Cycle the Sunshine Coast, BC

Its July 19th and for the last week I've been feeling awesome when I ride. Awesome means hills are molehills, power and recovery is always available and you feel that you have tons of energy. It wasn't more than a month ago that I was complaining about just the opposite effects - no energy, burning legs walking up stairs and not motivated. In June I wrote in my diary "feeling crappy - need to rest" and the last June entry "I'm getting slower FML!" on a training loop that use to measure my performance. I was thinking what the helI do i need to do to get faster???? It was like i was slamming the course but when i reviewed the data , i was slower. Urggggg! The solution was that i rested fofor about two weeks by reducing my mileage and effort, putting on easy miles. Then on July 1, I slammed 190km; the next weekend, 120km and now the granfondo at 115km. I rode the the course where I was slower in June, to a new personal best and I thought that I wasn't ...

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 wa...

Every year I try to put together a day that tests my endurance.  Last year was the Circle tour of Sunshine Coast and Vancouver Island - 240 km in 2 days.  This year takes me south from Nanaimo to Mill Bay, over to Brentwood and Swartz Bay, then Tsawwassen to Horseshoe Bay. This 188km tour I completed in 7 hours and 17 minutes with 5hours waiting or riding ferries.  The Nanaimo to Mill Bay was definitely the highlight of the trip where I rode through the back-roads of Cedar, Chemainus Bay, Maple Bay, Mill Bay, Brentwood Bay, and Sidney with relatively light traffic and calm flats roads.  My buddy knew the best routes and we rode on roads that I wouldn't have ever figured out.  Click this link to download or view the route in detail. Getting through the George Massey tunnel proved easier than I thought, but I needed to jump on a bus at the Ladner Exchange and ask every bus if the route went to Richmond.  Hint - Look for a bus that goe...