Nanton - Chain Lakes (re-living the memories)

Yesterday I had an opportunity to bike the daunting section of the R2CC 2010 ride I did a few weeks back.  I felt it would give me a good feel to how some of the mountain sections would be and also and to tell if I've gotten any stronger since last time I did this section.  

Here is the map of the Nanton - Chain Lakes - Nanton trip we did.  http://beta.mapmyride.com/route/detail/20248692/ 

So the ride was good, although we started a little later then expected we had planned for a 10am start, but didn't get going till nearly 11.  We took it easy, and I let Peter lead so I didn't push myself  and we got to Chain Lakes by 2, so it took 3 hours to get there with breaks.  I have to say I took more time to enjoy the scenery this time, it was very beautiful.  It was blue skies most of the way there, but became cloudy with threatening clouds for the return trip. 

Return trip was faster as we left Chain Lakes about 2:30 and got back to the vehicles in Nanton by 4:30. That massive hill we climbed and climbed and climbed at R2CC is a really really long enjoyable ride down, which is great!  Really makes you realize how long of a climb it really was.  We did have a head wind for the last stretch to Nanton which was a little sad as I was expecting a nice easy finish.  

I did notice that overall I took less breaks and had a faster pace yesterday then during the R2CC which means I have.

Total trip is 77km, so not a great average time  but when you consider that there is total 650m climb involved it makes it seem a little more reasonable.  I think I am ready physically for my trip next week... only 8 days remaining but so much to still do to get ready. 

And we are already talking about doing the Nanton - Chain Lakes ride again in August, probably late August or early September (I do need to take a little time off after I return).   I think I will email the Cenovus R2CC team when its closer as there may be another crazy person out there interested in joining us.    

My next blog entry will focus on my  preparations, what I'll be taking with me and why I made the selections I have.And hoeflly I've selected wisely as its a little hard to come home and pick up that really important item when I am 4 days into my ride. 

Please support Prostate Cancer Research as 1 in 6 men will get it in their life. Click the image or the link below.




http://www.conquercancer.ca/site/TR?px=2361639&pg=personal&fr_id=1372

Cold Feet

You know its not only bride and grooms that get cold feet, mine have been getting cold too.  Last couple days the temperature has plummeted but that hasn't been what has made my feet cold.  It's only days away from my ride, 15 and counting, and I'm starting to question my sanity.  I am sure many of you have already been questioning my sanity all along. 

Yesterday I watched as it poured buckets of water and pummeled cars and the building with golf ball sized hail. All the while I was thinking holey crap where would I take cover in such a deluge while biking!!!! And then on my drive home from Sorrento while passing through Rogers Pass - Revelstoke I kept looking at all that long unrelenting mountain I would have to be climbing.  

I must be crazy! I also know that I did bike from Nanton to Chain Lakes and that was also a brutal stretch of road, so I have that comfort to fall back on. Having done something similar once does easy the panic, and one of my motto's of "baby steps" also comes to mind every time I start to get overwhelmed.  I can always stop, I can always walk, and I can take more time if I need to, tackling a major mission like a 2 week bike ride is one that needs to be broken down into days, and then each day may be tackled peddle by peddle.  

This is the same approach cancer patients have to approach life, they need to accept their reality, determine a game plan and then methodically work through it, doing their therapies and working trough the recovery of each treatment.  All the while accepting that they can beat cancer because so many people have provided the funds for research to make it possible to win.  It's not a guarantee that their cancer can be overcome but with each year and each fund raiser the odds of winning have increased.  

Please share my journey with friends and family, with 1 in 6 mend being diagnosed with Prostate Cancer I know that at least one man you know will be struck by this.

Please support Prostate Cancer Research as 1 in 6 men will get it in their life. Click the image or the link below.



http://www.conquercancer.ca/site/TR?px=2361639&pg=personal&fr_id=1372

Week of R & R

So after the grueling weekend of biking I went on holidays to the Shuswap with my kids.  We stayed at Sorrento Centre where the kids hung out and spent a lot of time with the the other kids in the youth programs. Most other adults there were involved in the adult oriented programs, but I had other plans. My week of R & R was a week of riding and running.

After making breakfast I would head off on a bike ride up the back roads around Sorrento, some days I would stop and take pictures of interesting places or animals.  It was a very hot week with some days reaching 38 C which is very hot for me.  All my rides started with a 4 km hill that got me working hard and then the ride became a set of gentle rolling hills with a great view of the farms and orchards.  By Friday, which was the hottest day, I was biking to Tappen and back which is a 50km trip, with steep hills at both ends of the ride.  

I tested out my new water pack which worked really well. The water stayed cold/cool which surprised me.  And I carried along my camera a few camera lens just to add weight to the trek, and you never know when a great photo moment will occur.  

Each night I also ran with my dog which he greatly enjoyed.  I started with a 30 min run the first night and then bumped it up to 60 min runs the remaining evenings.  By Friday I had made significant improvement in the distance I was running in 30 minutes, as after 30 min I'd turn around and head back to the dog kennel to drop of my Lab.  

I do have to say that I have had many moments where I think i might be crazy to be doing this ride to Vancouver.  That its impossible and thus ridiculous for me to even bother with trying to do.  I know coming home I looked at the grade (6%) and trhe length of hills from Rogers Pass to Revelstoke (50k) and that made me really wonder what am I getting myself into.  Once the moments of fear pass I know I can do it, I just have to break it down into little steps.   It is going to be a very difficult ride both physically and mentally. The mental part is already starting with all te self-doubt I have been feeling the past couple weeks but I know that if I loose that part then I won't make it.  

Please support my ride either through donations to Prostate Cancer or by sharing my journey with others.  Its important that more money is raised for prostate cancer as it affects 1 in 6 men.

Please support Prostate Cancer Research as 1 in 6 men will get it in their life. Click the image or the link below.



http://www.conquercancer.ca/site/TR?px=2361639&pg=personal&fr_id=1372

Ride to Conquer Cancer

Friday night I was a little apprehensive having never done anything like this before.  In fact before this year the longest ride I ever done was a 60km ride 25 years ago that nearly killed me. So Saturday morning I was up bright n early at 5am and headed off to Spruce Meadows for the ride. 

Some cool stats - 1,888 riders who raised over 8.3 million dollars for cancer research here in Alberta. 

Here is a picture of the start of the event during the opening ceremonies.

Just before the ride started I did bump into 2 other team mates aka "Crazy Cranks" who I peddled with for a few minutes at the beginning of the ride, but soon I took off and peddled at my own pace.  The ride went through Okatoks where the first rest point was, since I wasn't trying to kill myself I stopped and grabbed a piece of fruit and more water then carried on.  The second stop was in High River, and I did the same short break as it was about an hour since the last stop.  The 3rd stop was in Nanton and I thought I was doing incredibly well, I had been averaging about 28km/h which is a great pace for me, I hadn't been pushing myself and at the Nanton 75km point I thought that it was going great. Nanton was the lunch break point where I grabbed a great box lunch then I hid in the shade and ate. 

As I was departing I saw a guy with a spare car tire painted and strapped to his bike.  He told me that he joined the ride 2 weeks ago and needed a creative way to raise the donations.  So he told everyone that he would add 1 kg for every $100 raised.  So he had a 24kg tire strapped to his bike for the ride.  I'm not sure if he completed the ride  as I never noticed the bike after that but I did enjoy meeting him and the other very amusing and creative people on the ride who had great costumes or interesting bikes.

Here is a pic of a guy cooling off literally as he sits on the ice packs keeping the water chilled.  Next is the spare tire and then a picture of a group of guys in hot pink shorts doing the ride.

I had overheard a couple interesting conversations at the Nanton beak, the first was that those riders who made it to camp at Chain Lakes before 12:30 were going to do an "after burn"  which I was told was a short 70km extra ride.  I just shook my head at that and thought if that was true they must be totally nuts!   I also heard someone mention there was some hills ahead, so I took it easy leaving Nanton just in case.  Unfortunately that was my last facebook entry on the trip as I didn't turn my phone off properly and the battery died.

So from Nanton the ride became interesting, you know when it looks like you are going downhill but you really going up?  Well that is how it was from Nanton on.  And I figured this isn't so bad, I can handle the last 20km of this...  well at about the 80 km mark there was a sharp turn and I noticed a sign saying 28km to Chain Lakes which I thought "couldn't be" I'm almost done!  I noticed that my legs were starting to get tired out and then the hill began...

The hill was a 6% grade that didn't end, it just kept on going and going and going.  Every time you thought it was over you would go around a bend and see that there was more.  I kept on thinking to myself, why am I doing this? I must be very crazy!  Do I really want to do a trip to Vancouver when this ride was nearly killing me? To understand the hill, imagine Glen Eagles hill but 5 times as long.

And finally after 12km of agonizing hill there was an unexpected pit stop, but not the camp I had so desired and expected.  I gladly stopped and took a much needed break where I found out that the ride to camp was actually 115km and that I had another 20km to go.   But they reassured me that after the short hill I could see before me and a couple rolling hills it became easy.  Well those "rolling hills" were quite mountainous and went on for another 10km.  The last 5 km was more downhill but with a nasty head wind that made it feel as if you were going down a gentle grade not the steep hill it was.  I felt robbed of enjoying the down's after all the sweat that went into the up's.

Finally after numerous short breaks on all those hills, I made it to camp at 3:30, only 6 hours after leaving Spruce Meadows.  Actual biking time was 4:45 min which I was is VERY impressed with as it was better than my hoped for goal of 5 hours for 100km.  After grabbing my bags I had a very very desired shower and a nap which made me feel almost human and refreshed. 

And 4 hours after arriving at camp I signed up for the ride next year.

During supper I actually met up with most of the Crazy Crank team, and heard about their rides.  Most of them took a little longer than me to get in, with the longest I heard being 9 hours.  I know that bikes were still coming in at 8pm, which I think is about when they went out and did a sweep to pick up anyone who was still on the road biking.  I'm not sure how many there might have been to collect.  One of my team had actually made it in by 1pm, which I was very impressed with.  I know I had passed a lot of bikes on the first 80k of the ride, and many passed me on the last 35k, but he must have been smoking along.  There was a lady who was 7 months pregnant that I heard made it the first 60k of the ride.  I was very impressed that she made it so far,  that would have been really a challenge for her. 

Supper was really yummy, with mostly vegetables but you had the option of chicken or veggie entre.  I had the chicken and it was very yummy along with a free beer.  Someone said that beers make a great recovery drink which I decided I liked the idea of so from now on I think it will be my choice of recovery drinks :-). 

I tried going to sleep at 9, but I think it was well after 11 before I truly fell asleep with all the chatter and then snoring around me.  I did sleep pretty good, and woke up at 5 am, not sore!  This really shocked me as I figured I’d be a hurting puppy this morning.  But I was pretty limber and no body parts were complaining. 

Here is a picture of camp and of me on day #2

Today’s ride was pretty good, we did NOT go back the way we had come the day prior which I thank my lucky stars! The ride back was up hwy 22 and then 22X to Spruce Meadows.  Just like the previous day the views were amazing.  The first stretch had a decent hill that really got the muscles loosened up and then for the most part it was rolling hills.  The nice thing about them is that for every up I got a chance to go down, and I made a personal best speed of 67 km/h on one hill.  Others had hit 80 km/h, but I thought that 67 km/h was pretty scary. I did get burnt today even though I had lathered up with sun block, but not too horribly.

The ride into Spruce Meadows was surreal.  They called off your name as you came in and a crowd cheered you on. In fact there was people all along the route that cheered and that really made me feel like I was making a difference.  Next year I will try and plan to have my friends’ n family there at the end as it was like a bit of a party.  They had a great burger feast, music and would be nice to share that with them.

So the return trip was 4 hours of biking time over a 5 hour period.  This is directly in line with what I had hoped to do for my Vancouver trip.  So I’m very pleased with my performance, and that today I still had a little energy left in my legs even at the end.

In 5 weeks I start my next crazy adventure which I hope to share daily... as long as I keep my phone charged.  


Its important to remember that 1 in 6 men will get prostate cancer in their life.  Count the men you know, and know that every 6th one is it, not the kind of game you want to be picked for.  Please Please share my story by bringing awareness of prostate cancer to those you know and help me raise money to fight this debilitating disease.  

Please support Prostate Cancer Research as 1 in 6 men will get it in their life. Click the image or the link below.


http://www.conquercancer.ca/site/TR?px=2361639&pg=personal&fr_id=1372

6 weeks to go

With 6 weeks till my ride to Vancouver, I will know next weekend how close I am to being in condition to biking 1,200 km.  Next weekend is the Ride to Conquer Cancer, and I have now met my donation requirement of $2,500.  I took a look at the top fund raisers and was astonished to see that there were quite a few that had earned up to $60,000.  I found raising $2,500 to be a challenge and would have no idea who to raise even $10,000 let alone 60!

I have been training most days, but have slipped from my goal for daily rides.  I had planned on biking from Calaway Park to downtown every week day about mid May.  It is now near end of June and I have ridden from Calaway to downtown, but it has been rather sporadic.  I do need to bump up my riding a little and with school ending it will mean that my Monday / Wednesday evenings will have a little more leeway to them.  Currently I need to be home to take my daughter to soccer M & W so that limits my rides somewhat. Most days I ride from COP, which makes for a nice ride.  Here are the distances of the rides I do.

Daily rides to Downtown

• Shouldice – 15km
• COP – 30km
• Calaway Park – 50km

I have decided that I have to take the main route to Vancouver from Calgary through Golden, Kamloops then to Vancouver.  I had been interested in taking a southern route, but it adds 3-4 days to the trip, would be much hillier and a lot hotter (40C).  So I’m opting for a more northerly route. The only part that is still to be decided is if I should go through Case or Whistler as both routes seem about the same distance.

The other part of my plan that has changed is that initially I was going to have a road crew to take care of the daily logistics.  Currently it looks like I will be packing my gear as well, so this will impact my rides making them longer if I want to maintain 100km a day. With 6 weeks left I now need to start planning what I need to bring along for this ride, as well as minimizing what I take as well. I’ll try and note what I’m packing or planning on packing in my next post.

I had expected that with the biking and running that over the winter I would have lost weight.  There are 2 ways to make your ride easier, you can by very expensive bikes and gear that are very light, or you can lose weight. I had opted for the weight loss as a 10 lb loss in body mass would be a big increase in my ride.  Alas I’ve gained a little over the winter which has me puzzled but also accepting that I won’t be as physically fit as I had hoped to be for my Vancouver trip.

Well it’s Saturday, and sunny out, and I hear the trails calling my name.

Time has really been flying, at this rate it will be June before I know it.  So last weekend I went out with the Cochrane RedRockRunners again and I did a 10.5 km run with them in 1h 15m, not a really fast run, but still a great distance for me to have accomplished.  And later that night my body told me in no uncertain words how much I have abused it.  I had already planned on taking Sunday off, which turned out to be a great rest break for my body. 

Monday I attempted to work from home, but due to technical difficulties connecting to the work environment I gave up at noon and went for a bike ride.  Initially I was only going to bike from Cochrane to Hwy 8 (the roundabout) (20km) but when I got there I felt I still had some legs left so decided I was worth an ice-cream cone and persevered another 10 km to Bragg Creek. I have to say I was quite shocked that while enjoying my hard earned ice-cream cone that I was attacked by hornet.  I thought that early March was waaaaay to early for them. It took me 1.5 hrs to peddle to Bragg Creek, its a very gentle uphill grade after the hwy 8 junction. My return trip took just a hair over an hour to do with it being a lot of down hill especially after Cochrane Corner (junction of hwy 22 and hwy 1). 

I was very pleased with myself for accomplishing this mental hurdle, as 60km is a long distance that I've only biked once prior.  About 20 years ago when I was attending the University of Alberta, I dragged a friend along and we peddled from downtown Edmonton to Leduc and back.  Sadly we had a nasty head wind that drained us on the way back, so even with a tail wind it was a brutal bike ride, and one that I've never done again. So it was a great achievement for me to have accomplished.

Tuesday I woke up to a massive tail wind so my bike ride to work was amazing, I was able to easily achieve and maintain 35km/h on my mountain bike for the entire trip.  I just wish I could do that every day!  Sadly the wind had not diminished over the day and alas I had a 50-70kmh head wind peddling back which nearly killed me.  I was lucky to get 16kmh, and was very frustrated at all the bikes that simply peddled by  me as I struggled.  I counted 11 bikes that made it look easy, and for some reason I really get frustrated that I can not keep up to them.  I know many of them have been biking for a lot longer then my 10 weeks, but a few of them looked to be bigger guys so to my perceptions I should have been able to bike like they do.

That they could easily peddle by me was very annoying and increased my resolve to become a stronger biker.  I've been reading up on ways to improve my cycling and get the higher speeds and endurance.  I did purchase some biking shoes that do seem to help, although my upper back leg muscles (biceps femoris) are not used to being used so it will be a while before I get any real benefits from the shoes.

Weekly Update

Well this is actually a bi-weekly update as this week has gone so quickly.  Last week I heavily abused my body as I was aching most of the week.  I started the week by doing the stairs at work Monday and Tuesday, now I don't work on the 3rd floor, I work on the 34th floor.  So I did 20 flights down and up each day, this week I was going to do the same, but got distracted with work and other stuff.  Probably not a horrible plan as my legs need some rest time from that abuse. 

The other major change to my regime is that last week and this week I have been biking from COP to downtown. Thus doing 120 km in a full week.  I also was out in Kananaskis on Friday so I did the 2km hill here, which really burned, but was a great feat to complete.

On Saturday I finally met up with the Cochrane running club, about 20 people where out for the run which was done in groups depending on the distances being run.  I did 6km and felt great after wards.  I then took my road bike out for a cruise. I biked from Cochrane to Cochrane corner (hwy 1) and back, this was a mental mile stone as I have never done it before and learnt I can easily do a 24 km bike ride as well.  To finish off the day I took my dog for a hike at Heart Creek, a beautiful trail, that my dog greatly enjoyed as well.  There was a couple treacherous parts covered in sheer ice on a hill side, but otherwise the trail was in great shape. 

On Sunday I did the Cochrane to Cochrane Corner again, and debated going further, but didn't want to kill my body.  I did have a nasty cross wind on Sunday, and a heavy head wind on Saturday.  Which was good practice as I am sure I'll have to deal with many windy days when biking in my trek.

So I hate bikes passing me, I know I may not be the fastest out there, but some days I sure feel like the slowest!  I've started researching training methods for biking as well, and building a training plan of sorts to get in better condition for those loooooong days on the road. And perhaps keep a few more cyclists behind me.

One other preparation I've started is to try and determine what route is the best to take to Vancouver.  I've mapped out a handful of them on a cool website that works with google maps, unfortunately its mangled all the maps I've made, so I have to remake them on a different site and then I'll share them and start discussing the pro's n cons of each route.