Building Endurance

The past three weekends have been exercises (sorry about the pun) in building endurance.  My goal was to put together a string of reasonably tough daily rides over a 4-day period, mainly to get my body, and more importantly my mind used to getting up and putting in mileage day after day, after day, after day, ... (repeat 65 times) regardless of the weather, how I feel, etc. etc.  Over these weekends I have ridden 190 miles, 150 miles, and now 178 miles, without any major issues.  Over the past week, I reached a total of over 20 miles (21.2 to be exact) in cumulative altitude climbed since the beginning of the year.

It helps greatly to know that there are 40 other souls going through the same, or similar routines.  Collectively there will be 41 of us riding, 27 men, 14 women ranging in age from 18 to 66 years.  The riders are predominantly from Canada, with 1 rider from Australia, 1 from England, 2 from Switzerland and 3 (including me) from the US.  It looks like a fun group!

In Vancouver, we will be assigned into teams (galley crews) and will be responsible for preparing dinner and the next day's breakfast, once per week, for the group.  Collectively we should be burning between 160,000 and 200,000 calories per day - or in Big Mac terms, between 300 and 400 Big Macs per day.  With that in mind, I am hoping for everyone to "go with the flow" as we get used to our new roles as cyclist/chefs and not be too hard on the crews in the first few weeks as we learn the ropes.

Given the number of riders and limited space in the truck/kitchen, the milk provided is in powdered form - I am still laughing about reading of a previous rider's experience on the first rest day when he took off to the laundromat with a few scoops of powdered milk instead of laundry detergent to wash his clothes.

In addition to the biking part, I am now mentally going through my checklist of what to bring, and wondering how it will fit in my bike box.  I will be religiously following the rule of thumb that one of the veterans shared: "Bring half the clothes you have laid out to pack, and twice the money!!!"  I suspect that rule would apply for any vacation.

I have also been experimenting with a new "Flip" camera I got last week, taking some video clips from this weekend's rides.  The cycling around New Jersey, especially around Morris County is, in my opinion, some of the best in the world - to get a perspective on the types of roads we are training on, check out the link to the video posted on YouTube.  Apparently I still have to figure out how to upload a video and not have it come out all grainy...

Looking forward to meeting everyone in just a little over three weeks.

Off now to a Memorial Day BBQ where I will play the role of "Food Vacuum" to replace the calories burned over the past four days.

22 days to "wheels up from Newark".

"Big Agnes" has a new friend.

Unbeknownst to me when I received my "Big Agnes" air mattress as a Christmas gift last December, she can be paired up with a "Big Agnes" sleeping bag.  The company making these have optimized a sleeping "system" by offering the possibility of integrating the air mattress into the sleeping bag.

The "ground-side" insulation in a sleeping bag is practically worthless as it gets compressed by your weight, and you end up in direct contact with the ground (I have first hand experience in this from camping on the side of the road outside Aspen in 1975 - I think I shivered all night.)   "Big Agnes" has designed a sleeping bag with no ground-side insulation, but instead, a sleeve in which to insert your air mattress which by its nature, provides both comfort and insulation in the form of an "air cushion".  As an added bonus, since the mattress is in the sleeve of the sleeping bag, you can't roll off it and onto the hard ground during your sleep.  As well, when you break camp, you deflate the mattress while it is still in the sleeve.  All in all a very well thought out, integrated design. 

Given these benefits, and 65+ nights of camping coming up in a month, I ordered the integrated sleeping bag on Sunday - it arrived via UPS on our front doorstep today.  I tried it out and it works really well.  Since it only has half the insulation, I was able to compress the bag, air mattress and a full sized pillow into my waterproof "stuff sack".

It is amazing how much camping gear has evolved since our cross-Canada family adventure in 1966. 

That is me 2nd from the right in the family photo - Mt. Edith Cavell, August 1966.

Unfortunately I will not be able to revisit the spot where this photo was taken - it is about 130 miles to the north of Lake Louise where our route turns south towards Banff.

4 weeks to departure...

My date with "Big Agnes"...

Just to set things straight before proceeding, "Big Agnes" is a Brand/Model of air mattress that one of my fellow riders suggested that I get for my 10 weeks camping.  The recommendation was to indulge on the mattress for camping gear since being well rested is critical to enjoying the experience.

The ride organizers suggest that you spend a few nights camping in your gear to try things out and get familiar with the new experience before doing the ride. Having done Alaska, and Montreal to Portland Maine (both week-long cycling tours) without seeing the camping equipment before the end of the first day’s riding, I figured the suggestion might be a bit of “overkill”, and imagined thinking, as I set up camp for the 60th day in a row in mid-August “Why on earth did I ever sleep in the tent before the ride???”

That said I decided this afternoon to "pitch camp" after my 46-mile training ride today and at least get familiar with my camping gear - partly from awaking in the middle of the night wondering how I would handle pitching a tent and setting up camp in a driving rainstorm (probably caused by the scene in "The Motorcycle Diaries" where their tent gets picked up and blown away into a raging river while they are trying to set it up in a howling rainstorm...) 

My previous exposure to my tent was setting it up once in the basement, and then once outside in the back yard shortly after purchasing it last October.  This time I set up in the front yard (level terrain), and was amazed at how whenever I tried to put a tent peg into the ground of our yard, I managed to find the rock buried 2" under the grass - I wonder if there is a science to that - probably so.  The answer to that question waking me up at night is "I would get wet while doing so, and deal with it!"

I laid out the ground sheet, put the tent on top, arranged the tent poles (only two which span from corner to corner in an "X" shape), set up and then wrestled with the fly.  Luck being on my side, I managed to align the doors on the fly so that they opened up onto the side of the tent rather than the tent door - D'oh!  As I re-positioned the fly I thought to myself there ought to be a better design so that you don't do what I just did, only then seeing that the corner fasteners on the fly are color coded to match with the corner fasteners on the tent.  With that pearl of wisdom captured, I am well prepared for June 27th when we first set up camp in Mission BC. All in all, the tent looks like it should serve me well this summer.

Next was inflating "Big Agnes" - my last experience with her was on Christmas morning when I managed to hyperventilate and get dizzy taking what seemed like an eternity to blow her up beside the Christmas Tree.  What a difference 5 months and 1,500 miles of cycling make - this time it took me only 2m15s, and I felt great afterwards.   Something to be said about building up lung capacity.

Tomorrow we are riding 55 miles which will be my 3rd day in a row of reasonable length riding - 52 miles Friday,  and 46 today.  The plan going forward is to ride about 150-175 miles per week with at least 3 days in a row.

31 Days to Departure.

A day in the Hamptons or "Two down, One to go"

Yesterday was the third year in a row that I participated in the "Montauk Century" with some guys from our Team Marty's riding group. 

This year, it took on an added significance as it is one of the three anchor rides for building up my mileage base for my Tour du Canada, which starts in just 5 weeks.

Unlike last year (45°F, raining sideways), this year we awoke to mid 50°s and a beautiful sunrise on the aptly named Sunrise Highway, in Massapequa, NY.

This year there were seven of us doing the Century, which I had described as "flat as a pancake" or more accurately "flat as a pane of glass" - there were only 870 feet of climbing (one bridge midway and a few hills at the end)  in the 105 miles.  I think this will prepare me well for the days in the Prairie provinces. 

We drove in to Long Island the night before and had a great pasta dinner at a restaurant which specializes in capturing that Long (pronounced with a hard G) Island atmosphere - Think of a mix between Joe Pesci and John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, with more food than 7 hungry cyclists could ever hope to eat.  The dinner arrived in mountains on our plates so we were well fed for the ride the next day.

The alarm went off at 4:30 after which we showered, had a bite to eat at the hotel lobby, and then drove the 5 miles to the start of the ride at the Babylon NY Train Station.  The ride started out ominously, with a missing shoe causing a 30 minute delay for us - apparently Pascal dropped one of his cycling shoes in the parking lot of the hotel, and we realized it was missing when we got to the start.  We headed back (in the car) to look for it only to get called back - another cyclist staying at the hotel saw the shoe, figured that it belonged to a rider doing the century, and brought it to the lost and found at the start.  A great "save" to what could have been a major bummer, but that is the helpful nature of the types of people who do rides like this.

With my base mileage for the Tour, I was unofficially designated (or took on the role) as the engine of the group, leading the others behind me.  No one seemed to complain, and others would come to the front now and then to take over.  To non-cyclists reading this, when you ride behind someone in a "pace line" you do up to 30% less work than the lead rider as he/she is in-effect "plowing" the air out of your way and you can draft behind in the slipstream.  We set off at a fairly good pace (18 - 20 mph) for the first 25-30 miles, and passed a lot of the riders who had started at 6:00 AM.  My view was that each person we passed along the route meant that the shower line at the end of the ride was one person shorter.

By the time we reached the first rest stop the morning clouds had burnt off, and we were riding in sunny skies with temperatures in the mid 70° s (F).  We stopped for a brief PhotoOp shortly after the second rest stop (50 miles) at a steel deck bridge where two of our group crashed last year - in that incident they suffered the usual cuts and bruises that come with a hard landing on the road, and unbeknownst to us at the time Marty ("thumbs up" in the middle of the photo) had broken his thumb - true to form we all finished the ride.

With that behind us we pressed on to the Hamptons.  To the groans of my fellow riders, I quipped that the green walls of vegetation blocking the views of the mansions behind them must have been the result of the "Hedge Funds" that are all over the financial press these days.  We opted for another brief detour for a Photo Op of the beaches and Atlantic Ocean that I will next be seeing in late August.

Our "Bentley count" through the Hamptons this year was: 3 Bentleys; 2 Ferraris; 1 Aston Martin Vantage convertible, and; one antique Mercedes convertible - I guess the economic downturn is affecting everyone, although there was still a lot of new construction happening.

By the way, did I mention that the route was as flat as glass? (see photo)

After a brief delay at mile 85 caused by a crash in our Peleton (those "wheel touches" can wreak havoc on the group), we patched Tim up and pressed on to Montauk.  For the last few miles, Pascal and I were playing a game of "cat and mouse" catching up to riders ahead, letting them draft off us for a bit, then slowing down and letting them build up a lead once again before cranking it up to 25mph again and chasing them down. 

When we got to the end of the ride, at around 1:30, we got our bikes loaded on the truck to be brought back to the start.  We arrived among the first 100 or so participants so no long shower lines (very important) or lines for food.   The ride was very well supported with well stocked rest stops (white chocolate chip cookies, bagels and pita with jam, peanut butter, Nutella, and plenty of other stuff) and a BBQ at five dollar Coronas the end. 

Showered and fed, we hopped on the 3:30 LIRR Train back to the start. The train was filled with riders, some of whom were still in their bike clothes, for the two hour ride back to Babylon - we were very grateful that we had the time to shower and freshen up before the return trip.  After about 30 minutes into the train ride it looked as if someone had released a canister of nerve agent on the train as every seat was filled with people, eyes shut, necks crooked, mouths open, and sound asleep, woken only briefly by the ticket agent to collect the fare.

Back at the start we loaded the bikes on the car, got to witness a few "Fast and Furious" drivers on the Long Island Expressway, and made it back home by 8:15 P.M.

I have now completed two of my three planned longer rides for training, with the "Revolutionary Ramble" being the last one, on June 12th before heading west.

36 days to "Wheels up" from Newark.