Trevor Linden excited about bike race in the Alps: 'It'll get me fresh and ready to roll for the season'

Vancouver Canucks president of hockey operations Trevor Linden loves biking, climbing and physical hockey. He dislikes staged fighting, buttoning his shirts up to the top and new-fangled ideas like "mind rooms."

With his rookie season as the top hockey executive in Vancouver about to commence, the Canucks president is set to undertake a grueling race in the Alps, called the Haute Route Alps. The race will last seven days and features amateur cyclists and climbers racing 900 kilometers on their bikes, before climbing 21,000 meters over 19 unique ascents. Linden is a very fit man.

"With the way my life has worked out, I really thought I wouldn’t be doing this, but the way things have worked out, the people we have in place, it’s pretty quiet, it’s a good window," Linden told Jim Jamieson of the Vancouver Province this weekend.

"I'm really excited," continued the iconic former Canucks captain. "For me, seeing the world on your bike is really something special, it’s really unique. It’s one of those things where you set a goal. I’m going to ride my bike from Geneva to Nice and every day I get one step closer.

“It’ll get me fresh and ready to roll for the season."

Like a ride through mountain terrain in Switzerland and France, Linden's first season in Vancouver could get bumpy. In one of hockey's most ravenous markets, Linden's club appears poised to be a bubble team to qualify for the postseason (at best). You can't really blame him, then, for soaking up the last remaining moments of peace and calm remaining this offseason.