Cycle the Sunshine Coast, BC: Kelowna Granfondo

2010 to 2011 Blog Posts - Virtual Tours

Over the past two years of having this Blog and fueled by my personal passion for cycling, I have posted blogs and have let people know where to ride on Sunshine Coast. Certainly the two elements has blurred a bit.

My blog has become many things including my training diary, my vessel to share my experiences with the world, promote the Sunshine Coast and to share in other cycling stuff that I find personally interesting.

My Homepage has my posts over the 2010 - 2012 years. When training for certain events, you get bored of analyzing data every which way, so in 2010 I started a virtual tour across Canada with the my cumulative training distance over the years and posted on Google Maps. It started out innocently enough with a question pondering if I virtually rode across Canada where would I be and what towns would I visit. The journey has been an interesting one and we live in a very vast and diverse country. Read on....

Monday, July 18, 2011

Kelowna Granfondo - It was worth it!

Its Monday and just finished the Kelowna Granfondo weekend. Thinking about the ride puts a great big grin on my face. There were 5 Cat 5 climbs and 1 Cat 2 climb - almost 1200m of elevation gain. At the end, my time was 4:01:40 - 69/260 in my 40-49 age group and 192/880 overall.

The ride started out slowly as expected, but the first hill came quickly and started to peak my heart rate. That was Cat 5 climb and 14km of uphill climbing for 500m elevation. Finally, descending on the OK lake side was beautiful and fast and then setting us up for the Cat 2 climb to Predator Ridge. Riders were falling like flies and I felt fairly strong knowing that I had a long way to go.

The descend from Predator Ridge into Vernon was an exhilarating 20km of a net 400m drop where we reached speeds of 73km! The ride along Hwy 97 was fairly non-eventful except that the organizers set aside a whole lane for us to use. That in itself was the reason that I LOVE Granfondos!

My goal was to be under 4 hours - and I came close - except for the pee break, 2 minutes waiting for a red light to change and the 2 water bottle fill ups. It added about 6 minutes to my time so, even though I was over 4 hours overall, I can rationalize that I met my goal. Way to go!!!

The last 20km was a blur as I got into a pace line with a dozen or so riders and a comment from one guy was "you're destroying us back here". Smiles and everybody was elated that I took it to the next level.

Next year it'll be definitely under 4 hours.

Getting Ready for the word GO!