24 Hours of Summer Solstice Albion Hills Conservation Area, Bolton, Ontario

The 24 Hours of Summer Solstice is North America's largest 24 hour mountain bike festival and relay event! With teams ranging from solo to ten person it's perfect for the ultimate challenge or a weekend riding or racing with friends.

This year Courtesy Bicycles Race Team members participated as a team and tore up the course in Albion Hills. The guys all looked to be in great form and the trip was well worth it!

Essex County Time Trial Series #1

All I can say is unbelievable! This was one of those races that can be classified as hard. Not because of terrain, it's flat. But, the wind was gusting so hard that if you turned sideways into the wind, you would be blown over. The wind gusts were hitting 80kph and the wind was minimally around 40kph. Just plain ugly....

I decided to wear my Cycling Saddlemen kit for the race because it was a little cold at 15c and it has a good fit right now (in other words, my skinsuit is just a little too tight and bulgy for my likes).

Ciociaro Thursday Series Race #1

Well, after spending the first part of the winter working hard at recovering from the broken clavicle and multiple fractures, and the last part working hard at undoing everything I did in the first part, it was finally time to race again. I was already putting off the racing this year and the weather was a good excuse not to go out and race so far....not to mention that I didn't really feel in shape for racing....but I had made the commitment to ride. I figured the worst I could do was race for 15 minutes and then go home blaming a bird or some stones or something like that.

Tour de Troit

This year was the 10th edition of the Tour de Troit. It is a Detroit area ride that raises money to develop greenways and other space for cyclists in the motor city. It is a ride with ride captains, ride mechanics and SAG support so getting lost or abandoned is not really likely. This year, the 100km version was moved back an hour with a starting time of 7:00 am. I woke up early at 5:00 so that I could drink some coffee and have a light breakfast. Lots of time and I actually knew where I was going in Detroit,

PEAC: Celebration of Cycling

Today was the 2011 edition of the Programs to Educate All Cyclists' Celebration of Cycling event. This is a fundraiser to help raise money to make cycling possible for children and adults with disabilities--they customize a ride for each rider. And, some of the modifications are simply amazing. Some rides are simply created for the particular rider while other riders simply require matching with an able-bodied rider for tandemneering (if that's what tandem riding is properly called). What's better, is there's no fundraising per se--no bugging all your co-workers, family and fb friends--you just pay your entry fee, show up, and ride! They raise money from all the entrants and it seems to work out quite nicely.

Ciociaro Club O-Cup #6

The easiest way to describe this race is to say that this race hurt. OUCH!!!! But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

The Ciociaro Club Ontario Cup is a circuit race on an enclosed 1.35km track in the suburbs of Windsor. It is part of the O-Cup Road Series where a champion is determined by overall points after the seven races. The Ciociaro Club O-Cup is the 6th race in the series and this is the first year the O-Cup race has been held at the Ciociaro Club.

Criterium Detroit City

It has been 2 decades since the Motor City has been host to a criterium bike race and the Criterium Detroit City was in my opinion, a success. The event was held in the area around Grand Circus Park with the start/finish on Broadway.

Ciociaro Thursday Series Race #7

Tonight I was feeling tired and didn't want to race before the race (this seems to be an easy excuse to me so I decided to race anyway). Katrina wanted to race again in the kids' race so I was at the Ciociaro at 4:30 and ended up there until the finish of the A race around 9:00pm. Katrina did great finishing 4th among her group, pretty good considering the 3 in front of her had 24" road bikes and she is using a 20" mountain bike. A long night with some great racing finishes

Ciociaro Thursday Series Race #6

For me this was another night that was hard to get motivated to go and race. I was feeling sick and the forecast was for thunderstorms and heavy winds. My daughter Katrina wanted to race in the kids race so I decided that I would race too.

Because I was at the race for the kids' race, I managed to get a very nice warmup and was ready to race. We had a nice contingent of riders wearing Courtesy colours and someone even remarked that it looked like we breed like

Pontiac 150 Rotary Ride Charity Event

Today I rode in the Pontiac 150 Rotary Ride as a charity ride. I managed to clock in 152km in 4:40 for an average of 32.7 kph. Not too bad considering I rode the first 112km by myself, yes sans d'autres cyclistes. But, I'm getting ahead of myself....

Although it was a charity event over in Detroit, I knew that I needed to get to the event early, with the expectation that there would be riders ready to leave at 8:00am. The day was looking nice and everything was going well

Ciociaro Thursday Series Race #5

Today was one of those days when it was hard to convince myself to even go to the race. I was feeling tired and lazy and it just seemed too much work to even get ready for the race. Good thing I worked on the bike the day before or I'd have never got to the Ciociaro for the race--it would have been the perfect excuse to not go.

Once again, not too much to report. The race was very clean with good team strategy and only a couple of