The Rona MS Bike Tour

I feel like I ought to have written about this last week, as a reminder of the ride, but I was feeling a bit nervous about the whole thing.  I figured, just in case I failed miserably, no-one in blogland would know to ask about it.

The Ride for MS was this weekend.  I got out on a few rides in the past months, but the temperatures here have meant that even going out at 8 or 9pm, I was biking through pretty heavy humidity – so I hadn’t done any very long rides since going on the winery tour trip in the early spring.

On Saturday, we started in Acton, Ontario.  We biked about 100 km to Waterloo, including a 25 km optional loop near the beginning of the ride.  I did the optional loop… perhaps not my wisest choice, considering my qualms about my ability to complete the 75(ish) km to Waterloo.

The Team - four average sized people and a giant.

I made it to Waterloo, though, with a total time from Acton to Waterloo of somewhere between 5.5 and 6 hours.  Pretty good, considering we stopped at every rest-stop for a quick drink and a piece of fruit.  We averaged about 20 km/hr.  Just to give you an idea of how… average… that is, one of my friend/teammates finished the ride in under 4 hours… he averaged a bit over 30 km/hr.

We stayed in residence at the University of Waterloo, got free massages (glorious), relaxed and ate lots of corn before dinner (glorious-er), partook of some beverage, and sat down outside to listen to the speeches and awards ceremony.

I had been getting gradually more and more tired as the post-biking events of the day progressed.  When we sat down to listen to the awards, my legs hurt so much it felt like there were bees crawling around under my skin.  Gotta say – I’ve never felt that much pain-soreness in my legs before.

my legs were like this... but it was under the skin...

I went to bed with the fear that, by morning, my legs would be the equivalent of petrified wood – not useful for walking or biking.  I woke up, rolled out of bed, and felt… nothing.  It was like I hadn’t spent the entire previous day either biking or trying to massage the bees-under-skin feeling away.

The second day of biking came out to about 65 km of riding. I skipped the 25 km loop, not willing to risk having to drive home with the same leg pain I’d felt before.  It was a surprisingly easy ride, although I did notice that my speed was a bit reduced from the day before.  My teammate I rode with the day before was nice enough to slow her pace to keep company with me, and would wait for me at the top of many of the tougher hills.

The same teammate who finished a few hours before us the previous day did so again on Saturday.  He hung out and grabbed some food at the finish line, then biked out about 10 km to meet us along the trail.  He generously let us draft behind him for the last few uphills, and it is amazing how much easier the last little bit of biking is, when there’s someone there cheering you on and telling you exactly how many blocks you have to go still.

All in all, it was a successful event – the weather was great (cloudy and not as warm as it could have been), they had plenty of rest stops to break up the ride, and everyone was really encouraging throughout the ride.

My donations page will continue to be open (link on the side of my blog) for the next month or so – if you’re interested in supporting the MS Society of Canada, feel free to follow the link and donate to my ride, or go straight to the MS Society page and donate there.  There are also still opportunities to participate in rides this year (including a one-day ride in Toronto) – go to this link to find a ride near you, if you’re in Canada.  You can also help out by volunteering during a ride.

My heavy mountain-bike and I at the starting-line - at least I have road tires!

Thank you again to everyone who supported my ride, I really appreciate it, and the MS Society will be putting that money to good use in the search for a cure.  In the past twenty years, the radical changes in treatment and diagnosis have helped increase lifespans and improve quality of life, and the MS Society plays an important role in this.

Training: A New Challenge, and Anxiety All ‘Round

I’ve decided to stop putting these training updates at the bottom of other posts, because they increase my wordcount from ‘hey, stop by and skim through this sometime, it could be entertaining’ to ‘take an hour out of your day and read this intimidatingly long essay that may or may not be entertaining, but certainly doesn’t seem like something you can just skim’.  Not that my non-training-update-filled posts don’t tend to get a bit over-long, but this way, I’ll at least stay on topic…ish.

So… since the weekend, my exercise towards being capable of doing my fundraising Ride for MS has been:

Saturday – not much, except walking… we went to Woofstock (see this post by my sister that covers it a little bit), which means most of the walking was at the slow-shuffle pace of all large crowded places.

Sunday – re-introduced Gwynn to rollerblades. We actually made it around the block!  Slowly, and with many sudden stops for him to sit huddled miserably, tail tucked.  I felt like a monster.  However, we figured out a good system.  Doodle would stay with huddled-Gwynn while I rollerbladed the next stretch of road.
She would then follow, and he’d keep up excellently.  It was kind of like we were proving to him that I wasn’t about to suddenly fall at any moment, and that I can, in fact, rollerblade.  He went with me a few times as well, though he is definitely still quite sure that my doom-by-rollerblade is imminent.  Clearly, however, my wearing of knee pads (that’s the difference from last time) was enough to prevent me from falling.  All in all, a success.  After dropping him off
after our slow-crawl of a roller-blade around the block, Doodle and I rollerbladed 10 km (!) through the waterfront trail.  Great success!  Next time, will bring water, because our only access to water was at the turning-point of our trip, where we elegantly and with panache slurped water out of the automatic taps in the public washroom.

Monday – walk… though more like hobble, because rollerblading works muscles in my bum-region that rarely see the light of activity.

Tuesday – long walk with Gwynn and Sadie, then off to dog obedience class, where we were less dunce-like, apart from Gwynn’s random spaz moments.

Wednesday – three hours of walk, then a 20 km bike ride.

Thursday – Tonight is my first attempt at Cross-fit.  Another groupon-adventure, this time it is 12 classes over the course of 3 months.  And since purchasing, I have become increasingly concerned about how I’m going to survive it!  This is INTENSE.  Their classes seem crazy-hardcore and kind of terrifying.  A and I spent Thursday emailing back and forth with increasing anxiety about this class.  The best part?  Apparently we’re the ONLY people registered for the class.  GULP.  An hour in which a hardcore instructor of cross-fit will kick our sorry un-coordinated asses up and down the room doing purposely random exercises that include weights and possibly even attempting to lift oneself up by the arms.  My arms are as strong as over-cooked spaghetti noodles.  I do a lot of things involving my legs… my arms?  Not so much.  My push-ups are a sad, sad affair,
and generally result in trembling arms barely out of ‘dead straight and elbows locked’ position as I do half as many half-assed pushups as the rest of the class does full-push-ups.  And this is even with the sissy knee-on-the-floor pushups!

Friday, there will be an update on crossfit… if I can lift my arms enough to operate a keyboard!  I’ll have more of an idea of just what it is (apart from scary), and how well (poorly) I did in it