The Sounds of Rain...

The city in the rain clouds and the autumn colours on show.

Joy here...This morning The Trainer and I headed out for a Friday morning ride up to Pink Lake.  Now while we've done this Pink Lake hill ride a number of Fridays throughout the summer season (like when we all rode up in our multicoloured jackets in 4 C on one Friday, or when we rode hard up that hill on a Friday just before I decided I needed a week off, or my Friday's ode to randomness post when our ride was framed by a series of oddities, or our Pink Lady Friday two-hill repeat up that hill, or the time we headed out on a Friday afternoon in the hot summer sun etc.), today's ride was different from all the other Friday rides up to Pink Lake lookout and back again.

My completely saturated and water-logged leg.

What was this big difference?

Well, today we rode IN THE POURING RAIN!

I've ridden in the rain a few times before - the most notable being the epic two-loop ride of the park that the Sashinator and I pulled off at the start of September - but since first learning how to ride a road bike the year before last, I've never really been brave enough to head out there in a full-on downpour.

All of that changed today.

The Trainer and I chatted this morning and agreed that despite the steady (but light) rain we would still head out to the parking lot before making any decision about calling it quits or heading up to Pink Lake.  And long before we reached the parking lot, the skies had fully opened up on us and we were drenched.  We were soaked right through to our skin, and so when we stood there in the parking lot (see the video below) amidst the downpour, we figured that we might as well just carry on - I mean, we were already wet!

And as we rode forward into the increasing rain (falling so hard at many points that I could barely see ahead of me), we began to think about the soundscape framing a rainy Friday ride.  There's the whizz of our wheels through the puddles, the whoosh and splash of cars zooming by through water, the patter of rain falling on the leaves all around us, and the howl of the wind in our ears.  There are so many different sounds of rain to experience, and we lost ourselves in them all.

As you ride, wind blows by your ears creating white noise in your head like the flapping of a giant sail, and layered over that sound is the whisper of the leaves beside you as the rain falls in the trees creating a sound like TV static.  And then above that sound there is the constant patter of the water falling all around you as if the whole world were your own private shower.  As the rivulets of water run in channels along the road as you pedal, you can hear what sounds like a brook, and as the rain falls harder and harder you would swear that you were riding along a waterfall as the heavy rush of running water deafens you to all the other sounds, even that of your own heavy breathing.

Take a listen to both videos to get a sense for the sounds of a rainy Friday ride.  It'll basically give you a sense of what it was like.  It'll be like you were out there with us this morning.

Only you won't be wet.

Or cold.

Or have to spend an hour cleaning your bike afterwards.

Over and out,
Joy

Strength + Spinning = Sweat...and Lots of it!

Joy here...Okay, according to my new workout plan, which I haven't really stuck to yet, I'm supposed to have spinning class on Thursday mornings, followed by strength training with The Trainer on Thursday afternoons.  This week, however, we switched our strength training to Wednesday aft and I had spinning on Thursday morn.  And both of these activities took place in the same locale, the fitness centre owned by The Trainer.

This week has been humid and weird weather-wise, and as a result, doing any physical activity indoors has been kind of moist and gross, add to that my penchant for sweating like a sumo wrestler locked in a sauna, and, well, you get the picture...

Over and out,

Joy

Loop #20...and a little Wild Turkey!

Joy here...It's that time of the year again:  the time when the leaves begin to change colour; the time when students return to the classrooms; and that time of the year when initiations and binge drinking take over universities and colleges the Western world over.  From college dorm rooms in the US to cheezy university pubs in the UK to "le binge drinking" making its way into Paris clubs, students everywhere are starting to drink to excess.  Students drink themselves into a kind of stupor that makes them doubt what they see as their eyes seem to fail them.

Have I been drinking?  That looks like the view from
a plane ride, not a bike ride!

Maybe my friends and I - Cili Padi, Power Penna, and SK (also known as the "Sashinator") - who met up for a Sunday morning ride had been partaking in the spirit of drunken undergrads everywhere, because I would have sworn that we were riding through the clouds today...maybe there was something a little stronger than water in my bottle this morning.

I mean, as we rode forwards in the humid and foggy day, wisps of haze shimmered up from the asphalt before us in twirling eddies of fog and cloud as if we were riding our bikes through an ongoing ghostly ballet that swirled and twirled all around us.

Or maybe that's the booze talking.

I mean what else can explain our ride up and out of the normal world of the park where we've been making progress by doing loops and loops throughout this summer?  What else can explain our vision impairment as we could barely see in front of our eyes?  What else can explain the smoke machine-like fog that hung heavily around us as if we were at a late night club?

"Ossifer, are you sshure I can see Ottawa from here?"

Clearly, we must have been sampling some booze.  Maybe we were like the students out there everywhere who think that brain cells are somehow expendable and that keenness of vision and intellect are things to be sacrificed at the almighty altar of blurriness, for blurry we were.

Blurry was the world around us, and blurry was our ride to the top of the Champlain Lookout.

And just like drunken students who can't see straight, but who seem to be having one heck of a good time, we were having a great time as well.  We were laughing and talking; we were telling stories, and we were having a blast.  Like drunken girls we giggled our way through the bike ride, even making jokes about boys!

Looks like a smoke machine at a dance club, doesn't it?

Just like students who, after too much tippling lose their balance and can't walk a straight line, as we rode away from the Champlain Lookout (after seeing nothing more than a bank of clouds), Power Penna pushed down on her pedal only to find that she wasn't fully clipped in, which resulted in her "lady bits" making  very close friends with the top tube of her bike - ouch!

And she wasn't the only tipsy one...Cili Padi tipped over on her bike today too!  So just like drunkards whose balance is, shall we say questionable, I might question what Cili Padi was drinking today!

Notice the bruised elbow and scraped knee as evidence
of the fall.

So all I can say is that even though I don't recall boozing it up, clearly the spirit of boozing must have been in the air this morning.

And if I'm going to carry this extended trope of boozing and biking to its ultimate (silly) conclusion, then I have to be clear:  if the "sisterhood" were going to be indulging in some pre-ride boozing, then I have a feeling that we'd choose something hard core.  No fruity coolers for these rock-hard ladies of the bike.  No thank you.  I imagine us looking lean and mean with a bottle of Wild Turkey shared amongst us, with each of us looking around with a snarl on our faces as we swig back bourbon straight from the bottle, before wiping our mouths with the back of our hands and passing the bottle on.  I mean, in my imagined version of us, we're a hard group of lean, mean women you wouldn't want to mess with. We don't even make a face as we reach for our second swig of the hard stuff, and if it burns our throats on the way down, we don't even notice (or even better...if we notice the burn, we like it!).

And as we rode out of the park, with its fog and haze, we began to ride back into reality.  We rode into the ever-growing sunlight and the ever-increasing clarity of a Sunday morning.  The fog began to recede, and my motif of a drunken ride has worn itself out.

Or has it?

Just as the Sashinator and I were powering out of the last wisps of fog, out of the shadows of the trees at the side of the road three somethings appeared.  In the split second before these somethings ran out onto the road in front of us, we slammed our brakes and tried to let our rattled brains compute what we just saw.  Were those peacocks?  Was that a dinosaur?  And as the crisis passed and we rode on beyond the beast who darted quickly in front of us as his brothers stayed at the side of the road, we burst out laughing and said, almost in unison, "I think that was a WILD TURKEY!"

So maybe we were drinking afterall!

Over and out,
Joy

Indian Summer Ride

Joy here...Four of us met up this morning under a hazy sky to head out for a ride in an autumn morning borrowed from summer.  Last Friday when we rode, it was 4 C at the start of our ride; today it was already around 14 C by the time we headed out the door, with a high humidity and a promise of temperatures around 25 C by the time our ride would be over.  The Trainer and I met up with two other friends - one who has never ridden with us so far this year and another one who has joined us on a Friday ride once and who was part of our "Share the Road" 100km cavalcade - and we headed off towards the park.

The Trainer says that we like to "pick up strays along the way" (with a laughing reference to our two new friends who joined us today), but we all agree that we are friendly folks who like to find like-minded friendly folks to head out on bike rides with us.  So our "strays" today were more than welcome, and in that spirit of friendship and camaraderie, we felt the skies began to clear overhead as the sun began to illuminate the beautiful fall colours that are just starting to show up on all the trees around us.  And while those trees were showing signs of autumn, and our memories of last week's 4 C ride were fresh in our mind, the warmth of today's ride made us feel like we were in the midst of an "Indian Summer."

There are a few different theories about the roots of the term "Indian Summer," as some think that it referred to a time when North American Aboriginal tribes would bring in their harvest and others think that it referred to a time of nice weather at the end of summer when tribes could still complete raids on European settlers (or vice-versa as the European settlers to North America certainly weren't above attacking those who were here first).  Etymology aside, the term usually refers to above-average temperatures in the autumn when fall begins to feel a bit like summer.  And today was just such a day.

Now in my former life as a professional academic, I have written a couple of articles on the way in which settler-invader cultures deal with various kinds of angst and discomfort vis-a-vis questions of indigeneity and aboriginality in postcolonial contexts.  As a scholar, therefore, I cringe at the term "Indian Summer" with its misnomer "Indian" to refer to Canada's First Nations.  I cringe at the stereotypes inherent in some of the theories as to where the term comes from (and its idea of historical aboriginals as nothing more than threatening savages intent on raiding settlers - I ask you what you would do if a bunch of people showed up and started living in your back yard?!).  As a scholar, I am sensitive to issues of aboriginal rights, concerns about identity politics, questions of belonging/non-belonging, and notions of equity.  But these are, as I say, often scholarly notions, notions which emerge from my study and research into literary and theoretical texts.

But today as I rode under an ever-warming sun, waving good-bye to The Trainer and our one new friend at Pink Lake, as the other and I kept on riding to complete a full loop of the park (loop #19 of the season for me), this new friend helped to bring life and animation into these academic concepts for me.

It turns out that he is of Métis heritage, and his family can be traced back to leaders of a particular Algonquin tribe in the area.  The Algonquins were the first of the North American aboriginal groups to ally themselves with the French, when they arrived in North America (and claimed it for France, with much of what is now Canada being Nouvelle France until 1763...or 1759, which was the date of the decisive battle in Quebec City known as the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, where the British were victorious over the French forces).

As we rode along through the warm "Indian Summer" day, with the bright colours of fall beginning to show up every now and then, he told me of his work to trace his family's history.  He can trace things back to the 1500s, with official, written documents starting as early as 1603 (you gotta love those Catholic Jesuits and their record keeping!).  His great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother (and I hope I've got the right number of "greats" in there) was married to one of the key Algonquin chiefs, one who is mentioned in historical dispatches and records noting his helpfulness to the French.

So the whole area where we ride, which is now a national park, was once land lived on and traded in by various aboriginal groups - tribes, clans, families - and then they made complex and complicated alliances and connections with the French (and then the English) when they decided to head over to this part of the world to expand their imperial holdings.  For me, whose family has been in Canada for a mere 100 years and whose history can be traced to the 170,000 Ukrainians who immigrated to Canada between 1896 and 1914, but who still feels a kind of "newness" to her familial history in this country; whose surname still raises questions by Canadians with Anglo-sounding names like "Johnson" or "Smith"; whose hyphenated ethnic identity still marks her as somehow different from Canadian-Canadians; and whose life in Ottawa only began a mere 4 years ago, I found this discussion of a man reclaiming and rediscovering a lost familial link to an aboriginal past while riding through his own historical family's lands on an "Indian Summer" day to be utterly riveting.

So riveting, in fact, that I didn't even notice any burn in my legs; I didn't feel yesterday's spinning class making me heavier than usual on the bike; and I was home before I knew it.

Who knew that a bike ride could offer a living, breathing tour through a bit of Canadian history?

Over and out,
Joy

2 1/2 Hours in the Park or 1 Hour in Baton Rouge

Blue sky, the moon, and a few autumn leaves.

Joy here...After the epic two loop ride of the park in the rain, the sisterhood figured it was time for another Sunday loop of the park.  I think this is my 18th loop of the park this season, but Cili Padi tells me my count is off, so I may have to go through this blog for the summer and count them up again.
In any case, we met up for what might be the final loop of the park with all the sisterhood together.  With The Professor back in the classroom after the summer break and The Trainer moving her gym from one location to another and the weather slowly but surely turning cold, our chances to get out for good Sunday rides are getting more and more limited.  As I've written about before, life does get in the way; trying to find time to ride a bike or go for a run often takes a great degree of motivation and organization, and it doesn't always happen.  And as our lives are getting busier and busier these days, we know that the summer of the sisterhood rides is slowly coming to its close, and we won't be able to count on each other being ready and willing to run out our doors every Sunday to push our bodies to the limit and laugh and talk with each other while doing so.  Autumn always brings its changes...change of scenery, change of temperature, and change of pace.

So we wanted to make this one count...burning calories, pushing our legs, and getting up and over those hills...

1,900 calories of baby back ribs.

...because, you see, another friend of ours told us the calorie count for a meal at the chain restaurant, Baton Rouge.  She said that one meal there was 5,000 calories.  Now I've done some searching online, and I can't find those stats, but the restaurant itself publishes its nutritional information for its meals.  It's one heck of an interesting read.

1,290 calories in a sandwich.

For instance, Baton Rouge's 16 oz BBQ pork back ribs (one of their signature dishes) has 1,900 calories in it.  Or, let's say you're not headed there for a full dinner, but just for a quick lunch with some colleagues from work and so instead of a big, rib dinner you'll opt for a sandwich of some sort.  Let's say you'll have their Louisiana Chicken Sandwich.  Well, if that's what you had, you'd be eating 1,290 calories.

And neither of those calorie counts includes the count for the fries that accompany the meal.  Those fries are another 860 calories.

So whether you head to Baton Rouge for lunch or dinner, there's a good chance that you'll be eating over 2,000 calories in one sitting (and don't even talk about the salt and fat intake).

Now let's put this into perspective for a moment.  Someone of my age and weight should probably have 2,000 calories PER DAY with moderate exercise, just to maintain my regular weight.  So if I went to Baton Rouge, and ate a meal, that would be my only meal of the day...but wait...if I did that, then I'd slow down my metabolism and tell my body that I was in starvation mode, so those calories wouldn't all be consumed and burned as energy, but stored on my body as fat.  Great.

The start of the Fortune Climb.

So what does this have to do with my Sunday morning bike ride with the sisterhood on a sunny day in the middle of September?  Well, it's all about perspective.  You see, those meals at Baton Rouge (at around 2,000 calories) require a heck of a lot of exercise to be reasonable meals for anyone.  Our Sunday ride was 2 hours and 28 minutes of cycling (so not counting the important moments when we had to stop and chat with each other, that added on about another 30 minutes or so to the total door-to-door time out).  Our Sunday ride was also 55kms door-to-door for me, up over hills with an 8% incline.  And for that 2 1/2 hours worth of effort, I burned around 950 calories...so not even HALF the calories in one of those Baton Rouge meals.

I would need to ride in the park for around 5 hours, completing over 100kms of hilly bike riding just to be able to come out at an even, no-gain position to be able to eat either one of those meals - BBQ back ribs or a Louisiana Chicken Sandwich - at a restaurant that is obviously popular enough to be a chain with branches in many different cities and countries.

The 950 calorie view from Champlain Lookout.

Now I don't want to preach and try to convince people to ride their bike rather than eat crap, but I do think that it's worthwhile to have some real-world comparisons at one's fingertips before making food decisions.  I mean if you're not planning on a 5 hour workout to burn off that meal, then how can you justify eating it?  It would be like saying, "heck my car only has a 40 gallon gas tank, but I'll just fill up the trunk with extra gas because I want to."  I mean, obviously if we did that to our cars, we would see how stupid and dangerous that is, but somehow we do that to our bodies all the time.  Why?

I for one, would rather spend my Sunday riding up to Champlain Lookout with my friends, feeling the camaraderie of the sisterhood, the burn in my legs, the strain on my breathing, and the sense of accomplishment rather than head to a restaurant to eat a meal that is just so over the top.  If I'm going over the top, it's over the top of a steep climb on my bike to get a view that is truly breath-taking.

Can you beat this view?????

So if invited for a meal at Baton Rouge, I'm likely to say..."no, sorry, I'd rather burn my calories than be burned by them, thanks."

Over and out,
Joy

I can sing a rainbow...

What I had planned on wearing over my jersey.

Joy here...Well folks, I woke up this morning, and it was 4C outside.  That's right:  4.  That's barely above freezing.  When Cili Padi and The Trainer showed up this morning to get me, they made me turn right around and put on a jacket.

Cili Padi was dressed warmly in red, bordering on salmon, and The Trainer's jacket was a bright, aqua blue.  When we met up with The Professor along the way, she was wearing a primary yellow jacket, and with me in...well, you guessed it...pink, we were a veritable rainbow of colours pedalling in the cold morning light to get to the park.

What I actually ended up wearing!

The wind blew in our ears making a sound like the ocean crashing against the beach in a constant roar, blocking out the sounds of our voices, and every now and then, above that continual white noise of the blowing wind, we would hear layered above that the sound of leaves rustling in the trees, almost like rainfall in the wind.

So as the wind blew us, chilling our fingers and toes, I began to sing in my mind:
Red and yellow and pink and green
Purple and orange and blue
I can sing a rainbow, 
sing a rainbow, 
sing a rainbow too.
Armed with a kids' song in my head against the cool wind and the pain in my underused legs, I began to feel better and better about getting out of bed to face the cold.  So that perhaps what lies at the end of a rainbow isn't actually a pot of gold (although that sure would be nice).  Our little rainbow of colours out on a cold Friday morning brought me not gold nor a little leprechaun, but instead, it brought me a growing sense of calm.

Makin' it up the climb to Pink Lake lookout.

After a busy week with meetings leading me to feel angry, stressed, and frustrated, a bike ride (even in the cold) surrounded by friends with a silly song from childhood in my head is enough to be an antidote to all things stressful in my life that can end up piling up in my belly and in my heart and bringing me down.

In fact, despite the cold, I was feeling so good in the relative emptiness of the park that is usually bustling with other cyclists and runners and hikers and families that I could have just kept on going and going and going, finishing a whole loop of the park.

But that, my friends, will have to wait until Sunday...
...when maybe it won't be so cold.

Maybe.

And if it is...well, I'll just have to find my inner rainbow, won't I?

Over and out,
Joy

Friday, Friends, and Flying!

The bend in the road marks the start of
the Pink Lake climb...topping out at
11% incline at its steepest.

Joy here...After yesterday's super tough double workout that had my legs screaming, I wasn't sure if I was going to make it for our Friday morning bike ride up that steep Pink Lake climb that I've struggled with on many a bike ride this summer (including just on Tuesday when I rode in the late afternoon). But Cili Padi and Superdave were coming along at 7:30am with their neighbour, and The Trainer was bringing along a friend who rode the "Share the Road" ride with me, and The Man was also ready to go.  So with everyone counting on me, I wasn't about to just roll over and go back to sleep...despite my legs begging me to do just that!

And as we rode out and met up with the crew of Friday morning riders and began rolling our way to the park, my legs began to wake up a bit.  With each turn of the pedal they warmed up just that little bit more, and so by the time we pulled into the parking lot I felt ready to go.

So as we started riding into the park proper, sticking together in one, big group, our "Share the Road" guest rider pulled forward; he was very strong and very fast, and served as the perfect carrot dangling out there before me.  Like a bull who sees red and has no choice but to charge, I felt that I had no choice but to turn my legs just that bit faster.  So off I rode from the group, pulling myself ever closer to that fast rider up the road.  I stopped long enough to enjoy a serene moment with a beautiful, full grown doe standing at the side of the road, her big ears flicked forward and her white tail upraised as she eventually bounded away into the trees.  Other than that pause, I was simply flying.

The end of the Pink Lake climb, Pink Lake itself, named
after an Irish-Canadian family who settled the area in
the nineteenth century.

The rest of the crew caught up to me as I watched the deer, and as they rolled forward towards the start of the climb, I clipped back into my pedals and caught up to them.  In no time, I had passed the group itself and began to fly up that climb.  I made it to the top and found our fastest rider waiting at the top for me.  We waited for the rest and had a good, long chat with everyone up there by the scenic view (with a few autumn leaves even starting to show up on some of the trees).

And even though I rode strong and I rode hard today, those legs of mine were tired.  I felt heavy, and I think I'm ready to take a bit of a pause.

It's a good thing that I'll be out of town from Sat-Wed, and that Thursday is my birthday, and Friday is my birthday party, because with all that fun and frivolity going on, I won't have any real chance to ride, and so I'll have a bit of a forced break from the bike.  While normally I would feel frustrated with this forced break and my inability to train when travelling, I'll admit that this week, I'm definitely looking forward to having a bit of a break.

Joe Friel's The Cyclist's Training Bible, which is an excellent resource both for the novice and the experienced cyclist makes a point of stressing just how important proper rest and recovery is.  Friel writes:
"Physical and psychological breaks from training are normal and necessary.  No one can improve at an uninterrupted pace forever.  If you don't build rest and recovery into your training plan, your body will force you to.  It doesn't matter how mentally strong you are:  You need frequent breaks from training."

Thank you, Dr. Friel!  I will take that advice to heart and give my legs a much-needed break.  And you, dear readers, will likely get a bit of a break from my cycling adventures for the next week...

...unless I change my mind! ;)

Over and out,
Joy

The Return of the "Double Double" and the new Plan

Joy here...Well, as my last post intimates, change is in the air.  Those of us living in the northern hemisphere must batten down the proverbial hatches and get good and ready for autumn and then winter, which will blow autumn to bits long before anyone is ready for it.

The Man amidst the snow during our first Ottawa winter.

Each year we try to come up with strategies to get through the winter without turning into big, fat, lazy potatoes.  It's hard.  First, the body wants to store extra fat in order to stay warm, so we find that our metabolism slows and anything and everything we eat turns to a little extra layer.  Second, it's dark basically all the time, which takes its toll on our moods and motivation.  Third, it's damn cold.  Anytime we want to head outside, we've got to brace ourselves for the shock to the lungs.  Fourth, there's snow everywhere, which means that not only do we have to bundle up against the cold, but we've also got to wear boots so that we can trundle through the white stuff...which then leaves salty/sandy puddles of water to ruin our floors wherever we leave our boots upon reentering the house.  (And don't even get me started on shovelling...).

Anyway, to make a long rant short, you can tell that we're not looking forward to the approach of the "w" season.

But instead of sitting back and complaining and curling into our sleepingbags for months on end, we try to put some things in place so that we can make it through the winter, despite the lethargy that coats us like ice.  Last year I took spinning; we tried bouldering and climbing; I ran outside to prepare for my 30km race in March; we started strength training...and we generally tried to keep a positive attitude.

Well, as this transition is breathing down our throats, we've already started putting some of our plans into practice.  I started spinning classes again, and we resumed our strength training with The Trainer.  So yesterday (Thursday) was my first "double double" workout in a long while.  My spinning class was crazily intense and had me sweating and my legs screaming for 60mins. straight.  Then I hobbled home and showered and ate, only to get ready for an intense circuit training session with The Trainer, where she said that I made the most funny faces that I've ever made at any session.  My legs were still screaming.

As fall and winter approach, here's what my workout week is sort of going to look like (I think), as I try to be a little more scheduled:
SUNDAYS - a long bike ride (indoors in my basement with SK and The Man when the weather gets too crappy to ride outside)
MONDAYS - rest day
TUESDAYS - a bike ride with some kind of drills
WEDNESDAYS - run day
THURSDAYS - a double double spinning & training day
FRIDAY - a run day
SATURDAY - a run day.

As with Nomi's and my usual approach, with the runs, I'll try to add 10 minutes to my weekly long run.  As well, I'll plan to take every fourth week easy.  Along the way, I'll probably put a little more structure into that plan and clarify some training goals and objectives and all that.  Right now, I just feel like I want to have a plan, so that when Old Man Winter blows his way into town, I'm not caught out scared and unprepared.

The best defence is a good offence, right!!!?

Over and out,
Joy

Labouring after Labour Day

My trusty steed.

Joy here...While many countries celebrate Labour Day at different times of the year (and on different days within one country, if that country happens to be Australia), in Canada and the US the holiday is celebrated on the first Monday of September.  In the US, though, "Labor" is spelled without its "u" as those darn Americans like to simplify their spelling like nobody's business.

Up here, we still keep our "u" in "Labour," but try not to do any labouring.  Labour Day is a day to take it easy.  It generally marks the end of summer, and usually right after Labour Day all the kids are back at school after their holidays.  It marks the change from one grade to the next, and symbolically the end of Labour Day marks a transitional moment.

As I rode out to meet SK and a couple of her friends for a post-work ride on the Tuesday after Labour Day, I couldn't help but think of these transitions.  Instead of cicadas buzzing heavily in the summer sun, evoking over-ripe grapes hanging lazily in still and hot vineyards, or ripened peaches on the tree, so full of juice that they drip, and humidity and summer hanging in the air with a sweet smell, I rode to the sound of crickets.  They sung in the bushes all around me as a cool breeze blew off the Ottawa river, and I knew that we'd not have much time to squeeze in this ride before the sun set on us.

The cool river and the wind blowing the clouds.

So as the late afternoon threatened to turn into early evening, we made our way to the park for a quick ride up to Pink Lake before we would let ourselves head home for a hearty and well-deserved dinner.

Back in April, one of my first rides of the season was a ride up to the Pink Lake lookout, and on a few weekdays throughout the summer, I've headed up there with friends for a tough ride that only takes about 2 hours door-to-door, like this time when I went with The Professor and The Trainer, or this time when I powered up with The Professor at 7am, or this time when The Professor and I did the ride and saw Power Penna in passing, or when The Trainer and Cili Padi and I started doing hill repeats up that 8% climb, ending with last Friday's epic three-peat ride up the hill.  My point is just that this climb has featured prominently, not just on this blog throughout the summer, but in my own cycling experience this summer.

The sun, about to set, hanging low in the clouds.

Yet as the weather is beginning to turn - from hot and humid to cold and clammy - Tuesday's ride to race the setting sun and stay warm in the face of a cool, almost-autumnal breeze, seemed to hint at the approaching close of our cycling season.

Last year as I was training for my first ever 1/2 marathon I described what the descent of autumn feels like on this blog.  I wrote that autumn means:  "one day it will be hot and sunny; the next day it will be cold; the next day it will be cold and rainy; lo and behold, the next day will be hot and sunny again; then the day will begin with frost and end being hot and sunny...etc.  In short, the weather is entirely unpredictable." 

And if this insight about the fluctuations and changeability of autumnal weather was true last September, it remains true this September.  Tuesday started at 11C and was 19C by the time we began our ride, but it was down to 12C overnight.  So we rode to beat the dark; and we rode to beat the increasing cold.

The sun setting on our path home.

Better than your local pub.

But we also rode for fun!  Our legs were still screaming from Sunday's epic two-loop ride of the park (which included this Pink Lake climb), and we did our best to ignore that burn as we turned our gears and willed our bodies up the climb, because it's fun to ride a bike.  It allows you a chance to plug into your inner child and ride fast and throw your adult caution to the wind as you fly down descents without a care in the world.  Gone are worries about bills; gone are worries about scheduling; gone are the petty frustrations of the day; your "to do" list?  Forget it.  All those mundane things that clutter our adult lives just fall away from you as you ride a bike.

So if my post-Labour Day ride showing me that the transition from summer to fall may just be upon us, and that change is afoot, then it also showed me that a good, hard bike ride with a friend can make me laugh and have fun and forget about what might be bugging me.

And, heck it's much healthier to ride a bike to get rid of those nagging frustrations than it is to have a stiff drink, right?

Instead of heading to "Cheers" where everybody knows my name so that I can drown my daily worries in a post-work drink (or three), I headed to Pink Lake and drowned my daily worries in a fun bike ride.

My liver will thank me.

Even if right now my legs don't.

Over and out,
Joy

The Shrinking Sisterhood and the Full Two Looper!

Joy here...Back in August the "sisterhood" (minus SK who was camping) headed out to the park for not one, but two full loops, including the tough Fortune Hill climb, but we cut off our loop without going all the way to the Champlain Lookout (a spot that features prominently on this blog as being a place with a really special view, that you can see in the fall here, or in the fog here, or on a clear summer day here).

We planned to do the full two-looper the following weekend, but we were foiled by rain and rolled over in our beds and went back to sleep.  And then last Sunday, The Professor, The Trainer, and I all rode in the "Share the Road" ride, splintering the sisterhood, so our epic two looper never happened last weekend.

Which brings us to today...

Look closely to see the rain drops bejewelling the spider web.

Who needs to see when they ride, right???

...The weather network was calling for thundershowers all day, but we've heard that one before.  So last night before going to bed, I promised myself that unless it was pouring rain when I got up, I would at least make my way to the parking lot where we were meeting the rest of the group before I would give up on my own, personal quest to ride two full loops of the park.

It wasn't really raining in the morning, but the roads were wet, and The Trainer and The Professor quickly (and sagely) decided to stay home and avoid the inclement weather.

So the sisterhood shrank by two members before even starting.

Cili Padi, Power Penna, SK, and I (along with the guys who make up the rest of Team Sunday) were still game to give it a try, despite the heavy fog and humidity in the air.

Right up into the clouds!

So we all rolled out of the parking lot and headed towards the start of the Pink Lake climb, that climb that I suffered through a three-peater just on Friday.  Then, amidst the low hanging fog and the haze that made it hard for us to breathe and that spit up water from our thin tires, we began to feel the start of rain.  At first we tried to ignore it, pretending to ourselves that it wasn't really raining, and it must just be the humidity in the air that was resting in crystal droplets on our arms.  But then we had to admit the truth:  it was raining, and it wasn't going to stop.

Power Penna and Cili Padi took one look at each other and agreed to ride to the top of the Pink Lake climb before cleverly turning around and heading for home...where towels, dryness, and sanity awaited, thus shrinking the sisterhood by two more.

SK and I reached the top of that climb and resisted the temptation to follow our sistas down the hill and out of the insistent rain.  Every pore of our bodies yearned to follow the other ladies out of the growing downpour, but like an unruly stallion that gets pulled sharply by his bridle at the hands of a skilled rider, we pulled ourselves into control and turned our bikes upward into the rain and the rest of the park.

You can't even see the cyclists up the road!

And as we rode upwards, climbing through the rain and the fog reminiscent of Victorian murder mysteries and enchanted forests, the rain slowly began to lessen.  The air was still humid and heavy around us, but at least the water seemed to be resting on our skin rather than falling on us and into our eyes.  In fact, at one point, while SK and I turned our gears and felt our legs screaming in rebellion, we agreed that the wetness was actually kind of refreshing.

As we rode, the rain lessened, but the fog did not.  And just as I looked down through the fog that kept our visibility to a mere few meters ahead my new CycleOps' battery died!  I was counting on having all sorts of new data about today's epic ride in the mist that would complete my loops #16 and #17 of this summer season, but I was foiled!  The road was white with mist ahead of me, and the screen was blank before me.  I was riding blind in more ways than one.

So without any data, with limited visibility, and with a truncated version of the sisterhood, I rode onwards to the Champlain Lookout.  But today...there really wasn't a whole heck of a lot to see:

But as we rode down from the lookout, we rode out of the thickness of the mist, and the roads began to clear.  The rain lessened and the fog seemed to lift, so when we reached the turnaround point where we would be faced with the choice to turn right to head home, or left to continue on for a second loop of the park, SK and I barely needed to look at each other to know that we were turning left...and up.

And as we rode that second loop of the park - making today's ride just under 90kms of hilly riding door-to-door - the air cleared, the skies lightened, and the roads began to dry.  So that by the end of it, we were able to give each other congratulatory high fives at the accomplishment of our first ever full two loop ride of the park...and then we began to crave fast food...

...SK was still talking about hot fudge sundaes at Dairy Queen as we rode our bikes home!

Over and out,
Joy

A Tribute to All Things Random (including a Friday Three-peat bike ride)...

Joy here...This morning at 7:30am I met up with The Trainer and Cili Padi and a new friend who has yet to earn a nickname when I refer to him on this blog like all my other friends who make their regular appearances as I chart my own progress.  The four of us were headed up to Pink Lake to do some hill repeats like we did last Friday.  Only this time, instead of doing two repeats, we planned on doing three repeats before turning our bikes around and heading for home.

Pink Lake:  Our hill repeat destination X 3!

At least that was the plan, but sometimes life just doesn't always unfold according to plan.  In fact, sometimes life seems more like a random collection of images and events that our brains are left to make sense of, rather than a planned out journey that we gladly trundle forward through.

Which makes me think of William Carlos Williams's most famous poem:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

Literary critics (and the poet himself) talk about the immediacy of the imagery and the particularity of each individual item as gesturing to something profound, something universal.  English profs nod their heads sagely and rub their beards as the poem seems to speak to them in a secret language, telling them something deep that excludes the rest of us.  And while I used to be an English professor, I wasn't that kind of English professor, and to me the poem is much more about randomness:  the randomness of grammar, the randomness of colours, the randomness of items etc.  In this randomness there may be something profound, for that is what life is...random.

And that is what our ride today was...random.

What are all those balloons doing there???

Our Friday ride's random collection of odd tidbits and events began as The Trainer and her friend were on their way to my house to meet up with me and Cili Padi. What did they see?  A cyclist without a helmet, smoking while she rode:   RANDOM.

Then we rode towards the park and looked up to the September hazy sky to see hundreds of hot air balloons floating up above the horizon:  RANDOM.

Me fixing my chain.  (Photo courtesy of The Trainer.)

Then once we were in the park, pedalling away to get to the base of the climb where we would start our hill repeats, I heard a grinding sound and looked down to my crank and realized that I had just skipped a gear and my chain fell loose.  So I had to hop off my bike and for the first time ever, and put the chain back in gear:  RANDOM.

Then after we rode up the hill for the first time, the new friend said that he was going to continue on and do a full loop of the park, and Cili Padi said she was going to go home and rest her legs in preparation for our long Sunday bike ride.  So our foursome became a twosome:  RANDOM.

And all the while I was shouting out bits of information that my new CycleOps was telling me about the ride.  The gradient of the Pink Lake climb is anywhere from 8% to 12%:  RANDOM.

So with a nod to William Carlos Williams and my own, personal reading of his poem, I will take a moment to celebrate the randomness of life that we as humans do our very best to make sense of in a myriad of crazy and interesting (and, dare I say it, RANDOM) ways!

Over and out,
Joy

Drunk on Information (The More Things Change, The More They Stay the Same)

Joy here...My birthday is coming up in September, and for my present, The Man has just given me a cool new toy to help with my training:

My new Cycleops power meter head unit!

My running Garmin.

Back when I started running, he bought me a Garmin watch that reads heart rate, pacing, and distance.  I was able to train last summer with real data to compare one run to the next one.  I was able to set up a training plan and stick to it.  And I was able to focus some of my efforts in specific ways.

My cycling CatEye.

Then earlier this summer when it seemed that I was riding my bike a heck of a lot more than running, and I had to accept the fact that I was turning this "running" blog more into a cycling blog, The Man bought me a little CatEye Strata computer for my bike that gives me similar kind of feedback and data.  It tells me speed and distance, and so I can compare one ride with another one.

I've realized, once again, that I'm one of those people who responds well to objective data...who gets drunk on information in a good way!

And so, now, 15 months after running my first ever race, nearly a year after running my first ever half marathon, and about 5 months after receiving my first bike computer...I am now the proud owner of an even better bike computer!

The new bit of information in addition to speed and distance that my new computer calculates for me is wattage and heart rate, so that I can figure out real power numbers in relation to effort.  So far I'm not so sure what that even is, but yesterday after receiving this little gizmo from our bike shop (where, I swear, we should be part-owners we've bought so much stuff), we settled into our home gym in the basement so that I could ride my bike on the trainer and figure out how to use my new gadget.

All ready to go!

In the end, I rode about 40 minutes with an average pace of around 27kms/hr, but more importantly, I set up my bike computer and entered in my personal data (weight, age etc.) so that when I get out the door for our planned two-looper of the park this Sunday, I'll have some real numbers to report.

Ahhhhhh....data.

Over and out,
Joy