So this past weekend was a huge one for a few reasons. It was my third time doing the Ride to Conquer Cancer. And as in years past it was an amazing weekend.
Day 1 started in Toronto at Ontario Place and Ended in Hamilton at Mohawk College (camp). The ride starts off innocently enough but with the Ironman forever on my mind I had planned to do the longer ride (125k) to help boost my ride milage. Louis (our team captain) and Jason and I made the turn fairly early on and were on our way to 125k. It took us through some side roads, through mississauga and milton where we started to get into the fun of rolling hills. We stopped at all the rest stops but not for long as we were on a pretty decent pace and wanted to keep things rolling. Unfortunately because I stupidly left my bike computer at home I really don't have details on timing and milage (oops). We kept pushing along, encountering some pretty nasty hills including one which looked like a wall that went straight up. Luckily it wasn't overly long but ouch that one hurt. Once we got to the hamilton area at around 100k Louis, Jason and I decided to go for the extra 10km "Hill Challenge" which was a new addition to the party this year. It started with a quick uphill (not too bad) then just seemed to go down, down… uh oh… down some more. Until we made a right hand turn at the bottom of Sydenham Rd. And up, up, up we went - WOW! It was about 3k long (I'm guessing) and pretty nasty steep. I was literally in my easiest gear and still slogging along. Apparently Clara Hughes used to do 15 hill repeats on that road in a much heavier gear - clearly the girl is superhuman. I was really happy after a long day of riding to make it to the top of that climb without having to walk. It's a pretty big deal for me thats for sure. We were rewarded for all that hard work, by getting to go down a nice fun and fast downhill section afterwards, and then - on to Hamilton Mountain. We did the Hamilton Mountain climb last year and while it is long, it's really not very steep so as long as you are careful with your gearing it's pretty manageable. Lots of climbing late in the day has me feeling pretty good about Ironman :)
I also tried out my Infinit nutrition for the first time, and honestly I felt great. Still ate a gluten free sandwich at lunch, but other then that it was all liquid and I had plenty of energy the whole day. So happy with that!!!! I felt awesome, and I was literally cheering people on as I passed them the whole day. Such a fun experience and great training as well.
Camp as usual is a lot of fun, it's great to cheer on teammates as they finish, and then enjoy the food and drinks at the camp site. Lots of great bonding and just fun in general. Then… on to day 2 of the ride. They changed the route this year and it was 113k instead of 100k. The good news is it's far less hilly then day one so really not as bad. There are still some hills, but a lot of them come after a nice downhill which allows you to get some good speed going on which will carry you up most of the hill before actually having to pedal again. We ride as a team on day 2 - but I ended up getting separated from them. Just after the lunch stop, we were all getting ready to head out, so I got on my bike and started pedalling with everyone just behind me (I assumed) doing the same thing. So I started riding, and realized that my teammates weren't with me. Eventually I stopped at the side of the road and waited, eventually calling my teammates. Turned out one of them had a bit of an accident and thats why they were so far behind me. Thankfully Patrick ended up riding up to meet me and we ended up riding the rest of the route (up until the last rest stop) together. We rode at a decent clip and ended up stopping at a random restaurant for a beer! We ended up literally having about an hour to kill before our teammates caught us. It was random and kind of awesome. When we headed out of the bar - we literally just watched our team ride past. It was kind of funny - but we caught up quickly and before long were at the last stop waiting to ride the last 19k with our entire team. We rode slow and together and stopped about 1km from the finish to get into a nice formation and ride across together. It was just an amazing weekend. I got a lot of great riding in and as a whole we raised over $20 million for the Princess Margaret Hospital Cancer foundation. Just a great cause, a great event and an incredible team!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment