Making the most of Montreal

I'm lucky enough to have a bonus weekend in Montreal. And the weather is fantastic!  I've rented a lovely canondale from the bike hire shop at Atwater.  Although I could easily have turned up at Atwater on a bixi, I decide I could not face the humiliation of riding a bixi in full Lycra and cleats, so use the metro instead. .

Today, I am riding with Stuart's cycling buddies, something I couldn't have imagined 2 years ago.  With my "Uncle" Keith, Michel, Marion and Angelo.

Michel asks how fast I ride these days, so I say that I am happy at 15mph on the flat.  Michel thinks I mean kilometers per hour and is horrified at the thought of such a slow day out!

However, although they ride fast, particularly, Michel.  I keep up in a fashion, but Keith notices that I don't draft, so I'm expending a lot more energy than I need to.  He convinces me to give drafting a try, and I do spend a small portion of the ride drafting, and it does make things easier, but I think it is something that will take a lot of practice to feel really comfortable with.

Relaxing with a coffee at Pointe Claire after most of the ride has been completed.

A fabulous 50 mile ride averaging 14.2 mph (ok there were no hills, but still very pleased!). Great company and great day out!

No, I've no idea how I managed this either!

View from my hotel room at the end of a fabulous day!

It's a beautiful sunny and hot Sunday and I'm back to Pointe Claire on my own (we won't mention the average mph, it has dropped quite a bit).  En route to Pointe Claire, I am stopped by a policeman and told to ride on the side walk, which is pretty unusual.  It soon became clear why, when a convey of hundreds of cyclists and about 50 police outriders came through.  A big charity bike ride.

It was lovely to catch up with Ti for a girlie  natter, coffee and a muffin.

On the way back I go into amble mode and start taking photos again.  I loved this roadside sculpture of a dragon made of plants, above a "hobbit" burrow.    There are even hobbit footprints painted on the ground that lead from the burrow and across the road!

It's 32 deg today and the heat take its toll.  I start to feel like I am heading towards a bonk, so head into the Dairy Quuen for an emergency peanut butter parfait ice cream.  Medicinal purposes only.

At Verdun I meet up with Adrienne, Stephane and Cecile.  They have picked a perfect shady swimming spot.  A wonderful place to wile away a couple of hours.

I even go for a paddle in the St Lawrence, for a much needed cool down.

Finally, at the end of a ridiculously, hot, sunny, lovely weekend, more ice cream at Atwater.  Marvellous!

Not a French Revolution, more a British Queue

I'm not sure what made me want to do the French Revolution sportive, probably the fact that it sold out last year, therefore I figured it must be good.  Stuart and my friend Gareth were also mad enough to sign up for this ride.   We knew the logistics would not be easy, but it was only after we had paid out money that we received the email saying that we needed to be at the Dover Ferry terminal at 5.30am.

Staying in a hotel in Dover the night before did not feel like a palatable option, so instead we picked the town of Canterbury, a 30 minute drive away. This was a good choice, a nice city, lovely restaurant, but we should have heeded the ominous clouds.

We got up at 4.30 on Sunday morning and were duly lined up at 5.30 am ready to head to the ferry

Despite the lane dedicated to cyclists, the wait to board was incredible

The French authorities had decided to do 100% passport checks on all 800 cyclists!  We spent three hours waiting in the freezing cold in our Lycra.

We had more queuing when we got to France and the start gate

There was not much hope for the rest of the day after this sustained lowering of the core body temp.

The route was pleasant enough, but the weather not great.

Then the heavens opened and we were soaked for 2 hours of riding.  Without hesitation we agreed to jump on the sweeper van at the last feed station, cutting off about 2 hours of riding time.  Gareth heroically completed the route, and he hadn't even had a light weight rain jacket.

We didn't arrive home until 10.30 that night, if we had caught the ferry 2 hours later we would not have arrived home until Monday morning.

I put the French Revolution in the same bucket as London to Brighton.  Not enough reward for too much effort.

Tour of Cambridge

What an Epic ride!  Loved the day and feel this deserves its own blog post!

The Tour of Cambridge was a closed road sportive with about 8,000 riders.  The route was billed as 80 miles (they lied) and nice and flat (true)

Due to the size of the event there were draconian parking charges meaning you needed to arrive by 10am ready for a 12.30 departure.  This meant we had a nice relaxed wander around the site, before we joined the queue for the Challenge ride.  

There were 4 groups

Race

Sport

Challenge 

Leisure

The first three categories doing the "80" mile route and the last one a 55 mile route.  The first two groups were also race categories, and they got to set off a little earlier than the Challenge and Leisure groups.

We got through the gate at 12.41 and really relished the freedom of the closed roads.  No cars just hundreds of bikes.  Although I have done some big sportives before this time was different - I was cycling with the pack, which felt a little unnerving.  Previously, I have pulled over to the left, ridden at my own slow pace and let everyone fly by.  This time I was flying too!  After 20 miles my average speed was 15mph.  I haven't ridden anywhere near these speeds before!

We kept the speed up, but unfortunately made a tactical error at the first feed station (30 mile mark).  It was billed as the Leisure feed station, so we missed it out thinking ours was just around the corner, but we were wrong.  The next feed station was at the 45 mile mark.  Things slowed down a little and I was averaging 14mph when we reached the point where the course split.  This split point was at 42 miles, and you had to arrive by 4pm to avoid being forced onto the shorter route.  We arrived at 4.10pm and were told we couldn't continue on the longer route  (I was mortified) unless we handed our timer chips in and deregistered from the ride.  Easy decision.  The chip was ripped off the bike and handed in.  

We clambered through the barricade that had been set up to prevent people like me and Stuart going rogue and headed off in desperate search of the feed station.  If it had been closed or much further on than it would have been a very bad decision.   Luckily it was still open and a handful of other riders were still there.  We refuelled with an energy bar and a banana.

Setting off again was a lot of fun, there was no pressure and we just focussed on catching up and overtaking other "still chipped" riders.     These were the stragglers and very spread out, so I was very proud to overtake 16 riders by the time we finished the next 20 mile loop and got to another cut off point.  This also kept my average speed at a pretty reasonable level.

At the next cut off point where the option was to dechip or wait for the sweeper bus, I saw the man who had taken my chip 20 miles earlier.  I said that I had overtaken 16 other chipped riders and believed that I deserved my chip back!

He agreed that I deserved my chip and said he couldn't do what I had done, so I was happy with that!

On the final section of the route we ignored the third feed station and just wolfed down a banana.  So in total we ate 3 bananas and 1 energy bar, which really wasn't enough to sustain us.    Perhaps it was the lack of food that led to a minor navigational error and an extra couple of miles.  Even on a closed road route Stuart and I can do accidental exploring!

With the extra 2 miles and the grossly misrepresented billed mileage of the route, we ended the day doing 87.5 miles.  The last 7 miles were really really tough.  Psychologically, I was ready to finish at 80 miles.

My final average speed was 13.8 mph, which I was absolutely delighted with, a massive improvement from last year.    And I think Stuart really enjoyed the fact that I am now riding closer to his speeds.  A great day out!