Bye week a chance to recharge batteries

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/09/2009 (5931 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The challenges for CFL athletes during the bye week are numerous. Not only do most of us want to go see our families for a respite, but we need the time to recover physically from the first eight games of the season without taking away from our fitness and strength levels. For as long as I’ve been involved in pro football the gridiron seasons have transpired during the summer months, which makes the bye week our one and only summer vacation. So just like the assignment in English class during the first week of the school year in September, this is what I did on my summer vacation.

Having grown up in British Columbia, and with my first ever nephew approaching his first birthday, it was a natural that I stayed out in Vancouver for a few extra days after the team bus departed the hotel early Saturday morning after the game.

But business always comes before pleasure and since we regularly have a rundown the day after the game to flush out the lactic acids in our muscles and to alleviate our soreness and stiffness, I got a little carried away with fulfilling this routine with some of the natural selections available to me on the left coast.

Anybody who skis in Canada knows that some of the best mountains available are on the West Coast. Well, in the summertime at one of the local mountains in Vancouver called Grouse Mountain, there is almost as much traffic during the sunny months as during the snowy ones.

Normally to get to the top of the mountain you ride the gondola, which takes about 10 minutes to hit the summit. In the summer, if you are in need of a rundown after a professional football game or are just plum masochistic, you can hike up the mountain instead of going on the tram ride on what is affectionately known as Mother Nature’s Stairmaster or the Grouse Grind.

The Grouse Grind is only three kilometres long, which is not so long for a hike, but the challenge is the fact that you are climbing a 30-degree incline and 840 metres of elevation. You can actually feel the air getting thinner and cooler as you attempt this rundown made in hell that some 100,000 people conquer every year. They say the average time to complete it is 90 minutes, and my two buddies and I did it in about an hour — a far cry from the record of 29 minutes. But as one of the hikers who flew by me remarked, "You don’t see many Clydesdales on this trail." Rundown completed and then some.

Saturday evening I also climbed another hill, this time the more sensible way, in a car, to see the Simon Fraser University Clan football team with Obby Khan and some other alumni play a scrimmage atop Burnaby Mountain as their training camp wraps up. We were all impressed by the tempo and organization of their practice, and after meeting the relatively new head coach for the first time and all of the players, we were sent on our way flush with some new Clan gear in the way of T-shirts and hats.

Sunday, I had a family barbecue at my sister’s house downtown and noticed that my nephew Liam is holding up his end of the genetic tree, as at nearly a year old and 30 pounds in weight, he is off the measurable charts when it comes to infant growth rates. I foresee he will be joining the football fraternity sometime in the first round of the 2030 CFL entry draft.

After returning to Winnipeg Monday for an hour of Spin Zone on CJOB, and the wrap-up party on Tuesday to celebrate the completion of Wes Bauer’s Chase the Cure ride across Canada for cancer, it was off to my girlfriend’s waterfront cabin at Davidson Lake, near Lake Winnipeg, with my boy Samuel, the 10-month-old Weimaraner pup, in tow.

Days at the lake fell into a predictable routine, where at 10 a.m. every morning I would mountain bike down a mining trail with a can of bear spray where my water bottle should have been for a couple of hours with the pooch in full pursuit. Then some pushups and sit-ups on the dock at the cabin, followed by swimming in 18 C water and 1,000 repetitions of throwing Sam’s favourite stick into the lake for him to fetch.

Summer vacation abruptly ended two days ago with 60 repetitions of no-huddle drill back at the Bombers stadium, but that’s the way we footballers enjoy our bye weeks in the summer, short with just enough time to recharge for the second half of the season.

Doug Brown, always a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears Tuesdays in the Free Press.