"This route has breathtaking landscapes, passing through beautiful farmlands, nurseries bursting with flowers and strawberry fields. The adorable Terra Cotta Country Store serves up lunch – and yummy ice cream!"
Departure for the rally is just a few weeks away (July 29) so training is getting challenging. I found this training ride really challenging. I'm not sure what it was, it wasn't as hilly as last week's ride but there were some hills that defeated me (had to walk). Perhaps it was the heat of the day, but other days have been hot. I drank lots and was so grateful for the sweeps who watered us along the way. Maybe it was just me; anyway if someone had offered me a ride home at 70km, I would have said 'yes'. I was so glad when another rider came along and stayed with me for the last 40km. He was very encouraging and just talking to another human helped distract me from all the little aches and tiredness.
This training ride was for me a real demonstration of how incredibly nice people can be (yes, in Toronto). To start, I had a flat tire about 45 seconds into the training ride. I picked up a great ugly piece of glass in my rear wheel. It efficiently sliced right through the tire and inner tube, the tire was flat within seconds. Bah! An inauspicious beginning. For the record I can change my own tires but if someone really wants to do it for me, I'll not say 'no' (unless they clearly don't know what they're doing). At the beginning of the ride, I wasn't sure who the sweeps were, so when this guy got out of his car and started to help me with the tire, I just figured he was one of the sweeps. He wasn't. He was just some random guy who felt the need to change my tire. The sweeps (Mike and Wade of Team Big Cog) were very helpful providing a floor pump (it has a lot more oomph and a pressure gauge so that you can get the tire up to the correct pressure). As it ended up, Mike and Wade were very busy with lots of other mechanical problems and crashes. Repaired and back on the road, for me and my bike the rest of the ride was fairly uneventful although I did notice a lot more broken glass on the road.
The second impressive act of kindness really took place in Mississauga but we were very close to the Toronto border. Mike and Wade had set up to provide water in the last 10 km of the ride which was amazing because I was almost totally out. But, being one of the last riders, they didn't have a lot of supplies left. A woman overheard us divvying up the water, went to her car and pulled out bottles of water for all of us. So kind! Fully watered I was able to make the last few kilometres. Needless to say there was a lot of napping once I got home. Today I'm feeling a lot less twingy than I did last weekend so that is encouraging.
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