Cycling
In January I finally decided to do something I’d wanted to do in a long time and that’s the Gran Fondo from Vancouver to Whistler.
I’ve been cycling for a while too and from work, but it was time to get more serious and hopefully lose some weight in the process. So I signed up and September I’ll be racing up to Whistler with a few thousand other people.
Last Saturday I was in Whistler for the Mozilla work week. I got to do some riding, including a quick trip to Pemberton:
I had the opportunity to ride down from Whistler as a practice. I’ve enjoyed my cycling, but I looked at this ride with a mixture of anticipation and dread.
Getting back is a 135.8km ride that looks like this:
It also meant hanging out at a party with Mozilla on top of the mountain without drinking very much. Something that, if you know me, I tend to find a little difficult.
As it turns out the ride was great fun. Riding in the sun with views of the Elaho and Howe Sound. The main annoyance was when I had stop for a traffic light in Squamish after so long of continually cycling.
After Horseshoe Bay I got flat a tyre. When I cycle to and from work I don’t carry spares - if anything happens I got on a bus. Repeating that was an error, but fortunately multiple people kindly stopped and offered to help. About 15 minutes later I was up and cycling again.
Later on, as I was crossing North Vancouver with some other people, a truck pulled up besides us and shouted “You’re doing 39km/h!”. Somehow after 5 hours on the road I was still having fun and cycling fast.
I’ve gone from doing a few days a week, to over 300k on a bike a week and still loving it. I’ve gone from just being happy to get to Whistler alive to thinking about setting a time for my race. We’ll see how that goes.