Today was the unofficial De Ronde van Cowtown (a play on De Ronde van Vlaanderen, the Tour of Flanders). In the spirit of the namesake race, it is run in marginal weather at the beginning of the season, and searches out all of the hills it can. I have known about this ride for a long time, but last year and this year, the official ride was cancelled due to COVID. So one of our club ambassadors set up an unofficial ride and about 17 of us gathered this morning. We split into groups to abide by the Alberta Health guidelines.
The ride started at 10 am downtown, but I put in 20 km riding from home first. It was chilly (-6 on the weather channel, but I never saw less than 1 degree) but dry and no ice to worry about.
Let’s just say it was a very long day. It was my longest ride in duration ever, almost seven hours of riding time. Elapsed time including breaks and time not moving was almost nine hours.
The ride was successful, but right now I feel like I’ve been hit by hammers. Most of the day I rode with Justin, Hannah and Colette along with Rob, Paul, Ron and John in the “slower” group. Nevertheless, we took shorter coffee breaks and actually spotted the “speedy” group a number of times and then caught them just in time for the cruise back to the starting point.
My new cycling computer worked amazingly well. It has a larger, color screen than my old one, and considering I spent most of the day following the route on the map, that was most welcome. Most of the people on the ride were on gravel bikes, but Wing, Colette and I were on our road bikes. It wasn’t too bad, except for some sections of dirt, mud and gravel. But I made it.
Well that is one way to spend a Sunday!!