Okay before I forget, Monday, September 1, Labour day, I am going to do the oft promised ride from Lake Ontario to Lake Simcoe and back. It starts at 5:30am (0530) at the Tim Horton's at Leslie and Lakeshore (North West corner). Everyone is welcome to join in, but bring food, drink and a few lights because it is still dark at that hour. The route is online in high resolution here, or see below.
Now as for the ride to Harrison I did yesterday. First if anyone wants to see the high resolution version of the route, just click here.
Some things you might notice, I did not take the route I planned to take originally, in my Friday August 22 post Weekend Rides. After consulting with Aaron I decided to go across Lakeshore and then go almost straight up Cawthraw, then Central Parkway/Kennedy. It was a dead easy route to remember and actually pretty lightly on traffic, as one might expect at 6am on a Sunday. Now I should add that Toronto air, at least on Sunday was appalling, it was filthy with smog and lord knows what else I was shoveling into my lungs - yes I should go into a tirade against pollution but anyway, because of the air, I took things light until I was well into Mississauga.
I rode directly under the flight path of aircraft taking off from Pearson airport, at a rate of about one per minute. You know, as a large jet, i.e. a 777, 767 or A320 approaches the whine from the engines is very different head on than from the side? I only discovered that yesterday. from the side or behind a jet aircraft makes a whoshing sound, of... well a jet of hot gasses escaping a pressure chamber, but from in front they sound like huge piston engines. No that has nothing to do with the ride, but you try riding along Kennedy road at Courtney park and notice anything other than 200 ton objects flying a mile above you at 300km/h and making as much noise as my lifeguard whistle.
Sigrid, Aaron and I rode from Brampton to Erin ON, I had more than a few chances to reflect on the irony as we approached that town, from there Aaron wanted to take a slight detour so we could do what must have been a 10% drop with a 170 degree switch back. Aaron, thankfully, advised us to take it slow. I am sure if I had been going fast I would have crashed on the switch back, it was a tight one. A few rollers later, we did a U-turn and came back to Erin (no not the bike, the town, Erin - the bike - was never far from me the entire day).
I had to use the washroom, too much sweat in my sunglasses for one thing, and I had drained my water bottle. We stopped at a Coffee time, in the town of Erin. Where I made what I only recently realised was a foolish mistake, I filled my bottle with straight tap water, but more on that later.
We continued on, I believe in Grand Valley I made the second mistake of refilling my bottle with more tap water. Several times we passed over the Grand River, this is the river that passes through Kitchener/Waterloo and supplies the town with something like one seventh the town's drinking water. It was an odd realization, the first year's students at Waterlooooser would drink some of that water during frosh week which starts in just a few days. Actually there is nothing grand about the Grand River that far upriver, it was little more than a creek or stream.
When we got onto Highway 89 I suppose I should have thanked my lucky stars that Erin - the bike now, is a Roubaix and not pure carbon frame like the Tarmac (or even worse, a steel frame). Highway 89 had a crack in the road, perpendicular to traffic, literally every three meters. Imagine, every second or so, say thump, but say it loudly, that is what I sounded like. Somewhere on thump! 89 I thump! crossed the thump! one hundred thump! mile mark, thump! for only the thump! second time thump! in my life, thump!. As we approached Mount Forrest the road quality improved significantly and my rear end stopped hurting so much, except that we turned off of 89 almost as soon as the road became nice.
By the time we got to the the Canadian Inline Training Centre I was completely bonked. Actually I was bonked before we got to 89. Somewhere on 25 I bonked, I took in some Hammer Gel, recovered slightly then bonked again at around the Century mark and never really recovered. On Sigrid's advice I bought coke (she said either coke or Gatorade, something with calories) for a ride. Good advice, except the problem with coke, it is carbonated and my water bottle could not hold the coke down. My lower legs go sprayed, Erin got sprayed, my shoes got sprayed, everything below my knees was covered in sugary stickiness. Next time I do a long ride I will bring up bags of powder drink mix or I will buy Gatorade. I am not fan of that stuff, but bonking really sucks, especially when it is so easy to avoid.
I did a lap and a half on the banked track at the CITC, quite probably one of the only, if ever, times a bike has seen that 200m track. I only managed to crank out 37.5km/h, but I was tired and I am just not used to banked corners. Maybe if I had done a dozen or so laps I could have figured out how to ride a bike on skating track, but since I was tired I decided to call it a day with 300m.
Georg N. was kind enough to drive me to the Go train station, he had to look after things at home so he couldn't take me all the way. But on the way to Mississauga we stopped at a Tim Hortons, Georg wanted a coffee - I wanted to die, but I digress. Georg had to buy gas as well, so I told him to go fill up and I would get his coffee. I was, obviously, the only guy in the Tims wearing a bike jersey, bike shorts and shoes. Oh and I was walking with more than a modest amount of obvious pain. When Georg pointed out that I was clearly having problems moving, I responded that I wanted the people in the Tim's to show some respect since, after all I had just burned off 7500 calories. He replied they probably thought I was crazy, and if they knew what I had done, they would be sure I was crazy! (Later Georg admitted he was kind of jealous of me for doing that ride, which is fine, but it begs the question, Georg, if you are reading this, why don't you come out on Monday? If you don't have a road bike I can introduce you to some decent bikes stores, or there is always some places close to your home. CyclePath at Spears near 3'rd Line, or Gears on Lakeshore near Mississauga both look like good stores.)
Of course doing 180km the week before Duluth may not be the wisest thing any of us ever do, but hey for me the 180km is a much more exciting thing than Duluth. Its sort of sad how little interest I have in skating anymore.
When I got home my parents came over for dinner. They brought some takeout, we bought a cake on Saturday. While I was in the shower I was thinking about that cake and it occurred to me, the cake has about 2000 calories (an estimate) so if I ate the entire cake, I would still be down about 5500 calories!
Its a remarkably difficult thing to keep the weight on when you burn 7500 calories in a single day.
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