or directly up the Cypress bike route and over the Burrard Street Bridge. There is lots of information on riding around Vancouver, so I won’t talk much about that right now.

This is my getting to work route, coming back would be mildly different to avoid some of the left turns. Starting off, going down 152nd Street to 40th Avenue and turning left, while slightly further than going down King George, allows you to skip the King George/Hwy 99 overpass, which is not the most entertaining of options. The right lane does turn off, which means that a merge across is needed. Not a problem, but sometimes it’s a bit more stressful than I really need at the start of the ride. On 40th, once you hit King George, take a right to the Colebrook road offramp thing just before the overpass and then a left on Colebrook itself to go under the bridge. Colebrook goes along the flats and ends with a right turn and then up the hill. Stay on this road until it ends at 56th Ave and take a left there. Down the hill, take a right on Scott Road and the first leg is done.

I should note that the Colebrook route does involve a 500m long climb at something like 12%. This is a much less busy route than taking King George up to Hwy 10, but it’s worth pointing out. If that kind of hill does not appeal to your knees, continue straight on King George, go through Hwy 10 and use the crosswalk button to cross King George. The left turn lights do not turn for a lone biker, so it can be frustrating if there is traffic, but no cars turning left with you. Take Hwy 10 to Scott Road and take a right. There is a pretty big shoulder along here.

Scott Road, when I ride to work on it at around 7AM is not terribly busy. Your mileage may vary. Take Scott Road to 72nd, up and over the hill and left on 72nd. 72nd -> 116th Street and right. 116th Street is a bike route and is fairly pleasant. Up to 84th and left, finally down to Brooke Road and a right. Take Brooke down to River road and when traffic finally breaks, hang a left.

Depending on how you do this, this next little stretch can be a bit nerve wrecking. There is a lot of truck traffic along this road, though it is wide enough, it does get tight from time to time. If you are a confident rider, as you go under the alex fraser bridge, merge into the car lane to take a left on Nordel. If you’re a bit more timid, there is a crosswalk that I have used on particularly busy days.

From here, get yourself over to the parking lot of Planet Ice through the industrial park. From there, the walkway up to the bridge goes from behind the building. Stay to the right as you enter the parking lot and you can’t miss it.

The Alex Fraser Bridge itself is pretty self explanatory. You can’t really take a wrong turn up there. Once you have come down the other side, you will end up on a sidewalk with an off ramp to your left. The easiest way to do this next bit is cross the off ramp over to the lights, then take a right across the crosswalk. The little path continues on the other side and takes you over another bridge and then down some entertaining switchbacks.

At the bottom of the pedestrian walkway, you want to follow the little bike path away from the road that you are now beside. This bike path puts you into a dead end beside an off leash dog park. Start cycling down the street while keeping an eye open to your left. There is a bike path that goes over Highway 91 and you want to take that. Coming down from that bike overpass, take it really easy as you are going to take a very tight turn at the bottom and go in the opposite direction. This path spits you out on Westminster Highway.

Take a left on Westminster and the first right onto River Road. Enjoy.

Once you’re on River Road, there isn’t much else to say. Essentially the next 15km or so is straight with a couple of right turns. (And one left at a T intersection, but right is an obvious dead end, so it’s not hard to get). The new bridge over the Fraser River, accessible from Van Horne way is not something you will miss as you continue, take that over and you are into Vancouver.

Well done.

A few last points, unless you really have to, I’d suggest staying away from the Heather Street bike route during the school year if you commute in the mornings. There are several schools and associated dangers with parents randomly stopping to drop kids off. Fun times.

Lengthy, hopefully useful for some of you. Cheers.

Habits. Important things they are.

The cycling season is going pretty well if I do say so myself. I’ve done a grand total of 8 races as of now this season, which pretty close to matches my lifetime road race total. I’ve even actually placed in a couple of the races, which was pretty much unheard of for me in the past. My goals for this year is to win a race and I can certainly see that happening.

I ended up only doing one other race in the EV Spring Series, the Bradner Road race. Held on a hilly course, it was relatively tough, but ended up being a rather uneventful race. Anything remotely resembling an attack was quickly chased down. I made one go at it about halfway through the race, but after about 2km out front with a small group it was clear that it wasn’t going anywhere. I attacked on the last climb, was out front for about 1km and was passed by the pack with less than 200m to go. Ah well.

The Campbell Heights cat 5 road race ended up being the fastest race I had been in to date with an average speed of just over 39km/h for somewhat over 50km. Not much to note there other than I made it up the 184th avenue climb and only got spat out the back on the last ascent. Caught up before the next climb and finished 11th in the bunch.

My Thursday nights have been spent in Richmond, with the Team Coastal Cycling criterium series. These are massively fun little races. Short, cat 5 is only something like 15km, but pretty intense. The circuit has wide, shallow corners, so it’s nice and safe and the cat 5 guys all seem pretty relaxed, which is nice. I’ve had two pack finishes in this series, one 4th and a 2nd.

The fourth came in my first real attempt at a sprint finish and the 2nd came out of a two man breakaway with 2.5 laps to go. Lost that race by something like a foot. Still though, it basically means that this year I have finished with the pack or in the break with every race I have done. The only race I haven’t finished is one where I crashed and that was when I was sitting in 10th in a large field going into an important corner.

In other words, I think my positioning is decent as are the legs, so I’m pretty happy. Going for the win is my next goal, then just attacking and attacking until the season is done. Hopefully I’ll find a team for next year and then up to category 4!

The road race season starts much earlier on the west coast. March 15th is this year’s first real road race and this is two weeks earlier than last year’s race. The race series is put on by these guys and from what I’ve been able to gather from exactly one race, appears to be well run.

The first race of the year was a flat, four corner circuit race weighing in at about 6.3km per lap. 9 laps in total for a grand total of  just under 57km of racing for my category, the lowly ‘C’. I had actually been somewhat worried about this as I haven’t been able to get much riding in yet this year, so I was definitely relying on riding intelligently as much as any semblance of strength that I actually had. My main goal was to see how fast the thing was and sit in for the first half of the race. After about halfway if things were going well, I was going to try to get to the front, see if I could get into a break for at least a little while, then attempt to have a good last few km. I also intended to not crash and stay away from anything remotely resembling a sprint.

The day started off cold. It got colder and rainier. It actually started snowing just as my race finished, so that about sums up the environment. It wasn’t a drizzle either, it was a driving rain, I was completely soaked. That said though, I was riding with enough effort that I wasn’t cold until after the race was over, though I wouldn’t have enjoyed an extra couple of laps.

My race was punctuated with two particularly hard efforts that were worth noting, but other than that, I probably took it a bit easier than I should have. The first one was roughly on lap 4, two guys went down just in front of me and basically brought me to a complete stop. At that point it was chase time, which is never fun. It was pretty chaotic getting back on with lots of single riders stretched out. Unfortunately by the time I caught most of the people trying to catch up, they had blown and I wasn’t able to help them at all. I eased up slightly as I overtook each rider trying to let them latch on, but once I had a gap, I figured it was more important to get back on the back.  The chase took me about a quarter of a lap and I didn’t really let up until I was in the front half of the pack so I could relax a bit more. 

The second ‘major’, quoted for reasons that will become clear, effort was with approximately three laps to go. Two guys had gone off the front and had a bit of a gap. I probably went too early, but I felt that a break might be kind of fun. I jumped across and was followed by about three other riders. So there were five of us up there and we were pretty quickly reeled in by the group. Nothing was getting away, probably because none of us is fast… Anyhow, my turn on the front came around and before I knew it I had about a 20m gap, which was not where I wanted to be with 18km or so to go. A bit far for me to go it alone. I kept the pressure up for a bit, viewing this as a chance for a bit of a harder effort for some fitness but I never committed. 

The last couple of laps were pretty uneventful for me. I sat in the pack, tried to move up a couple of times but messed up. I put in a hard last kilometer and while staying out of the real sprint kept in touch with the leaders and came across in 20th or so I think. All in all, pretty solid considering I was very worried about being shelled in the first few minutes.

Lessons learned? Next race I’m going to spend more effort trying to get into a break and keep it going. The racing seems to be of  a ‘chase it all down’ variety. Since we’re all pretty weak, a ‘counter attack’ wasn’t going to happen, though I could see it being an effective tactic. So that’s my goal next week. And if that completely fails? Fabian from 5km to go.