Lake Placid Training Weekend

That was a fun, albeit tough training weekend. Simon, Bernadette, Sid and Steve V. and Steve B. drove to Lake Placid on Thursday. David, Bryan Willem and I drove down in David’s van on Friday. We all stayed at Swiss Acres. I’d stayed in one of the cabins there before with Michelle, Gavin, Kathryn and Derek a couple of years ago. I remembered the cabins bigger than they were but, they worked out. David’s a bit sad about having to sleep in a cupboard, but he wasn’t too vocal about it.

We got to LP at about noon. Check in wasn’t until 3:00 so we drove into town and drove the bike route so that everyone knew what it was. We got back to town, had pizza for lunch, checked into our room and headed off to the lake for a swim. The fact that there was no one else in the lake should have been a hint to us. The water was ice cold. We got into wet suits and neoprene caps. I put on my diving booties too. We dashed in and out of the water a bit trying to decide if we were going to die attempting to swim to the other side of the lake or not, then Bryan went for it. David was right behind him. I really didn’t want to go, but I couldn’t wimp out, so I swam, head up for a bit and about two buoys out decided to finally stick my head in the water. I glanced at a my watch when the water finally started to not feel so cold. It was 16 minutes into the swim! The lines were in the water, but we think they were canoe race lines or something. There were three of them, and they were over to the far side of the lake, not down the middle and across. The went to within about 100 meters of the other end of the lake also. I kept looking ahead to see where Bryan was turning, but he never turned! We came back along the same line we’d swam out on. When we met up, Bryan came back out with me to the end again. We ended up swimming for about an hour. I could feel my body temperature starting to drop about 10 minutes before we got back to shore. I wore my wetsuit back to the hotel!

We all met up at the A teams room before heading out for dinner at Charlie’s. There room was HUGE – I think it could have slept 11 people, and still had empty space in the middle where the couches were, in front of the fireplace!

Michele and Gavin came and met us at the restaurant as we were finishing dinner. We did a little grocery shopping after dinner and were in bed by about 9:30 – 10:00 I think.

I had a bowl of cereal for breakfast. Some of the gang went for the free breakfast at 8:00 in the hotel restaurant. By the sounds of things, it was run by the breakfast Nazi (Seinfeld’s soup Nazi sister I guess), and wasn’t too tasty.

We headed out for our 180k bike ride about 9:00. I found the first loop of the bike seemed to go by fairly quickly. Even the out and back didn’t seem as far as I had remembered it, or as long as it felt driving in the car the day before. The climb from the gorge back into town was a bit tougher than I’d remembered though. We met up at David’s van that we’d left by the lake and refilled water bottles, loaded up on Gel’s and Power Bars and were on our way again, this time doing the route in reverse. Simon and his gang had done that last year and all I remembered were stories of how hard it was. I wasn’t looking forward to this loop at all.

The first half of the loop went pretty well actually. Riding down all the hills out of town was a blast. Not as steep or as fast as that 10k drop into Keene where I’d hit 72.6 kph on the first loop, but I was zipping long a lot of that at 50 – 55k. I guess the wind was too our back going out on the out and back. The 11k heading out went pretty quickly, after we turned though, with wind in our face, it felt like it was twice as far to get back to the main road. We stopped at the corner store to re-fuel a bit. Chocolate mild tasted great! I drafted off Steve’s back wheel for most of the ride from there to Jay, and hung on for about half the way to Upper Jay, but I was fading quickly. I was paying tons of attention to staying in zone 2 as much as possible. I decided to drop back. I really wanted to see how long a zone 2 180k ride was going to take, and I wanted to be as fresh as I could be going up out of Keene. The gang just flew ahead of me!

I got to Keene. We’d ridden about 155k so far, and the climb started. Amazing how quickly that 10k hill goes when you’re headed the other way. I dropped into granny gear immediately and crawled all the way up. Wind in my face, cursing a bit. I was glad for all the curves in the road. I always had a little hope that the road would level out just around the next bend. Most of the time I looked down at the speedometer it read about 8kph. Eventually I got to the top. It took me just about exactly one hour to get there. My bike needed a tune up. I couldn’t use 2nd or 3rd gear all day. As soon as I went to try to use one of those, the bike would slip in and out of gear. I had to stay in 1sit until I could push 4th. Eventually though, I got to a downhill and some flat land. It felt GREAT!

Bernadette got her second flat of the day just before the horse grounds on the outskirts of town. Sid was with her, but I stopped anyway. I’m not sure if my real motive was to be of help if I could be, or if it was just a great reason to stand still for a bit. She got the tire changed and I gave her a cylinder to blow it back up with, but mine were for 700 tires. Hers was a 650 and it blew it up. I was amazed at how easy Bern was about having to change it again. I would have been tossing my bike half way up the mountain if it had happened to me!

We got back to town, back to our rooms and headed out for dinner. Michelle, Gavin, Derek and Kathryn met us at Malone’s. I had a big pasta dinner. It felt great.

We got up at about 7:30 Sunday morning. It looked miserable outside. The weather report on the TV was calling for thundershowers and huge winds. It was cold. I decided I’d be pretty happy with getting home early and doing my last loop on the Computrainer. For a few minute, it looked like that was what we were going to do, but Willem headed out with David close behind catching up to the other team. Not wanting to wimp out got me out the door again. One more loop, in the right direction though this time. That was a long hard ride. When we got to the out and back, Simon, Bern and team were just coming out of it. I figured that was an omen from God that he wanted me to come back with them and pass on the out and back. So that’s what I did. David was sticking with me. I think we were both glad to skip that bit.

The wind picked up a lot when we got to that last 10k – 15k uphill back into town. At times it almost stopped us dead in our tracks. We were pretty happy to finish that ride. We caught up to Willem in town by the lake. He’d hit a pothole in town and blown both tires and tubes. Bryan had run rather than ride so someone got him to drive back to pick up Willem. We biked back out to the hotel.

We showered, packed up and headed back. It was a little sad when we got lost in the car and ended up at the Quebec border, but we eventually got back on track and were home by about 8:00.

Nice to sleep in this morning!