Rideau Lakes Cycle Tour, June 8-9 2002

All images are shamelessly stolen from Markus Wandel and Andrew Lavigne.

My brother Matthias mentioned that he was considering riding in the Rideau Lakes Cycle Tour (RLCT) with our other brother Markus this year, and I asked him a dozen pesky questions about it (how far is it? where do you sleep? how many people do it? and so on). Matthias thought that he wouldn't like to ride with Markus because he'd be too slow, so I impulsively offered to ride with him at his pace should he decide to do it.

Matthias decided that 177km (each way - you go from Ottawa to Kingston, stay overnight at Queen's University, and ride back the next day. Over 1000 riders do this) was more than he wanted to take on, but by that time I had thought about the idea enough to be intrigued. I don't think I really thought through how far 177km is - I remembered when I first got my mountain bike (in 1996!), I would often spend Sundays racking up over 100km - and that would include about half of that on trails, and the rest on dirt roads and all that with nubby tires and low tire pressure. I figured that 177km wouldn't be that big a deal either. After all, I was no less fit than I was in 1996, I would change my tires for slicks, and it would all be paved with the opportunity for drafting. So I was undaunted by the idea, and since Markus' advice was simply "just do it", I merrily sent off my registration sometime in April.

My undaunted state did not last long. One of my friends who has cycled cross-Canada kept telling me that this is FAR, when she did her ride her longest day was 200km and it took ALL day and the wind was at her back and she was pooped after. And since this woman is no wimp, I started having dark thoughts about the RLCT. I started my training rides late - it was the end of April by the time I had my bike fully tuned up and bought new slicks (and a front handlebar bag for snacks!). No other modifications were strictly necessary - I like my clipless pedals even if they are the Shimano SPD kind for mountain bikes (hey, I can WALK in my bike shoes because the cleats are recessed, AND I can ride by bike without the special shoes because there is a cage around the clip and the clip is on a spring and will bend away from ordinary shoes so as not to damage it). I already had J-shaped bar-ends so I would have a variety of hand positions, too, and two water bottle cages. I did have the bottom bracket replaced, and the derailleurs adjusted, and the drivetrain cleaned and the brake pads replaced and all that... The only thing I was still unhappy with was my seat. It was the narrow el-cheapo uncomfortable seat that came with the bike (like the seat, the pedals that came with the bike were crappy too - the bike store geek explained that with this kind of bike, virtually everyone customizes pedals and seat, so why up the cost of the bike with quality components here? And I'd replaced the nylon pedals with aluminum ones that would take toe clips within the first three months of owning the bike, and a year or so later I got my groovy clipless pedals at MEC). But when I mountain bike, I don't spend much time in my seat (I'm not very good, so I spend most of my time picking myself up off the ground, actually), so I never minded the nasty seat. It only took one (50km) training ride for me to mind - I was trying to do the steady pedal cadence ride thing, and my butt hurt! So off I went to the bike shop, and asked for a woman specific seat. They showed me the Body Geometry seat, and since I didn't know enough to know that many people go through multiple seats before finding the one that matches their anatomy, I bought the seat, put it on my bike, and was happy. I love this seat. From the first moment I sat on it, sore bum from biking was no longer an issue.

Gear is the easy part. I still needed to train. The RLCT pamphlet advises a minimum of 1000km training prior to the tour. I was unaware of this (I got the pamphlet a week before the tour), but it's just as well - I wouldn't have done it anyway, and would have been intimidated even more than I already was. I did the Fergus-Elora loop a few times, going further and further out Highway 24 each successive time, so that my longest training ride was 100km. But I didn't do an awful lot of them - not only have I been super busy this spring (something about a thesis...), but it has been cold, wet, windy, or a combination of any of those three for 90% of this spring. The one nice week we had in April, I was marking finals, and the other in late May I was at a conference. So my total training distance was about 450km.

Of course everybody I was riding with - Markus, Andrew and Lorraine - was much more hardcore about it. Markus had 2000km on his bike for this year, and Andrew and Lorraine had done the Golden Triangle Tour over the May long weekend. Plus none of them were on mountain bikes. Plus Markus kept talking about how demonically fit Andrew is, and of course I'm already intimidated by Lorraine's cycle prowess - she belongs to a real bike club and is tall and lean. Plus I drove to Ottawa from Kingston the day before the tour - and realized just how far and hilly this stretch is. So I told Markus that I wouldn't mind if they left me behind if I was too slow, I would just do it in my own time if I couldn't keep up.

Markus had Andrew and Lorraine over for a "carbo-load" dinner of pasta the night before the tour. I'm not sure I'm a serious enough athlete of any sort to subscribe to words like carbo-loading, but I'm not about to pass up a chance to pig out on pasta (and caesar salad, and ice cream cake!). Never mind that I had more carbs than anybody need the night before and that morning in Kingston when I visited my friends Mark and Jen - pizza and bread and most of all beer and ...

Markus was very worried about lineups that would make us leave 10 minutes later than he wanted to, so he convinced everybody to get up before dawn and be at Carleton by 6:30. Fine with me, I was enjoying participating in an activity that I had no responsibility in organizing (Markus organizes down to the last detail - I tend to be anal about things, but being around Markus makes me feel positively lackadaisical in my approach. I actually LOVE when other people organize stuff - it means I can just go along with it, and take no responsibility. But that only works when I have confidence in others' organizational ability, which fortunately is the case with this bunch of people). So we were registered and ready to go by 6:45.

I was assigned the task of looking out for Andrew and Lorraine. Here I am looking out for them. Obviously not very effectively, since Andrew clearly saw me and took a picture with me in it, and I still hadn't spied them. There we are on the right, all ready for the tour. I'm trying not to let my intimidation show.

See, I'd figured all the riders would look like those characters on the left - fancy bikes, loud and fancy jerseys, no body fat... And a lot of them did look like that. But there were just as my ordinary looking folks. But I know well that you can't tell just from looking at somebody's body how fit they are. And I also figured that everybody except me had done the training mileage. And while there were some mountain bikes, and I even saw two riders who had nubbys on (I, on the other hand, had slicks, with 73 lbs of pressure to reduce rolling resistance), Markus pointed out that my bike would be the slowest of the four of us.

The one thing I do know about is pacing myself. I started using a heart rate monitor sometimes when I run about three years ago, and keeping myself slower than I want to be at the outset means I can now run 25km (I never said I like doing that, though). So I was happy to comfortably ride to Ashton (drafting off Markus and Andrew the whole way, though). After that, we picked up some more riders and rode in a pack, so I had to take my turn in the front too, but I was feeling great and all was well. Plus I got to learn all the cool hand signals and calls that you use when riding in a pack. Markus got a little upset when the formation wasn't as perfect as he liked, but I thought we looked great even if brightly spandexed groups blew by us every now and then.

We got to Perth really early, but that didn't stop me from eating my lunch and buying a square from the ladies selling them and helping myself to the free OBC juice. At this point, I realized that - even though I hadn't done the miles, and even though I didn't have a road bike - my fitness was up to par with most everybody there, and if the pack decided to move faster, that wouldn't be a problem for me either.

I'm not one for long breaks - I recover very quickly, and I don't like for my muscles to get cold (my body temperature drops in less than five minutes when I stop moving - I pulled out a jacket at the rest stops because I started shivering). We did take breaks close to half an hour at all the stops - so, after getting through the bathroom line-ups, I killed the time with snacks! Any excuse to snack will do.

Between North Crosby and Perth, our pack somehow got split up. I found myself with a faster group of bigger (than me) and very fit men. They were too fast for me to ever take the lead, but I managed to keep up even though they were going well over 30km/hr. It wasn't intentional, and I knew I'd find my group again at the Perth Road Village rest stop, but it was cool to ride that fast and blow over the hills and past lots of other cyclists.

We got to Queens in the early afternoon. Markus' seat broke just as we pulled in. He needed to get to a bike store before it closed. Andrew found out where the nearest bike store was and then he and Markus went shopping while Lorraine and I went to shower. Ahhhh but it felt good to be all clean!

When Markus and Andrew came back, Andrew showered and Markus had a bath. I'm hanging outin Andrew and Lorraine's room - right next door to Markus, I was housed in a separate building. Then we went for dinner. Markus was worried about the line-up, so he and I went ahead to see if we could save spaces in the line for Andrew and Lorraine (who went to make a phone call).

There was a LOT of food at dinner. I ate an awful lot. But that didn't deter me from my mission of going downtown for ice cream afterwards (I had thought I'd go for ice cream when I first got there, but between the bike seat shopping and bathing endeavours and the fear of the dinner lineup, there was not enough time). So afterwards, we strolled down to White Mountain for ice cream.

We goofed off in Kingston for a while. Lorraine's friends Tamsin and Rob (who had joined us at dinner) came for ice cream but then headed off to the brewpub. My fellow riders aren't beer drinkers, and since I had enough of that when last I was in Kingston (two days ago), I went back to the residence when they did.

Breakfast opened at 5:30, and it was decided that we should be there then. Yikes, I was not happy when my alarm went off. Fortunately, I can eat at any time of day or night, so I pigged out before 6:00a.m. (a first for me, I think). Despite the early breakfast, it was well after 7:00 when we got going.

We weren't riding in a pack from Kingston all the way to Perth Road Village - there was no wind to speak of, and we were full of energy, and I hadn't realized how pretty the area is because the day before my eyes had been focused on the rear wheel in front of me all the time.

Just after Perth Road, we were joined by Julio and Ken, who were in the fast pack I'd spent a little bit of time in the day before. They stuck with our little pack the whole day - we only split up to chug our way up the Westport killer hill. That's me about a third of the way up on the far left, and a cool action shot of Julio (who is obviously not struggling as much with the hill as I am - but I stayed on my bike all the way up. That was so exciting, I had to stop for a pee break at the top, but that was fine since Markus and Andrew were busy taking pictures).

By Perth (77km from the finish), I was pretty tired of riding. I still had lots of energy, but the thrill had worn off. Markus' butt was sore from his new seat (unlike mine, his butt does not work with the Body Geometry saddle). The last stretch should have been easy - it's relatively flat, and the prevailing winds should be at your back. Not this time, though - the hills didn't grow, but there was a stiff crosswind which sometimes switched to a headwind. By Ashton, I was ready to be done, and started watching the km roll by on my bike computer (I needn't have, though, Markus and Andrew and their GPSs kept us updated as to how much further!)

Due to Markus' sore butt, he kept a pace that was a bit more than I could sustain for long distances on the way back. I whined a bit, but that didn't make it any easier, so I chugged along. I paid the price for it by the time we hit Ottawa - I'd blown out my legs, my quads were starting to cramp (a problem I've been having this spring, though it's better when I take potassium and vitamin E supplements, but I hate taking supplements), and the last little hill took more than the Westport hill out of me - my muscles had a mind of their own and were contracting randomly (without correlation to pedaling). If we had had another 50km to go, I would have told my group to go ahead and curled into a little ball in a ditch for a while, but as it was I bit my lip and pushed. But my legs hurt too much to be willing to stand up for the group shot at the end!

Due to the miracles of ibuprofen, though, I was fine the next day. I was amazed - *nothing* hurt, except my hands were (and still are, three days later) very fuzzy - my wrists obviously weren't used to all the vibration, which undoubtedly is linked to my lack of training rides. I did nothing except drive back to Guelph and paddle my kayak for half an hour the day after the tour, but by Tuesday I was back to my normal workouts without a noticeable lack of energy. If it wasn't for the agony of the last 10km, I would pretend the whole thing was no big deal. It was much less painful than I expected, that's for sure (but not so easy that I'd want to do it every weekend, either... I did find it challenging. But I had anticipated not being able to keep up, so I'm still thrilled that I did manage to do so. Maybe the other riders went more slowly for me, but as long as I don't know that, it's okay with my ego). And I had a lot of fun! Thanks Markus, Andrew and Lorraine for letting me come (and thanks Ken and Julio for riding with us).

Markus' RLCT page.

Andrew's RLCT page.

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