No – not even in the pack!
There’s a training ride organised by the Ride to Conquer Cancer crew today so we decide to join them. It starts at Vaudreuil over to the west of the island so we need to hire a Communauto car to get there for 8am. It’s a tight squeeze, but by taking all 4 wheels off, we get the bikes into the car and are away by 7am!
I’ve never ridden in a group before, so I’m looking forward to seeing if I can keep up! There’s about 30 of us, and of course rain is forecast (but at least it’s warm)
We all depart the car park together and I make the serious mistake of leaving with the first group (the roadies). The ride is only supposed to be ridden at 20-25km /hr, but these people are cycling at 28 – 30 km/hr. I keep up for about 10km (ish!) but am soon dropped! Unfortunately, these boys have taken a wrong turn, and are heading round the circular route the wrong way! We will all end up at the same rest stop (Tim Hortons, unsurprisingly) but now there is no group behind us to join onto. It seems like I am destined not to ride in a pack after all!
We arrive at the rest stop (last of course!) and decide to only ride part of the second loop. We can’t afford to return the Communauto car late. When you sign up for Communauto they give you a hell and damnation lecture about never bringing the car back late!
Towards the end of the ride, it starts to rain gently. Ha –after last week’s epic adventure I don’t see that this counts as rain at all, so I leave my rain jacket in the handy rain jacket carrier on the bike.
We only chopped 10km off the ride, so find that we have ridden 68km and arrived back at the car park at noon. (we actually had time to do the whole ride, but never mind). I’m delighted to find that we arrive just behind the roadies, but ahead of everyone else (we skipped the second rest stop, this may have helped). So I’m very pleased that I felt the ride was well within my capabilities and that my average speed was a stunning (well for me anyway) 21.7 km/hr!
As we are loading the bikes in the car, one of the other riders says to Stuart, hey aren’t you the guy in the video, that’s an amazing story. I feel myself welling up. Goodness knows what I will be like at the actual Ride!
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