going up and down

Took advantage of the infamous Saturday morning group ride. I'll be honest and say that I do not like dragging my butt over to the school for 8 am. 1 the fact of driving in is just stupid. It's a 25 minute ride away but this also means leaving the house by no later than 7:30. Now leaving at 7:30 means eating breakfast no later than 7 am. That leads to being out of bed by no later that 6:30. I love the mornings and I'm up at that time Monday to Friday. I leave for work at those times and have no problem with it. When the weekend comes around I want to drink a pot of coffee and not look at the clock in panic. So what did that mean for me this morning. No coffee!!!! I also slept in. Hey I'm on holidays and the use of an alarm clock during this time should never be mentioned.

Ok I'm done my complaining, for the moment. I did drive in, I know, I know. I had some running around to do after the ride, that's my excuse. Small group today but still strong riders. The plan was to head out to the final interclub road race course which is on tomorrow. Of course the finals always needs to be the most painful, abusive, tortures, cruel course. Ya it needed all of those words to
describe it. The course is based around Mount St. Louis Ski resort. Ya around the rest so does that give you an idea of the climbing?

We rolled out of the school parking lot and looked at the nasty clouds hovering. I think I rode with my fingers crossed for the first 20 minutes. My abusive coach gave me a couple options for my ride plan for the day. Of course all them hurt. The guys I was riding with were going to make sure of it. I didn't help with instigating things when ever it was my turn at the front. with a gentle touch of the ride hand on the shifter I would ramp the pace up. Hey, it may be a group ride but my coach told me it's all about me when it comes to training. If you have a problem with that you can go argue with her!! Of course this was not a good thing for the boys that are racing tomorrow.

Rolled through some nice new pavement in Orr Lake, crossed the highway and had the real pain begin. The section of moonstone and Mount St. Louis you are either going up or down, minimal flat sections, Oh and being around a ski resort means it's steep. Ski hill steep. One of the guys cut out early to save his legs for tomorrow. Smart call. The climb into Moonstone split us up a couple times. Now
the payoff, what goes up gets to come back down. I have now been on the road bike much in the last couple months. More I have not been on it at these speeds. I love speed, coasting is my favorite thing.

I had to speed check the brakes a couple times on the decent. It's crazy steep and has a couple small bumps. Ok really it's not that bad but even with the brake touches I hit just over 85Km/h and that was not even in my normal tuck position. The boys do this 3 times tomorrow, woo hoo. Now of course we had to get back to the top again. More climbing. Nice. One thing I do love about the road bike. It's power transfer, When I stand there is no tires slippage. Everything goes to forward momentum. Ya I attacked the hills, felt great.

Now one thing that always happens in these group rides. Near the end of the ride someone always tries to blow up the group. Today that was going to be me. Coming on to the 5 th line I took the lead, picked up the pace and didn't look back. Unfortunately I ran out of road before I did any major damage but speeds averaged a hair under 43 km/h for about 20 minutes. Dam stop signs. I felt great putting out that effort.


It's a recovery day tomorrow and I'll be spinning out the legs at a very important event. The Terry Fox Run. The MCC guys will be there. Lots of pictures to be taken. Hope everyone can make it out.