Training Log Archive: veinbuster

Alberta Ride to Conquer Cancer Day 2

Heavy rain the night before had everything soaked, most notably my seat so I wore my rain gear, even though I thought I could make it to the end of the ride before the 2:00pm rain (which in the end didn't occur). I had left my elevation charts on the bike and the colours all blended together so they were unreadable. Fortunately I'm not so old yet that I couldn't visualize yesterday's elevation changes backwards.

I was planning to go out as soon as the gates opened at 7:00, but One Aim wanted a group departure at 7:30. We assembled, then had photos, then started out. It was worth the wait because it was quite impressive seeing the whole team roll out together. The parade lap through town was a bit quicker than coming in Saturday afternoon - not many cars out yet. Then we turned onto the highway and a decent hill that I felt would set the tone for the day.

I was going out with pretty much the same plan as Day 1, but wanted to try to avoid the rumble strips as much as possible. That was challenging climbing with 70 (or so) people all on much narrower bikes, so I found myself riding up the deep (2-3cm) heavy, wet sand trying not to wash out and not be where the rider behind me expected me to be. 1/3 of the way up the hill I had a flat. Tipped the bike on the side, pulled out my spare and tire levers (needed for the 16in rubber) and set about doing the change. A repair crew stopped to help before I was finished and while my team was long gone, I was back on the road in 10 minutes...

2/3 of the way up the hill, I got another flat. This time I would have to patch the tube. Unfortunately, the old style patches I had were separate glue and the 10 year old glue tube had dried up. A sweep truck came by with a pump and said they could take me to pit 1, but then the repair crew came back with some modern glue included patches. We also checked the tires and pulled out a nasty shard of metal. They were a bit afraid to pump the tires up to 85 psi (seems a lot for tiny tires) but I got back on the road a little bit behind the last rider out of camp. It was shaping up to be a long lonely day.

Over that first hill and then ticked over my first interval close to an hour (elapsed time) into the ride. At 12km, I started to see some back markers on the road and started going by some of the slower late starters. I also went by one team at the side of the road - 10 or so of them waiting for two guys to repair a flat. about 5 km later one of them popped up on my right side and said "I've got your flags" - the top half of the pole and popped off on a bumpy descent as they were bent back in the wind and he had grabbed them and given chase to return them - even help put them back in place so I didn't have to get out of the seat. The rest of WBN came by in a pace line shortly there after and I started checking the pole was still where if belonged at the bottom of each hill because I didn't expect anyone else behind me to be inclined to chase me down.

The flags popped off again on the washboard road to pit 2, but I heard them fall (or heard them not catching wind) and looped back as soon as it was clear to make a U turn, picked them up and did a quick pit, leaving ahead of a couple of teams. At this point I started working backwards from yesterdays descent to prepare for when the big climbs of the day. Lunch was at the top of a decent climb, but the challenge would come in the 10 km after lunch, so I ate a little bit and made sure I had two full bottles. I also took as many clothes as I could stuff into my bags off, but was still overdressed so would have to use by ventilation to keep from overheating too much.

The two big climbs had big wide turns on them, so you could never see the full force of what you faced. I think this actually helped, because I could only be as intimidated as what I could see. Less than half way up the first, I reminded myself to use my full lungs and made it up pretty nicely. The second went better than I had expected as well, in part because I had enough road to work with that I could go at my own pace and not have to wait behind slow (and often wobbly) riders...but I finished all of my water at the second summit and had 10km to the last pit - and Garmin said the temperature was up to 28C. But it was mostly downhill and once I made the turn north at Bragg Creek, I knew exactly what the road would be like for the next 25km.

I filled up both bottles at the pit, hoping it would be enough for the last 31km. I ate more than at any other pit. Stopped to borrow a wrench to tight my mirror/computer mount (shook loose as it had Saturday on the bumpy road west of Bragg Creek) and generally lazed about for a bit. This was my longest pit all weekend.

Out of the pit I had nice road and carried a decent pace on the stretch of 22 up to the turn back to the city. At the turn I decided that I was well under hydrated so would not push an extra gear any more to try to make up for the slow start and pretty much took a recreational pace for the last 20 km. It was sweet to see the 20th interval tick over. Then fun to charge down the Trans Canada - OK so I pushed it a bit there with a nice big wide shoulder to myself. Routed in the back way, and the same dodgy km we had started on Saturday - but today there were people directing where there was a solid path to avoid loose or wet section.

And a solo run down the finishing shoot. No one else was coming in so they announced me before I made the turn and the huge cheering section practiced with me while they were waiting for there loved ones to come in. Pretty good event.

I'll save the physiological observations for another time.

Alberta Ride to Conquer Cancer Day 1

The ride was being sent out in groups of about 300 at a time this year, rather than all in a bunch. The first groups were to have all gold helmet (5 year participants) and cancer survivors. I positioned myself at about where I expected 600 people to be and went out at the end of the second group.

We started out across some very unfriendly ground: deep loose gravel, fist sized rocks so I bounced and spun a bit until we hit some real road - which routed us onto the Trans Canada Highway. It had a nice big shoulder, but was pretty blustery with traffic whizzing by. I navigated by the slower 1/3 of the group fairly quickly and sat mid pack while the fast 1/3 separated themselves. For the first 7 or 8 km there were frequent instances of people riding 4 & 5 abreast, gang passing slower riders - in spite of clear single file, pass on the left instructions.

I was going to shoot past the first pit stop, but it looked pretty quiet, so I popped in to make sure my bladder didn't artificially constrain my fluid intake. 40km of pretty nice road went by fairly quickly, and the light rain that lasted for half an hour or so had no impact on the ride. The turn beyond Bragg Creek brought us to road that didn't work well for the trike: fairly narrow shoulders with wide rumble strips on the left and lots of loose sand/gravel on the right. I pretty much had a choice of riding the rumble strips or spinning in the sand and biased the next 40km to rumble strips over sand. I relished the clean stretches.

I expected the worst climb of the day at 50km and it was long, but my legs were strong and half way up I remembered to breathe with my full lungs instead of just the top half, which dropped my heart rate from 160 to high 140s pretty quickly. I intended to do both days keeping the heart rate to 130 on flats, below 160 except for a couple of designated big climbs if the grade really ramped up. It worked well with my switching to the middle ring as soon as the grade hit 7%. The granny gear wasn't required all weekend.

I almost missed lunch because I was expecting it at 69km and it showed up at 60km. I took a longer pause there. My original intent was to follow the Tour de Pierre pattern and elevate my leg for a bit shortly after the half way point, but there wasn't a convenient place to do so, so I deferred that.

By 80km, the group had separated nicely so I could give myself space to smooth out the climbs, and take advantage of some of the downhills without riding my brakes as I approached slower riders or spots where the shoulder narrowed dramatically. I also started to feel short of fuel so started eating all the food I had packed with me - about half a portion every 15 minutes or so. Hills were just rolling from this point and after verifying that on my elevation chart at the last pit stop (93km), I allowed a higher cadence knowing I didn't have to worry about an escalating heart rate. A bit more rain started about 7 km from the end, but ended by the time we had to parade through Okotoks - competing with normal Saturday downtown traffic.

I got in about 45 minutes ahead of the fast end of my estimate feeling pretty good. I didn't realize how well my heart rate had been managed until loading the Garmin here to see the distribution.

C • Impressive Day One! 4

Road from Flight's out to COP to see if I could find a back way in avoid a big lineup at the trans Canada Hwy enterance on Saturday morning. I looped all through the subdivision looking for a route down but none was to be found. Then went further west on Old Banff as far as 101st, which was my reference for 1Ave going to parking at the edge of COP, but it didn't go north.

It turns out I should have followed the thought I had to ride out to where we started our ride to Bragg Creek. The map shows a branch a bit west of where I looped back that appears to be what I wanted. I hadn't noticed it watching at car speed Tuesday, but would almost certainly have caught it at bike speed. It makes for a long route to COP so might not be worth it. I'll scout it before Saturday to pick up land marks and make a judgement call based on when I get away.

One Aim training ride

The last training ride before the 237 weekend ride seemed like a good time to meet some of the team that has raised $2 million since the Ride to Conquer Cancer started.

A few of the guys declared an intention to do extra hills. I made note of a couple of people that were not doing extra, thinking that if I stayed near them I would be on the easier path. It was a no drop ride, so there were periodic stops to collect everyone. Not being used to this, I frequently forgot to turn my Garmin back on. I reported the Garmin numbers, but ride time was actually about 10 minutes longer and about 5km - the most noticeably lapse was a smoking fast downhill where my average speed said 11km/hr when I'd been well over 40 for about 2 km.

The plan to stick with the 'loosen the legs' riders rather than the 'extra hills' riders worked pretty well until the turn west. This was a long straight road that was hill after hill so I just went a comfortable pace assuming that people would be waiting at the turn north. But...by the time I got to the turn, only the extra hills guys were ahead of me and they all went through. I would have happily paused for the rest to assemble at the turn, but unwittingly followed up more climbs. At the top of the last one on the road I waited, suspicious because nobody was at the T intersection ahead. Looped back to the intersection where the hills guys were waiting, having sent the others ahead. These guys set down a smoking pace on some ragged road, pulling away a bit on the really rough sections and a bit more on each little climb. I finally caught the tail of the main group on the last climb, which I believe was the longest of the day. I might have been fooled by the big curve and the lack of water - forgot the water bottle I had prepared in the fridge.

I caught up on fluids with a couple of giant waters and a Guinness at the pub after.

C • Sounds like you're ready! 2

Bragg Creek with Flight.

This is a nice ride we did in the spring and happens to be the second quarter of the Ride to Conquer Cancer this weekend. There is only one climb that I'll want to watch my heart rate on (hit my peak on it both ways). I was happy to see that this stretch of 22 has nice wide Greenspeed friendly shoulders most of the time. I might try to arrange to be in a pack for the round about at Hwy 8.

Nice lunch at the Cinnamon Spoon.

This ride felt much easier than the spring one, but I haven't checked the numbers.

Edit: previous ride was last July. 10% faster this time and average heart rate 12 bpm lower, but last time I had been out on the Greenspeed for 1:47 earlier in the day so it might not be a fair comparison - I had noted in my log expecting a heart rate mid 140s for the ride as the first in the day.

Some more wandering, but mostly a loop around the reservoir. It was much farther around than I remembered so about 2/3 of the way I started to question whether or not I had missed a turn.

A bit chilly at 7C and plenty of mist rising off the water. The trees started raining massive amounts of dew as soon as the sun hit them. It was a pretty cool effect.

I stayed mostly in the gear range I'll have on the Greenspeed. I might need to adjust to the elevation a bit. I hadn't noticed that in previous visits.

C • Elevation 2