Fall Riding

This weekend's weather was totally awesome.  While I was exchanging emails with a buddy, Rommel, he asked me if I wanted to join them on a bike ride this Saturday.  They were meeting at 8:30 am at Angus Glen CC (where I swim) on Saturday so it was an easy 15 minute ride over.  The weather was a little chilly in the morning but I knew it would be hot later in the morning.  Rommel promised it would be an "easy" ride with no hammering it.  The race season was over and it was a short 80 km ride straight up Warden Ave just shy of the southern tip of Lake Simcoe.  I've done this route several times and am familiar with the road as Warden is flat as a pancake for the first 30 km and then goes into some small rollers.  No problem.   There were five other guys and Lisa.  This was the biggest group ride I've ever been part of.  Usually I ride solo or with one other rider.  One of the riders was Roger Hospedales who writes for Ironman.com, Running Free and Multisports Canada.  I've read several of his articles but didn't realize who he was until after he turned back partway through the ride.  He had to get home to report on Kona. 

The pace started out slow but quickly moved up.  Only later did I realize we had a pretty good tail wind.  I checked my heart rate and I was around 150 bps.  I knew I would be able to keep this up but I didn't want to get dropped this early in the ride!  Basically at every interesection, the lead rider would hold up and wait until the last rider reached.  We kept fairly tight together.  Lisa was keeping up pretty good.  We reached the turn around point and pulled off to the side to rest and refuel.  I had three gels but was feeling tired.  This was only the third ride since Muskoka.  Rommel mentioned that several guys knew Coach and we chatted about him for a couple of minutes.  The conversation confirms what I've been thinking about him the last two months.


We started to head back home and directly into a headwind.  This was going to be trouble!  Within a couple of minutes, the line spread out pretty quick and I was struggling to keep up.  When we met up at the next interesection, I told the other guys not to wait up as I would stay back with Lisa.  Needless to say, it was a long ride back home.  By the time we got back to Angus Glen, the other guys had taken off, not that I expected them to wait.  I checked my power tap and saw that I burned about 2,300 calories but only had about 600 for breakfast and 300 in gels during the ride.  Talk about running out of gas.  Rommel suggested we ride with them next spring and summer as many of them are doing Ironman.  Not a bad idea as riding with faster people will make me faster and my bike needs work.  Lots of it.

Sunday I ran for about 90 minutes and it was a disaster.  I think I was still tired from Saturday's ride.  I was using a wooden roller for the bottom of my foot/heel and it killed.  I'm still mulling over running the Angus Glen Half marathon next month.

Holiday Monday (Thanksgiving) was another awesome day but I had a meeting at 9:00 am.  It ran a longer than I thought it would.  I wanted to get another ride in so I bugged my brother Don to go riding.  He made every excuse in the book but I basically told him that the riding season was almost over and there aren't going to be too many days where its sunny and 25 degrees.  He agreed and so I rode down to his place in Ajax and then we tooled around south Ajax for about 45 minutes.  Tammy wasn't too happy about me working on Thanksgiving and then go riding so I agreed we'd all go to Whittamores Farm after she picked me up at Don's house.  It was total chaos but expected for a beautiful holiday Monday. 

Vanessa with a friend

I was tired from the ride but didn't dare complain to Tammy.  It was another beautiful day but sadly days like these are coming to an end.