30km Loosen the Legs Ride!

Joy here...On the heels of my first ever bike race, the Gatineau Grand Prix (where I placed 6th, just in case you needed a friendly reminder), I basically took this week off.  I took both Sunday and Monday as pure rest days and did a whole lot of nothing.

Then on Tuesday I did a short bike workout.  On Wednesday I did nothing, and on Thursday I did strength training with The Trainer.

Some of the folks out for an easy, peasy
"loosen the legs" Friday afternoon ride.

But Saturday was the Ottawa GranFondo, a fondo cycling event organized by local cyclist and all around great guy, Greg Capello, and I had signed up for the 100km event (there's also a 170km and 220km event).  So I knew I'd have to get out there and ride to loosen up my legs before Saturday's big 100km effort.

As luck would have it, The Man and I decided to check into the hotel at the start line of the fondo event--a little "staycation" for us--and ex-pro cyclist Andrew Randall who just retired after a 10 year long professional cycling career was leading a small group of riders out on a little ride just to get the blood flowing, and we joined up.

We rode easily out for around 15kms, and then at the turn around point, Andrew had us all start 30 seconds after each other in order to do a 5 minute effort.  "Don't time trial, or anything," he said, "just ride hard to get your legs firing."  Ha!  "Don't time trial"?  Really?  You're going to tell me to do a 5 minute effort and NOT treat it like a time trial?  Good luck.

So, yeah, I fanged it outta there like a maniac, hitting speeds around 49km/hr, chasing down the woman who started in front of me, but then I did slowly begin to realize that I couldn't actually sustain speeds over 40km/hr.  I slowed down to about 34km/hr and kept on going until we regrouped with the rest of the folks out for this easy "loosen the legs" pre-ride.  Then a category 3 UCI racer--who I nicknamed the "Pocket Rocket" since she's 5 feet tall and 105 pounds--and I went to the front of the group and rolled easily together back to the hotel, holding a nice, comfortable 30km/hr pace.  Trish-the-Pocket-Rocket, whose real nickname is "Turbo," and I chatted along the way, becoming fast friends.

Andrew is her cycling coach, and by the end of the ride, she had planted the idea in my head that he should be my cycling coach too.

So all-in-all it was a good, little "loosen the legs" ride, one that may just have netted me a new cycling coach.

Over and out,
Joy