A friend invited us up to their cottage in Minden which is about 150 km away. Naturally the thought of riding up to his cottage would be a great way to test my endurance. One small trouble. My longest ride has been 36 km and I've only been riding outdoors for one week and we were invited up in two weeks. So for Saturday's ride, I decided to ramp it up by going a little further than the normal 36 km loop but it started out as a disaster.
Normally before any workout, I have everything arranged the night before so I don't waste time fumbling around in the morning. I been riding outside with my trainer tire (last year's tire that the tread has worn down) and have been too lazy to switch over. Saturday morning forecast was rain so I wasn't sure if I was going to ride outside or on the trainer (for two hours? Ugh) so I didn't switch the tires over rather I would wait until I got up Saturday morning. I got up around 5:30 am and checked the weather. The roads were wet but it wasn't raining so I decided to ride outside so I had to change the rear tire. If you recall from last summer, I had about eight flats so changing a tire should be fairly simple right? Nope. I fumbled around for about 15 minutes and then took the bike outside. I rode about 15 feet when the rear wheel kept rubbing against the break pads. Upon closer inspection, there was the inner tube bulging out of the tire. I didn't push the value up to ensure that of the inner tube was inside the tire. I'm lucking it didn't blow when I pumped it up. So back into the house to fix the problem. Another 15 minutes later, I was back riding and about 400 meters, I came to a stop light. I stood up to start riding when the back wheel locked up and I almost went over the handle bars. Looks like I didn't tighten the fly nut tight enough and the wheel popped out of the brackets. I guess it was better to find out when I was stopped as opposed to be flying down a hill doing 50 km\hr.
Finally I got riding and headed north up Warden Ave. I hit my normal turnaround point at Bloomington Road but kept going. I was flying along thanks to a nice tailwind. I hit Davis Drive and was going to turn around when I saw another rider about 500 meters ahead. I decided to chase the rider down and it took me about 5 km until I finally caught up to her. Small victory but it would come with a price. I was bagged and I was far from home. I turned east to head home and then south. I forgot about the tailwind and now had a slight head wind. I had one gross tasting Power Gel (from the Marathon) and that helped but I was a little shaky as I had burned a lot of energy chasing the rider down. I was averaging about 38 km\hr as Warden is flat as a pancake.
I forgot that Mccowan Ave isn't a continuous road this far north so I had to detour further east to Highway 48
By the time I hit Aurora Road, I had to get something else to eat. Thankfully I had five dollars so I stopped at a gas station and got a bagel plastered in butter. It tasted sooooo gooooood!! I was about two hours into my ride so I called Tammy and let her know that I would be about 20 minutes and she reminded me that she wanted to go for her ride. On the ride home, I passed about 200 riders training for Ride To Conquer Cancer. There were some people riding mountain bikes. Oh that was going to be a painful 200 km ride! Naturally with that many riders, traffic would be backed up but at least there weren't many cars on the road. But there was one idiot who tried to pass the riders by driving in north in the southbound lane....the lane I was riding in. I got out of the aero position and stood on my pedals to make myself as visible as possible.
I boogied home with doubts about riding to my friend's cottage as my back was killing me. The ride was about 69 km and took me about 2:20 or so. Not bad but 69 km is way short of 150 km.
On another note, Tammy has a friend whose husband had a stroke a couple of days ago and is in the hospital. The thing that's most bizarre is that Tom is only 40 years old and is in better shape than I am and probably has half the body fat I do. He is totally ripped and in good shape. There is no history of strokes in his family. Hopefully everything will work out.
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