On Riding and Rain

I’ve done quite a bit of riding lately. Of course on account of the fact that my job is much closer to home, distance is shorter, but I am trying to make up for it by doing things faster and with more hills. Most days I now cover Cosburn from Donlands to Woodbine, or even further, faster than the cars do. (It helps that I have a bike lane and the cars have traffic – of course I have the same 40km/h speed limit they… disobey, and I often have a head wind – when I go east, go figure!)

Anyway I have done a bunch of hill climbing and a few club rides since my last post, one of the club rides involves a nice little climb on Brimely road. It turns out the hill (which we do repeats on), is about 890m (at least the loop I do). It starts at 88m above sea level and I turn and do it again at 160m above sea level, so it averages around 8%, but is in places as gentle as 4% and at other times is 13%.

Thursday evenings we have a little ride up and down the hill. I set a modest goal for myself, after all, it is only mid-May, I decided I would do four repeats of the hill, some guys did three, some did six. One person, a new guy, got to the bottom and from what I understand he basically just went up a little bit, turned around and went back down. Most of the guys were done and the new guy was still at the bottom. I still had plenty left in the tank and in my legs so I went back down the hill and rode up with the new guy. Mostly trying to encourage him as we rode. Towards the two thirds mark, the hill leveled off from 13% to 4 or 5%. I got back into the saddle (obviously at 13% I’m not going to be sitting all that much, I am no Alberto Contador). As the hill became more level I pushed the new guy, steadily, for about 150m (or about 500 feet). It is a nice feeling when you can, well frankly rescue someone, from the bottom of the hill.

The following week it rained almost continuously from, well Friday afternoon until Thursday morning. Although the grass and the trees are mostly green as a result of all this damned rain (more expected over the coming long weekend) the rain is getting to me. But at least I can now ride to work in the rain, I use the beater bike, something I could not do when I worked 25km from home. Tomorrow, Saturday, is supposed to be a nice day, so I am going to ride up to Lake Simcoe. I doubt anyone will come with, so I may need to charge up my iPod, oh well, at least I will get one good ride in before the rain that is predicted to ruin Sunday and Monday.