Hills and wind !!!

I’ve had a couple of good training rides this week , Monday I couldn’t start until 5.30 so I took advantage of the waning rush hour traffic and headed south to do some climbing on the King City hills. An extra challenge to the hills was the 28km wind (with gusts of 37 km) coming from the north-west. The first 14 km down Keele St. was fun and fast, I crossed westwards on Kerby and came back up Jane and then Weston and then through Kettleby, the wind made it interesting but I had good legs so I was able to push it most of the way and actually had one of my better average speed rides ,24 km/h for the 38 km I did, granted it was a short ride.


Today I spent the day working outside in the wind, and it was WINDY !!!! 28km with gusts of 50 km !!! and let me tell you there was a lot of gusting going on!!! So by the end of the day I was ready to go out there and play in the wind and test myself again, although I was a little worried about the cross winds and the traffic but I wanted to get a feel of that kind of wind because I am sure we will encounter that and worse during the trip.

I started off with the same route as on Monday as the winds were also from the NW today and those gusts made it a bit more challenging this time especially while cresting the hills and on some of the down hills. I kept a firm hold of the handlebars for most of the ride, even going for the water bottle was tricky and had to be time just right in the shelter of the wind, or to get a good drink I actually would stop. All in all it was another very good training run, I extended it a bit more going down Keele and then Jane and crossing over to Pine Valley via Teston, the way back was mostly up hill and against the wind on Pine Valley, Jane and Weston and on the way home once again I went down into Kettleby and had to climb out.

I like Kettleby because it is one of the few places were I can easily exceed the maximum posted speed limit which is 40km, just have to be careful as the road is pretty rough !! . I am told you can not get a speeding ticket on a bicycle in Ontario, I’m not sure about that and will have to research that a bit as I would hate to actually get a ticket because of misinformation . The only time I was actually clocked was last year on McCowan , I had just crested and started going down and there was the policeman in his car aiming the speed gun my way , I waved as I approached and he shouted back to me “37” ( it was a 60 zone).

So 50 km today and once again I felt good , I am happy with the conditioning so far , now I have to start putting in some long rides to be ready for “Southern Ontario Century Ride” on May 29th and 30th , back to back 160 km rides !!!