Tree trunks, yes please

Ahhh sleep, how I’ve missed you so. But fear not, my dear friend, you will once again be a vital part of my life come tomorrow. Today, July 24, 2010, marked the end of the 97th Tour de France. And you know what that means: No more 3:30, 4:30, 5 a.m. alarm clock wake-up calls. No more squeaky office chairs and tapping keyboards in the wee hours of the morning (although, he did stop sitting in the chair and did stop Google-searching once he realized it impeded my sleep). No more bright TV lights. And no more excited husband waking me up an hour before I wanted to get up to watch the two-second time difference bruhaha between Contador and Schleck. “I thought you’d want to see it too,” he said, far too excited for any human being at 7:30 in the morning. I so could have waited for the PVR thank you very much.

And yet, I do have some pangs of sadness with the closing of the Tour, not being able to regularly see my Alberto Contador and sexy Andy Schleck and even cocky Mark Cavendish (I love his cockiness, of which he has every right to be – fastest cyclist alive!). And I know that Mario will tell me I can always watch other races on the Internet with him, but as much I do love drooling over the boys, I love my sleep way more!

After watching the time trial stage yesterday, Mario and I headed out to the Valley to do a time trial of our own … well, more like a turtle trial actually 😀

Decked in my Garmin-Slipstream jersey in honour of BC boy Ryder Hesjedal who finished 7th overall in the Tour!

I’ve always thought that my thighs would have been perfect for speed skating; they’ve got a nice thick consistency to them, good muscle tone, perfect for the ice. But seeing as how I can’t skate worth crud, they should be just as good for speedy cycling, right? Wrong. After watching Fabian Cancellara give her in the time trial, completing 52 km in just 1:00:56, I was inspired. But alas and alack my thighs are not quite the tree-trunk thighs of Fabian Cancellara. In the same amount of time, I completed just 22 km.

The one and only time you'll ever catch me wishing for tree trunk thighs.

It was a bit of a rough ride, which wasn’t much of a surprise. The route starts from my parent’s house in farm country and I’m quite familiar with it. And even though it’s not a long route, just 45 km, it’s a deceptive route that looks like it should be flat, but is so not flat at all – it kills me every time, especially in the last 5 km! And let me just say I much prefer the short, medium and long hills (even the nasty steep ones) that you can actually tell are hills to those damn roads that don’t look like hills at all. One second I was going 36 km/h and then the next I was down to like 15 km/h thinking what the hell, why can’t I go faster, I should be able to go faster, I’m not on a hill. Oh but I was.

This one was a killer!

I also had a bit of drama on the airstrip. Mario was a ways ahead and something in me just didn’t feel right, so I stopped (I figured he’d turn around at some point when he realized I was no longer behind him, especially given that I was more familiar with the route, and he did). I tested my blood sugars and they were 2.6 – yikes! Into my mouth went a few sugar pills and half a larabar, and a whole lotta water. Turns out I forgot to temporarily decrease my basal rate. Oops, my bad.

Not happy with my blood sugar mishap.


YESTERDAY’S RIDE:

  • 1:30 p.m. BG before: 7.7
  • Distance: 45:14 km
  • Average pace: 21.1 km/h
  • Fastest pace: 60 km/h (thank you Gladwin hill that goes down into the flats.)
  • Time: 2:07:34 (not even double the time got me up to Cancellara’s time!)
  • 4 p.m. BG after 5.6

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