8th
A brief summary of Cross Ontario 09
Sorry for not posting anything over the past few weeks. I’ve been working on writing a proper recap of the ride. I’m already at 6,000 words, but still have the last 12 hours of the ride to document. Its definitely going to need some editing. It’ll be a few more days of work, so in the meantime, I thought it might be interesting to share the technical summary that I forwarded to the UMCA as part of the records packet.
This was sent to the UMCA Records co-chairs in May 12. The version I’m working on now provides the heart and soul to the skeleton below.
Rider Summary:
It was an interesting weekend.
We departed Parliament Hill at 7:15 am on May 8, 2009 - a few minutes behind our originally scheduled time of 7:00am. Just prior to departure, I rode a ceremonial lap around the Parliament Buildings and left the grounds at the quarter hour. The ride out of Ottawa was uneventful. We had chosen an early start time to beat traffic and the heat of the day. It was a wise choice.
Friday was a mostly dry day, however as we started into the late afternoon, we encountered thunderstorms, strong winds, which combined with the hills, had slowed us down slightly, although we were on track for an arrival time of 1:30pm the next afternoon at the 1/3 mark. After a quick change into my woolen “evening wear” around 8pm, we left the Peterborough region and headed for Toronto, the 1/2 way point. After another storm that evening, the night turned temperate and the winds died down. I was able to make up some lost ground on our pace as we travelled through the Toronto region. It was awesome to see so many familiar faces cheering me on from the boulevards as we passed through my home town. A full moon lit our way through the Toronto region and down into southern Ontario. As we headed towards Guelph, the terrain flattened out and I was able to pick up my pace even further.
As the moon fell and daylight broke, I was greeted by a blanket of thick gray fog on the landscape. Everything was the same shade of gray and I was finding it difficult to stay awake on the bicycle. I fought drowsiness for almost 2 full hours - first with physical and mental techniques, and then caffeine. Nothing was working. Rather than risk a crash, I bedded down for a much needed nap. 11 minutes later, we were back on the road and headed for our destination.
Around 9am, the wind started to pick up. Moderate at first, but quickly gaining strength. By noon, I was fighting a 25 mph headwind that was rumored to be gusting up to 35 mph. My pace dropped from a steady 16 mph to an agonizing 10 mph. At some points, I was struggling to keep the bike moving as I stood on the pedals and fought to hold the line at 4 mph. I was quickly losing the benefit of the time I had banked and my dream of beating Ron’s time was all but lost. At one point, my crew had miscalculated our ETA, and when I asked how we were doing, was met with stone-faced silence that I could only have interpreted as “I hope you are having a nice training ride, because you aren’t setting any records today.”
Around 2pm, our route turned further westward and the wind moved to a cross-headwind. It wasn’t much of a respite, but it was enough of a break to let me get back to a 16-18 mph pace. I still had a long way to go, but I knew that with some solid effort, I might be able to beat Ron’s original time by at least 15 minutes. 25 miles from our destination, a man stuck his head out of a minivan parked on the side of the road and yelled at me as I passed. “Its Ron Dossenbach,” he yelled. “Its all yours, go get it!”. I had been looking to contact Ron for months and he was the last person I had expected to see at the side of the road. His encouragement was tremendous motivation and I was able to pick up the pace even further.
As the afternoon wore on, I banked more time and rolled into Windsor City Hall at 6:12pm on Saturday May 9, 2009.
I was met at City Hall by Ron and his wife, my wife Amanda, my mother Kathryn and several local cyclists.
Some other interesting stats from the ride:
Total bike time: 31:54
Total ride time: 34:57
8677 feet of climbing
High: 89 degrees
Low: 48.2 degrees
Average HR: 125
Minimum HR: 84 (recorded as I was fighting off the drowsiness)
Max HR: 172
Calories Consumed: ~15,200
Calories Expended: ~20,142
Sweat Rate: 3.6 pints per hour
Total liquid consumed: ~95 pints
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General notes and comments:
I should note that two crew did not start the ride with us - Rob Dyson and Bob Langley - and that a third, Brad Crockford, took ill mid-afternoon as was taken off the ride. You have waivers from all three.
Posted at 12:52 - Comments (View)
