Now for the ride report:
Friday evening we drove out to Dauphin, we left the house at around 5:00 p.m. and we stopped in Headingly for dinner.... at 6:00! oh man, that was the shortest hour-long drive ever. The rest of the drive was fine, and we rolled into the hotel parking lot with 10 minutes to spare until the office closed for the night. So we unpacked the car and got settled. No sooner than my head hit the pillow, my nose started to run, and my sinuses quickly became congested, and I had trouble sleeping that night (although it was better than in stonewall a couple years ago when our noisy neighbors kept us up until 4:30a.m.). I was not looking forward to the morning.
7:30 Saturday Morning: Up, getting dressed, feeling terrible. I made my way over to the community center where the breakfast and sign-in was. I went to the table, handed in my envelope, and received my registration packet.... for "Randy Smith" huh? so I went back, and got the proper named envelope, then proceeded to attach my number onto my jersey and bike, but... no zip ties, so I had to go get some zip ties ugg.. I hope the whole weekend isn't going to be like this. Feeling a little better my expectations for the ride increased. I spotted a few guys from the shop, and we chatted as we waited for the event to start.9:00 the ride begins after a short ceremony and "warm up" which consisted of bending over a couple of times and stretching our arms. Temperatures were somewhere around 5 or 6 degrees at the start of the day hence the tights and long-sleeved jersey. As things got rolling, we got a small group together and were riding at a decent speed (at least that's what I thought), we were slowly picking up the pace, and after one of my pulls (the rider in the front that breaks the wind for the other riders) at ~37km/h one of the guys in the group sneered as he said, "it's hard for me to warm up when you're sprinting". Huh? if my sprints are that slow, I really need to look at a different sport.
The ride was mainly flat for the first 30 minutes or so, then we got closer to the park, and started up the escarpment. My first day where there were some actual hills was going to be a learning experience for me, living in Manitoba, the biggest hill I had come across was the bridge over the floodway. Our group divided up pretty quickly, and there were 3 of us riding together through the hills. There were some tough ones where I ran out of gears, but I made it up them pretty well.
A couple of other riders joined up with us, one of which Jess used to work with at the hospital, but he has gone back to school to become a doctor. Nice fellow. Anyways, we held a good pace the rest of the way to the finish and our time was 2 hours 31 minutes for 72 km. All in all, I was pleased with my performance as I didn't have all the time I wanted to prepare for the ride (I hadn't ridden in over a month, and before that I wasn't exactly riding regularly either).
Well, I have to go to work now, so I'll continue this later. starting with lunch....
