The ‘May 2009 Epic Adventure’ of the University’s Triathlon Club happened this past weekend in Canmore. 10 athletes tired of the indoor bike riding that Edmonton has enforced for the past half of the year got out onto the open roads. For myself it was an opportunity for my second and third serious outdoor rides of the season. I’d done a couple ‘Coffee Shop Route’ trips to St. Albert and one ‘Bakery Run’ out to Calmar thus far but these were to be somewhat hilly and long!

Saturday morning we headed out just before 10 am waiting until the world had warmed up a bit from the overnight low of minus 8 and then set out. We rode Highway 1 through the park gates to the bow valley junction and then along the parkway to Castle Junction. From there we headed up and over the continental divide on Highway 93 and descended the other side to the paint pots at approximately the same elevation. The climb was great, rather unrelenting as a whole but the pitch did vary enough that I still found opportunities to move from seated to standing. The south side (BC side) of the pass on the return wasn’t nearly as steep and the descent was long and fast, spinning out my top gear on the bike didn’t occur for long stretches at a time so I inevitably was putting out the effort to keep myself cruising above 65-70 kph instead of slowing down. The return climb was nice and then the steep descent was amazing. Dave and I co-operated on the downhill trading drafts and I broke 75 kph. From there the group split, some returned to Canmore directly and others took in a climb on Mt. Norquay. Simmon and myself turned left and headed out to ride the second half of the parkway to Lake Louise. Simmon turned at the end of the road and I continued for a further 5 km up to the Lake Louise Chateau as my final destination. The return was a long push into a headwind, 50 kms of rolling hills along the parkway. When I reached the end we had about 30 km to return to canmore and I needed a little break before continuing. A little bit of sugar and a quick rest of my legs and I was game to get back on the road. Simmon and I drafted one another back holding mightily respectable speeds considering the duration of the ride, the headwind which was luckily beginning to die off and a rather meager showing in terms of long-rides so far this season. My longest at 120 had been trumped by almost 85 kms and Simmons longest of 2009 by more than 100 kms.

The hot tub greeted us instead of a short run as most of the others did upon their earlier arrival and then the eating began.

Sunday’s collective ride was to be shorter so I headed out an hour earlier than their scheduled departure in the vehicles planning to meet up with them along the way at Kananaskis village and ride with them from there. I rode an average of 35 kph with a sidewind for the first hour and then began to battle the wind from the south on the second hour of my ride. I saw the cars go past loaded with bikes and I had motivation to really keep the effort level up if I was going to meet up with them for the ride. All was well in the end as I arrived on time but it took some hard work to do it including a top speed on one of the downhills of just 32 kph into an exposed headwind.

The group stuck together for the most part after meeting up and we rode a double paceline 30 kms south into the wind. Once we reached the gate to Highwood pass we turned around and headed back north with the wind at our backs. The speeds leaped by a significant margin as we rolled along at 45-50 kph along the flats and returned home in significantly less time than we had taken to ride out. After shuffling luggage and packing bikes we were still able to head out for a run together through Kananaskis village and down towards the river. Putting a hill, and a rather significant one, into the gameplan for the brick run was maybe not such a good decision following two days of serious riding because that’s the part of the weekend that I can still feel, the calves aren’t super pleased today, likely magnified by the car trip home almost immediately after the run.

That’s just a teaser photo: the rest can be viewed in the Canmore Training Weekend Photo Album and have been stolen from Becky and Justin. Thanks!