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".