Gatineau Grand Prix: Recce the Course (Loops #12 & #13)

Joy here...Since I've done very little (i.e. no) running this spring but a lot of bike riding, many of the posts on this blog this year have been about cycling, and in particular, they've been about cycling in Gatineau Park, the local park maintained by the government of Canada, which is great for cyclists and is one of the reasons we still live in this town!

The usual loop--from Gamelin Parking lot all the way up to
Champlain Lookout and back to the bottom--totalling 42kms.
(Then I would add on the additional distance to and from the parking
lot from home to get my total ride distance.)

This park began to appear on this blog in the summer of 2010, when I completed my first loop through it on my bike (well, actually, it was technically my second loop, but the first one was in 2007 on my second-ever bike ride in life, and it was more of a torture fest...it took me years before I got back on my bike after that, so I like to block out that experience).  That summer of 2010, I was able to ride 5 loops of the park from July to October, in preparation for my first-ever half marathon.

Last summer--the summer of the "sisterhood"--I completed just under 25 loops of the park, and this year, it's only June, but I'm already up to 13 loops of the park.

Quite obviously, my cycling has overtaken my running as of late.  And I figured it was about time to provide some more info about the park itself and what I mean when I talk about: the Pink Lake climb (like when I did repeats and blogged about them here--a post with links to other Pink Lake rides--or here--a post where I describe the aim of hill repeats in the first place); or  the nasty Fortune Climb (like here, where I blogged about this year's first ride up Fortune or here, where I wrote about the bear we encountered at the top of the fortune climb); or what it means when I say "loops" of the park (like when I blogged about the "sisterhood's" first ever two-loop ride of the park last year).

So the pic of the map above gives a sense for the ride.

Click for a larger version.
This pic shows
Wednesday's truncated ride due to rain and hail 
(still a total ride of 27kms).

The "Women on Wheels" rides (except for last Wednesday's that was truncated due to rain), start at the Gamelin meeting spot and go all the way up to Champlain (including those two climbs, Pink and Fortune) before returning to the same meeting spot.

The Gatineau Grand Prix, however, which is an annual bike race in the park, starts after Pink Lake and includes the shorter loop circuit (i.e. excluding Champlain Lookout).  It begins/ends along the part marked "Gatineau Parkway" on the map, goes up Fortune, turns left at the Champlain Parkway, down to the junction, and then turns right and starts all over again.  That constitutes the race "loop."

Depending on one's racing category, one might have to do as many as 6 of those race loops!  The women's novice category complete 2 of those race loops, and since I've been riding my bike so much this spring, I began to toy with the idea of *maybe* entering the Gatineau Grand Prix come mid-July.  So I headed out on Sunday to ride with the thought in mind that I should try doing the two loops of the race course and then compare my times with the times of previous races to see if at this point--only a month out from the race itself--I would have a hope in hell of not coming in last place after hours of unprecedented suffering.

21km race loop of the Gatineau
Grand Prix.

It was my chance to reconnoitre the course--or recce it as the pro cyclists say!

So we rode the 24.6km from home to the starting point of the race circuit and then began the timer so that we could see how I would measure up against past racers in the women's novice category.  In the last year that the race was offered the winning group of women finished each 21km loop in under 40 minutes, thus finishing the entire race in under an hour and a half.  The women who came in the last places finished each of their 21km loops in over 50 minutes, thus finishing the entire race in around an hour and three quarters.  Armed with this info, I had a target of somewhere between 39 minutes and 55 minutes to see where I would slot in, were I to do this race.

Now, of course, the race is still over a month away, and I've not done any training, and I have never even done a bunch race or anything like that.  So this little recce ride isn't going to give me full and predictable data of any kind, just a kind of guestimate so that I can figure whether or not I'd be up for trying a real bike race.

As I started my first loop, my legs felt much better than last Sunday, when I felt tired and like I was pedalling through molasses.  As we climbed up Fortune, I felt powerful, but like I still wasn't able to go as fast as I wanted, and as we reached the very top of the loop at the turn around point, I could feel my lower back paining me.  Nonetheless, I tried to gain some time on some of the downhills--topping speeds of 68km/hr--so that as I went over the rolling section of the loop, I'd have some power.

I did the two loops, and then as The Man trundled on to do a third, I turned around and rode back to the Gamelin meeting point to check my data, count my kilometres and minutes, and see where I would have slotted in.  (In total, my door-to-door ride was 91.2kms in under 4 hours...a far cry from the 5 hours it took me back in 2010 to do one stinking loop!)

I did my first 21km loop in 46 minutes and my second one in 48 minutes, coming in just over an hour and a half, and had I been in that race in 2010 with the novice women whose data I was using to gauge myself against, I would have come in third from the bottom.

Pretty sobering.

But then again, I wouldn't have been last place.

And I've got more than a month to improve.

So maybe, just maybe, I'll build up the courage to sign up for my first real bunch bike race.

Over and out,
Joy