June 30 Iron Bridge ON

It has been a while since I last had an opportunity to add to the blog. And we are now 4000 plus kilometers into this adventure. A lot has happened and my thoughts about what matters have shifted as the trip unfolds. I continue to call Jan every evening and we talk about our day. She has done a wondeful job of conveying in her blogs, the events of each ride and I noted a lot of repetition in what I was adding in mine. After some feedback from Jan , Susie, and Robbie (via Jan), I will change what I am wriying about and try to offer insights into some things that are more related to my experiences and insights rather than the specifics of the day. I think a good starting point might be to start by talking about a typical day on the bike, what we do to manage all that, and what happens as a day unfolds.

Firstly, we are trying to do 120 to 150k as a rough target, although some days will be shorter or longer based on other factors. Neither Tug or I had much experience with riding these kinds of distances back to back, day after day, so the first weeks of our trip involved learning everything we could about doing it and actually getting to the time when we were confident that we could do it! I think that may be why my first blogs were more about stats, conditons and such. Now we accept all of that as manageable - if we are wise.

A few important ideas now underpin our day: you must learn to accept what the road conditions (hills, surface, shoulder, traffic, etc), weather (cold, sun, rain and wind), and your body can provide on that day. You simply cannot battle anything / everything and continue to maintain your health over time. Take for example, the wind. We now accept that you have no control over it; it has been our biggest enemy (or friend). When headwind blows, it is very easy to want to lean forward over your hands and fight to make faster progress. But we learned. One day In Saskatchewan, a strong sidewind and headwind was destroying our day. When we rode along a line of trees that blocked the wind, we would be going 20 - 24 kph and the bike would be upright. When the line of trees ended, as it always does on the prairie, we would suddenly be going 6 - 10 kph (nearly stopped!) and leaning the bike sharply into the wind to maintain balance because the bike and pannier bags act like a sail. That day, we spent hours trying to go faster and make headway, and were exhausted that day - and sore and exhausted the next day. Now we know that you must ignore the speed (which can be infuriatingly slow) and simply spin in low gears no matter what. Which bring me to a bit about managing your body and what we learned about being ready for this. When out for shorter training or recreational rides, you can afford to do things like power up hills using the wrong gear, but if you do a day of that when touring, your knees may not handle it over time. Sore quads just above the knee and bursitis around the knee have affected both of us, although we are free of it now because we simply never use intense contractions against too high a gear. I think of it a "light legging" or spinning.

We are on the road every day for long time; you cannot do 150k in a few hours, so you need to have a routine that works to get you through the day and allows you to be ready next day. I can't possible cover all of that at one time, but will offer a few insights into how we handle the challenges of getting up for each ride. First, we do a lot of data gathering to find out what the ride will be like. We need to know about road conditions, terrain and what amenities exist along our path ( campsites, motels, restaurants, towns where groceries can be purchased, etc). And as the day unfolds we ask the same questions of people we meet to update our knowledge. We have found that the closer the person is to the place in question, the more accurate and detailed the answers are and even then, drivers do not notice thing that matter to cyclists (hills do not affect cars and food is only minutes or hours away in a car, but for us, 60k is many hours of riding to get to food!) .

We find ways to motivate ourselves that emphasize short and longer term goals. For example,we often ride 15k and then stop for a brief time off the saddle to take a drink. This helps us to focus on a schedule for drinking but also gives us the target of 15k to complete. As the day wears on and fatigue and seat soreness increases, we have learned to switch that to 10k and even 5k targets so that there is always an achievable goal just in reach. If we put enough of those together, the kilometers add up.


There are lots of things I can write about, so if you want to know about a specific topic, please sign up and ask. Besides elaborating on the "typical day" theme, I will try to blog about how we reacted to the different areas we passed through (mountains, prairies, Shield, etc), learning how to manage my body and bike, what I didn't know about things I should have done to prepare (upper body and core strength) for example, and experiences with the many people we met - including other riders, places along the way and our reactions to some of them, some thoughts about why I did this (and am continuing to do it!) , and the experiences in nature (this is a complete sensory experience that I never would have imagined when I did this by car), Perhaps most importantly, my family wants me to talk about how I felt about things - places that I wanted to stay longer, things I just plain detest about being on the trip, and so on. Lots of possibilites.

posted by Frick (Gary)