This Ride Was Long

My overall goal this season was to do Long rides. My definition of a long ride comes from the wise one, Ben Sukow: A Ride is anything under 4 hrs. Longish rides are under 8hrs. A Long ride is anything longer than Longish, but still within reason, while a Redicuride is any ride that is going to make you hurt real bad and make you wish you never liked bikes. My strategy was to titrate my rides, do a bunch of Longish rides, slowly cranking it up, and never overstep into Redicuride territory. Today I did another solid Long ride. Nearly 11 hours on the bike, of which less than two hours were on pave. I will call this ride the Gatineau Tour, since it pretty much links up every one of the disparate trail systems in the park into a ~75-mile mega loop that swings to north and south of the park, and into Wakefield. To do the link up you need to do a 1/2-hour hike-a-bike and traverse a little-used equestrian trail that is overgrown and consists of two water-filled OHV tracks. Sometimes you don't see what you are rolling over exactly, but you know it has water in it because your feet sometimes get soaked, and sometimes your front wheel shoots down into a mystery rut. All in good fun.

On a remote piece of trail, I encounterd my first mama black bear.


I didn't have much food at the house, so I went empty handed for the first 4 hours till I got down from the hike-a-bike to le depaneur. This was the first helping.


Very healthy. Once I blew through the glycogen and started on a good feeding cycle, the miles clicked by. Every climb the legs were there, even at the very end. If I eat, drink, and take electrolyte tablets regularly I think I could go for a while. I got my system dialed now. Still, after 11 hours I will be wiped tomorrow. To think that GDR racers pull down more than that 20+ days on end. Well, I think I am ready for Great Glen at least...