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| Resting at the top of the hill between sets. |
Joy here...Wednesday morning rolled around and instead of being -8C, for the first time in a LONG time, it was +8C and so The Professor, The Spinning Instructor, and I all headed out to meet up with each other so that we could do some hill repeats up the Pink Lake climb in Gatineau Park. (Cili Padi and Superdave headed out earlier to do some loops of the park...but stay tuned below for how that turned out).
I've written about hill repeats up Pink Lake before, such as one of the all-time favourite posts "
Pink Ladies Conquer Pink Lake"from last summer, or this spring's "
Spring Hill Repeats,"or the ones I did with Cili Padi who was very strong, "
Hill Repeats." The hill is short; it's steep; and riding up it builds musculature strength. Also, it takes less time to ride up and down this hill a few times than it does to ride an entire loop of the park, and with all of us being a little pressed for time on a mid-week morning, we opted for the hill repeats.
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| Pink Lake through the mist. |
The day was foggy and cloudy, and because of the 100% humidity it never really felt as warm as we were expecting. It was a kind of cold and clammy day where the sweat you work up by pushing your body to the limit to ride up that steep hill clings to you and turns cold as you turn around to ride down the hill, pushing speeds to nearly 60km/hr.
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| My friends all cresting the hill together! |
But as we pushed ourselves through the haze and fog of a morning that was chillier than we had hoped it would be, who should appear upon the horizon, her bright red jacket shining through the fog? It was Cili Padi! So as I pushed myself up that first hill repeat to crest the top, I met up with her, and The Professor and Spinning Instructor and I all joined up at the top to hear how she just didn't feel like doing a whole loop of the park, and decided to let Superdave carry on on his own as she rode back to join up with us. (Personally, I think she just wanted to ride with the girls...after all there is something special about girl time.)
I've mentioned before that
Cili Padi is French-Canadian and that The Professor is bilingual, working at an English-French university; well, the Spinning Instructor is also francophone, so as we rode through the mist and fog, I asked for them to just speak French on our rides so that I can practice listening (and eventually speaking, when I get over my nervousness), because all my French seems to be locked somewhere in the mists of my mind, and I can't make my way through it.
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| Seeing the lake through the trees (les arbres). |
So as we finished our three repeats of Pink Lake--me whizzing past The Professor on the downhill and catching her with my own version of her tucked Bullet Move (see
Sunday's blog entry for a full description)--and started making our way out of the park, the morning's haze and fog began to lift around us, but the fog of language began to descend upon me. I was able to pick out a phrase here and there--"Joy est une grande cycliste"..."Elle est une bonne amie"..."Elle a les jambes solides"--surely that's what they said, right? And slowly but surely, as we rode and the roads cleared before my eyes, my ears cleared too, and their French made more and more sense in my head. It's only a matter of time before I have the courage to let that French come out of my mouth too!
I turned off to leave them and head for home--"Au revoir, mes amies"--and smiled to myself. All in all, I rode 50kms door-to-door with my power output topping 240 watts as I rode up the climb. Not too bad for someone who
only recently decided to come up with a new cycling plan that includes hill repeats and still doesn't really know what she's doing. Bravo, Joy!
Over and out,
Joy
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