On Riding In The City

Saturday (August 21) Ian, Thi and I went for a quick ride around the city. The boys were fast and it hurt, in a good way. I will here try to summarize the route to the best of my recollection.

We first had to work our way to the bike trail from the Toronto Public Library Branch at Gerrard and Broadview. This involved a great deal of winding around street car tracks, bad drivers (question who is worse, pick-up trucks or taxis?), oblivious pedestrians and so on. By the time we got to the trail I was seeing red and started an attack, Thi held on and would not let go. Ian was still warming up and dropped off. I slowed down and by the by Ian got back on. Of course having set a speed Thi and Ian were now ready to run hot.

We went up Royal York and as per standard operating procedure missed the light at The Queensway. When we finally did clear Royal York and The Queensway I was feeling slow and it showed, 26 km/h, Thi and Ian started complaining and before I knew what's what, found myself desperately drafting trying very hard not to fall off their backsides.

When we got to St. Phillips I made a discovery, the entire run from Dixon to Weston I was never once going slower than the posted speed limit. Sadly there was no cop around to give me a speeding ticket. (A speeding ticket whilst cycling would be awesome!) I maxed out at about 55km/h just before hitting the brakes as I neared the traffic light at Weston, Ian and Thi both passed me going down the hill. We used Oak St. and Wendell to cross highway 401, which is probably one of the nicest places to cross the highway in the city, it is a minor side road with no interchange.

We used Bartor, Arrow, Signet and Weston Road to get up to Langstaff, while mostly keeping the pace down to the low 30s an occasional sprint up a hill left me hurting. But when we turned on Langstaff we got nailed by a good 20 or 30km/h East Wind, it was a fight to go east. We used Creditstone and took it to Rutherford and then down Keele, although looking at the map now, it occurs to me, one day we should just take Creditstone (becomes Melville) all the way up past Major MacKenzie - heck a guy could use this as a route to (or from) Klienburg.

The journey home was, with the exception of a rude driver (honked at for no good reason) largely uneventful. The trip down Russel Hill road from just below St. Clair to Dupont was, as always, a complete adrenalin rush. There was a Toyota SUV in front of us at Clarendon, by the time I got to Cottingham (about 500m down the hill) the Toyota was out of sight it was so far back. (It probably helps that I was taking a 30km/h zone turn at over 50km/h.)

On Rosedale Valley Road an entire car managed to pass us on the 2km run from Park Road to Bayview. When we got back to Dundas Thi decided he needed to log some extra miles so while Ian had to meet someone Thi and I decided to try to meet up with the Saturday Pickering group, on the way we found Jason Charette who rode with us.

We climbed the hill at Kingston Road between Birchmount and Danforth, Thi started hammering and while Jason and I were keeping a fine form at first, doing 35km/h up the hill I found the 90km already on my legs hurt too much and I decided to drop back a little and regain my ground later on. I think Thi was feeling generous and decided to stop at the Tim Hortons just past the Danforth merge. We waited a while and the Pickering group never showed, so we headed home. In short it was a good day, complete with a lot of proper burn your legs sprinting and hill climbing. Hopefully we will do another ride like that one again soon.