Canada Day Ride

The BC Randonners Cycling Club, http://www.randonneurs.bc.ca/ have a Populaire every July 1.  It starts in Fort Langley and heads out the Fraser valley to Vedder Crossing and is as many kilometres long as Canada in old. So this year it was 144 km. 

These couple of pictures were taken climbing Straiton Hill.  You end up climbing about 190 meters in around 3 km.  I now have a routine where I eat a sandwich on the way up.  This time it was acually a sandwich and a half.  Lots of folks passed me that I had passed earlier on. 

The route has a couple of km of flat terrain at the start of the ride and then it's uphill and some rollers but mostly up until you get down onto the Sumas flats.  From just after the uphills started I was riding with two women and we kept passing one another as the terrian favored them or a velomobile.  This must have happened a dozen times.  Once it flatten out a bit I was riding by myself until just before the last bit of the descent onto Sumas flats.  From here to just a short way up Straiton hill I passed some but they all(and more) passed me on the hill.  After the hill there was a very steep descent to the first contol station.  At the control station Aaron riding a Quest caught up with me.  We rode together for a little bit and then he took off.  I rode a steady pace and didn't get sucked into riding faster as I had on a couple of previous rides. As a result I was able to finish the ride comfortably and felt pretty good the next day.   The next section to the next control is only about 20 km and its quite flat.  This bit went by quite quickly.  The section after this ends up at the third control point at Birchwood Dairy. Needless to say I stopped for an ice cream cone.  In previous years the last 45 km seemd the toughest as I did a poor job of pacing myself.  This year this part was fun too.  It has a long straight section with some hills.  Mostly I was keeping up, being passed on the uphills, flying by on the downhills and catching up on the flats.  This continued until there was just a bit too much up and most folks I had been riding with disappeared in front of me.  The last 10 or so km were quite fun as it is mostly gently down so I could fly along without much effort.  I suspect that I would have been faster overall on my highracer but I wouldn't have had as much fun.