Musselman Lake pt.2 (67km)

21 07 2010

Sunday was my last ride before I depart from Toronto and make my way to Montreal. A friend and I completed our usual route to Musselman Lake. Much cooler than Saturday, but still quite a beautiful day.

We rode up to Musselman and took our break at the Cedar Beach Variety Store , the home of the “Coolest Little Ice Cream Shop”… don’t believe me? Check out the sign! This place is mostly full of candy, but we were able to grab ourselves some beverages to quench our thirst.

If you haven’t had a chance to visit Musselman Lake, I strongly suggest you head out there. It’s close enough to the city that you can make a day out of it or just head up for ice cream!


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Categories : Friends for Life Bike Rally, Other Training, Road Challenges

Musselman Lake (67km)

17 07 2010

Wednesday was the first mid week ride I’ve done all season, slacker? Yes. Musselman Lake is a gorgeous place to visit so riding the bike out there doesn’t feel like work at all.

We built our own route, departing from Bayview and Highway 7 we made our way up Leslie and across Vandorf Side Road. Not many hills to climb on this route, aside from some gentle ones, but it’s just the right ride for after work. Clearly Musselman is a popular ride for cyclists as there were a number of others on the road at varying stages of their rides. It’s great to see everyone out on the road at this time of year!

This weekend will be my last set of rides before departing for Montreal. We’re off to Lake Simcoe on Saturday and a short ride back out to Musselman on Sunday! Can’t wait!


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Categories : Other Training, Training Rides

First Friends for Life Training Ride

4 04 2010

Well this morning was the first official training ride for the Friends for Life Bike Rally.

At 9am this morning the group set off from Finch Station and completed about 34km. A quick ride, less than 1.5 hours, but was the perfect re introduction to the bike for this season!

The weather was beautiful! Not a cloud in the sky, warm weather and the sun was shining! A bit of a head wind, but you have to work for it a little bit.
Looking forward to the next ride, which is a repeat of this mornings, next Saturday.

Stay tuned for pictures to be posted shortly!

Sent from my BlackBerry device.


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Categories : Friends for Life Bike Rally, Training Rides

Winter Off-Season Training – What Are You Doing to Stay Strong, Lean and Road Ready?

16 01 2010

In many coutries around the world the winter season offers some training challenges for cyclists, do we gear up and brave the snow covered or icy roads in order to ensure we stay in shape for the spring or do we keep ourselves locked indoors?

After researching different training methods I’m finding the opinions on this subject are varied. Some say you should spend your time weight training with low weights and high reps, others say to spend your time on the stationary bike alone and additional sources say the best way to stay in shape is a mixture of the two.

Personally, I can’t stand the stationary bike so either way it is definitely out of the question for me! I’ve been spending the majority of my time training using the blended approach I mention above, substituting the stationary bike for the elliptical or treadmill. I’ve been making pretty good progress so far, spending about one hour with weights and the other hour with cardio, increasing time and distance as I move along.

With the cycling season fast approaching, it doesn’t leave much room for experimentation, but I’d be interested in knowing what works best for you?


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Categories : Discussion, Other Training

Hairshirt Classic Double Century

14 01 2010

The desciption of this sounds just awful! A hairtshirt was a medieval form of monasterial punishment and penance. Essentially monks wore shirts woven of very coarse horse hair, which caused them to experience extreme discomfort. As wrong as this may be, I think me and my TREK have just found one of our pre-Montreal goals!

A century challenge is a ride of 100 miles! By simple mathematics a double century ride would be 200 miles or 322km! Crazy you say… a little maybe, the furthest I’ve gone to date is 135km.

The Hairshirt ride, organized by Toronto Bicycling Network,  takes you from Toronto to Niagara and back! It departs at 6am on June 27th and you have until midnight to complete it!

It’s still a few months away, but if anyone has any tips as far as training for this I’d really appreciate it!


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Categories : Road Challenges

The Beginning

12 01 2010

It’s January 12th and it’s only a little more than 6 months until my 600km+ journey begins with the Friends for Life Bike Rally in support of Toronto PWA! I’ll be taking part, along with hundreds of other riders, in the 6 day journey, Toronto to Montreal, from July 25th to July 30th, 2010.

What this means is that my training and fundraising needs to start very soon in order to be ready! I’m setting some steep goals for myself, both physically and financially, and hope to surpass each of them! It feels quite daunting at the moment to think of myself riding my bike all that way, but the funny thing is that even before I leave for Montreal I’ll have finished many more times the distance in training rides.

This blog will be tracking my various activities over the months between now and the ride, and beyond.  For now, while the weather is cool, I’ll be focusing most of my energy on indoor activities, weights and cardio, which I hope will assist in prepping my body for the upcoming task.

I plan to share the sights and sounds of the training rides and the bike rally itself so I’ll be posting updates that will, at some point, have video feeds and photos from all. I hope to share as much of this experience with you as I can and who knows, maybe next year you’ll join us!


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