Today I rode to Goodwood, the interested reader can see the high resolution route by clicking here or just look at the picture below.
As is pretty much the standard the fast guys did their thing and I did not even try to keep up. But for once the reason I did not try was not because I could not, rather I need to save my legs for tomorrow. I honestly believe that if I had really tried I could have kept up, perhaps not the whole way but a good portion of the distance I would have been right there in the QB Express.
The ride to Goodwood is generally a pretty pleasant road, Brock Road is almost a continuous run of up hills, but if whatever goes down must climb back up, whatever goes up does get to race back down. On Reesor I was clocking in a steady 35-45km/h from around 19'th Ave. to around Highway 7. I covered around 114km, in about four hours (this excludes time spent stopped for pastries at the bakery, or red lights) and according to my GPS I also burned off over 4400 calories.
Tomorrow: 180km!
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Sunday, August 31, 2008
Saturday, August 30, 2008
On the August 30 Stead State Ride
I am going to bed soon, I have to get up early for the Sunday ride. But I would just like to post my most recent ride information for the curious out there.
An interesting aside, we were not far from Erin at the far reach of this ride. You know now that my bike is Erin, I am going to notice that name all the damned time. Erin Mills, town of Erin. The Cisco sales rep I used to deal with was Erin Gartner, all these Erins... weird!
Anyway I got home from the ride and well actually after the ride went directly to the office to fix something, then went home and went to the super market. Then I got my neighbour, who bought Amy, to bring her over and I cleaned the chain and told my neighbour we should go for a ride. If for no other reason then to learn how to shift gears properly on a road bike, that ride will have to be postponed until tomorrow though, it gets dark too early these days.
Remarkably there really is not all that much to record, unless of course, I talk about the ride, but at this point I do not feel up to that task.
An interesting aside, we were not far from Erin at the far reach of this ride. You know now that my bike is Erin, I am going to notice that name all the damned time. Erin Mills, town of Erin. The Cisco sales rep I used to deal with was Erin Gartner, all these Erins... weird!
Anyway I got home from the ride and well actually after the ride went directly to the office to fix something, then went home and went to the super market. Then I got my neighbour, who bought Amy, to bring her over and I cleaned the chain and told my neighbour we should go for a ride. If for no other reason then to learn how to shift gears properly on a road bike, that ride will have to be postponed until tomorrow though, it gets dark too early these days.
Remarkably there really is not all that much to record, unless of course, I talk about the ride, but at this point I do not feel up to that task.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
On A Fast Tuesday Ride
I booked today off as a vacation day. You wouldn't know it from the way my Blackberry has been ringing off the hook, all work related crap. I read a study, actually there are several, by forcing employees to have real down time, - i.e. disconnected, offline, away from the office, sleep in, don't worry about it, we've got you covered - down time. Well that sort of downtime causes:
- improved employee moral
- improved performance and productivity that far and away offsets the loss from a couple days away from work
Well fine, I hate my job, and frankly when my boss got pissed at me because on Thursday at 8:30 I was not able to shut down the servers, well let me elucidate, that was Thursday at 8:30 at night! I was on my bike at King and Parliament and he called me and got pissed because I needed twenty minutes to get home - well if anyone out there is hiring an IT guy, I am willing to be on call but it better be expected that off hours calls may not get the under 5 minute turn around that a call during the business day would entail. This 24x7x365 World we have created is a monster and I want out! Lets start the revolution, throw your Blackberry into Lake Ontario!
Anyway an angry rant from an office worker, hope you enjoyed it.
Okay so on to real things, i.e. things that I love with a passion, not hate with a passion (what can I say? everything for me is a passion). As I said yesterday I was going to do the Tuesday night ride, and I did. I could include the map, but the one Dan drew in advance is exactly the route we followed. Also I must have accidentally hit the stop button on my GPS on Russel Hill Road so I lost the last ten or so clicks, which were also probably the fastest part of the ride. But I can draw comfort from the fact that for once I was not waaaay behind the pack the entire ride. Well there was one spot I started to drop back, on Eglinton I just felt slow for some reason but I picked things back up by the time we got to Tomken.
It was a good ride, we never really stopped for any length, and managed to maintain a pretty decent speed. At one point I commented that Thi should spend some time pulling the pack, to which he responded by going full tilt like a bat out of hell, and I am pleased to report that while I had trouble I was able, with effort, to stay in his draft to the next red light. One day I might even be able to keep up with fast guys for more than just a couple blocks, if that ever happens maybe I should start racing.
I have some pictures, compliments of Dan Yang, all taken at the end of the ride.
I wore my North Shore Inline Marathon Jersey on this ride. I figured the red would stand out so drivers could see me. Not smart, next time I will wear either a white jersey or a BCC jersey. Actually at night the BCC jersies are pretty reflective, which is a good thing.
From left to right, Dan, Jeff, myself, Bill, Thai and Steve.
The guy waving was walking down the street, someone asked him not to get in the way of the previous picture, then feeling guilty they asked him to stand in this picture. Notice the blur between myself and Jeff? That is Dan running to get in the picture after setting up the camera.
I remember as I fidgeted with my water bottle I was thinking, this is going to look really silly, oh well I guess that water bottle I am holding is not really a big focus of attention here.
I have taken all kinds of Glutimine since that ride but legs still hurt. But that is alright, I feel great!
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
On Office Perspectives
September 19 our branch office in Montreal will be shutdown, the building is doing electrical work. Normally the building would start at 2200 or later, possibly even the next morning, this time the building wants everyone out and all systems shutdown by 1900. Of course our users don’t want the day to end before 1600 and then we have to perform a backup – after all when you shut a system down how confident are you really that the system will come back up after? Normally backups take about 13 hours, a full shutdown, its an additional two hours or so. So we are looking at compressing 15 hours of work into a three hour window.
When I was an undergrad I met a U of T student in a purely social setting, when I told her I was in CS she asked if I was a developer, when I told her I was in IT she started making fun of me. Apparently IT guys simply reboot things when something stops working. I wish!
In other office news, I was about to go home yesterday. I was in full uniform, bike shorts (bib) with an old S-works Jersey. One of my co-workers who was waiting for the elevator said I looked like I belonged at the Olympics, (as if!). Then the co-op told me when she watched the Olympics she thought she saw me, apparently all the cyclists wore the same clothing I did. (For what it’s worth, my sun glasses, while Oakleys are in fact prescription, that I have had since 2003. As for the shorts, they were on sale at the bike show, but hey, when you’ve got it baby flaunt it!)
Tonight is another Tuesday night insanity ride. It’s a new route, looks exciting, actually lets be honest here, the new route looks like Michael’s gonna be dropped and lost! Alright seriously, we are going along Gerrard to Sumach then to Carlton all the way to St. George? I hope Dan does not mind this, but there is an ugly jog in Carlton at Parliament, having lived on Amelia Street (just a few doors from former mayor Barbra Hall as a matter of fact), just a couple blocks away, I think I may have a better idea, take Gerrard to Sherbourne, then take Sherbourne to Carlton. Or if we want a more X rated ride, take Gerrard to Church then Church to Carlton. I can pretty much promise there will be at least a few prostitutes out by the time we pass through.
Prostitution… there must be something we as a society can do to ensure that young women do not feel they have to resort to such a horrible thing to get by. I have no idea what, but surely among the teaming masses there must be a good idea out there?
Anyway check this space tomorrow (I am taking the day off work) I will have a full synopsis of the insanity ride. As well I will be giving Erin a full cleaning. Here is my secret, my chain has a master link, I open the chain up and use varsol, the chain shines like it is brand new after a quick varsol dunking. Oh and I got a new rim finally, Erin rides true again, it is an awesome feeling, like the first time I drove our car, when it was new, only its like a million times better. There are no dead Iraqis in my gas tank!
Monday, August 25, 2008
On a long journey
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.
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.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
On 196.5km with GPS data to prove it!
I will give a more complete description of this ride later, but I had to get this out. Below is the route Sigrid, Aaron and I used to get to Harriston Ontario. In my case I covered a sum total of 196.5km and yes my knees hurt something awful. (Dan, when I got to the Canadian Inline Training Centre I did not wear banana boots, I did do a lap and a half around the banked track though, on my sweet little Roubaix!)
Friday, August 22, 2008
Weekend rides
Lesley and I have plans for Saturday so I won't be riding then. Sigrid from Racer Sportif has told me I should ride with her and my old coach from my skating days, Aaron A. to the last regular season Roller Sports Ontario (RSO) race in Harriston on Sunday, about 160km from home on Sunday. Here is my plan to get to Aaron's home, or see below:
I have no idea how we will get to Harriston but hey, at least we are out of the city by the time we get to Aaron's.
Of course since it is supposed to rain on Sunday it seems likely there won't be an RSO that day, which could leave me stuck in rural Ontario about 160km from home, in the rain with no way home but Erin, who's back rim still needs replacing. Sunday could be a very interesting day.
Speaking of interesting, I was riding in to work, stopped at the red on Coxwell at Lakeshore when someone in a full BCC kit rode by, crossing Lakeshore and going on the Martin Goodman south of Lakeshore. I made a quick left and crossed like a pedestrian - not something I am proud of, but safer than making a left at that intersection, and when the light changed I raced to catch up. It turned out I was working to catch Steve, the very guy who had taken that horrible crash on gravel at Webb Road near York/Durham Line Road. It was probably the best ride I've ever had in to the office, besides the fact that I had someone to talk to, and make me bust my balls spinning into work, it was good to see Steve back on the saddle again. It is always so much more pleasant to ride in groups than ride alone, and the BCC is a pretty good group to ride with.
I have no idea how we will get to Harriston but hey, at least we are out of the city by the time we get to Aaron's.
Of course since it is supposed to rain on Sunday it seems likely there won't be an RSO that day, which could leave me stuck in rural Ontario about 160km from home, in the rain with no way home but Erin, who's back rim still needs replacing. Sunday could be a very interesting day.
Speaking of interesting, I was riding in to work, stopped at the red on Coxwell at Lakeshore when someone in a full BCC kit rode by, crossing Lakeshore and going on the Martin Goodman south of Lakeshore. I made a quick left and crossed like a pedestrian - not something I am proud of, but safer than making a left at that intersection, and when the light changed I raced to catch up. It turned out I was working to catch Steve, the very guy who had taken that horrible crash on gravel at Webb Road near York/Durham Line Road. It was probably the best ride I've ever had in to the office, besides the fact that I had someone to talk to, and make me bust my balls spinning into work, it was good to see Steve back on the saddle again. It is always so much more pleasant to ride in groups than ride alone, and the BCC is a pretty good group to ride with.
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