Hey,
Well I'm back safe from my cycling adventures, so I thought I'd share a brief report of what was. This past week was unlike any I've had with my bike, I've never spent so much time on it, and never felt so "at one" with the machine. What some people call "crazy", I often have a desire for (at least when it comes to sporting events) - and I come by this honestly through my family. One member, my uncle Lindsay, shares this "crazy" trait with me, so we set out last week to bike around Lake Ontario. It was something he's always wanted to do, and I thought it would be fun. We left Thursday night and made are way west down to St Catherines. My brother was doing the Niagara on the Lake marathon (the same event many of you did as well -congrats), and we figured rather than stand around and wait for him, we'd do the half marathon. My uncle ran with his wife (who broke 2:30 for the second time), and I set out to get the thing done a.s.a.p., so I could just be done (it actually went pretty well, I had only ran 3 times since Ottawa and having biked down there, I was happy with it as I was within a couple mins of my PB, but my thighs sure took a pounding!) Post race, we made our way back to the hotel (via a car, since his wife had drove down), got showered, ate, and biked from St. Catherines to the Falls. It was still raining, so we made it a short afternoon and called it there. Sunday was a big day. We biked from the Falls and crossed over to the US and followed (for the most part) the Seaway Trail. The roads were very nice for riding and the traffic was very quiet. We rode our way just past Rochester that day, and cover 188km. Monday was the "beast" day of the tour. We continued eastbound from Rochester over to Oswego. The terrain here, was very hilly -one after the other, none stop. Then once through Oswego we turned north into a very tough headwind (I'd estimate it to be at least 20km/hr). The terrain was less hilly, but still challenging, and the headwind made it feel like we were always riding up hill. Seriously it was brutal. The goal was to get to Kingston, and we did via the Wolf Island Ferry. 230km's of riding that day, and my uncle's Garmin said we climber over 6000ft of elevation - easily one of the hardest rides ever (oh and we were carrying gear, making our bikes not so light - mine 40lbs, his 70lbs).
The trip from there on was fairly straightforward. We gave ourselves an easy day following that tough ride, and went from Kingston to Picton to relax by the poolside, and be with my family. The final day we rode back from Picton to Oshawa. The tour was a great trip with lots of nice views of the lake, and spectacular waterfront properties.
The 1 Day Epic -
My uncle (again) always likes to push the limits, so 1 day removed from our tour, we decided to leave Oshawa, and head eastbound. The goal was to see how much ground we could cover in one day. The forecast predicted a tail wind, so we took our chances. Ultimately my uncle has thought of trying to ride from Oshawa to Montreal in 1 Day (530ish KM's). He wasn't sure if it was possible, but he wanted to test the waters. Well we did, and both set a new standard for ourselves in distance covered in 1 day. The tailwind wasn't as strong as we hoped, and we hit some gross steady rain from Gananoque to Brockville. We pressed on and made it to Cornwall. 400km's in 1 day. We left at 3:45am, and stopped at around 7pm. We debated going another 50km to get to the border of Quebec, but there's nothing there (hotel) and we were satisfied with our achievement. I was surprised at how well I felt considering the amount of riding we had done, and really only felt "low" the last 50km. Given a stronger tailwind, and perhaps a slightly earlier departure and more disciplined drafting together, we believe me may have a chance at Montreal. Given the right opportunity, we will likely attempt it again, and when we do, I'll let ya know
Oh, my wonderful aunt (who is our #1 supporter) had drove down to meet us in Cornwall, so we didn't have to bike back!
Thanks for reading. Hope to see some of you at the races, Peterborough and Quinte Tri anyone???
Cheers,
Jon
