King of the mountains

Hi again,
Today was probably the hottest day of the weekend, and maybe the toughest workout. I was dreading it big time as I've probably never climbed over 3km in length and I was informed that we'd be going 18km up!!!! Starting out in the morning it was warm already and I was anxious to get started. We drove out to Oliver to do a open water swim. The water was great and easy warm enough to swim in. Remember my last OW swim was CDA and it was FREEZING!

So we got through the swim ok, practiced some exiting, entering, and wetsuit stripping. After that we got our bikes ready to ride to Osoyoos where our climb would begin. The ride from Oliver to Osoyoos would be our warm up. Warm up?? it ended up getting to around 36c for the day.

We stuck together for the ride to Osoyoos where we quickly refueled at the Husky and rode to the hill. Through the town we went and started the climb. I basically kept to myself as I wanted to pace myself, although from the start Greg and Trevor weren't too far ahead. I found myself catching them at first, I knew they were stronger then I, but the carrot was there. I had to decide, should I try and get on their wheels, or keep with my pace? Well it turns out they decided for me, I see Greg look back and see me sneaking up on them. Game over, as they start to lift the pace up a bit. I managed to keep the distance even for a bit, but then they slowly started to move ahead. I kept them in sight most of the way up and didn't loose too much time at the end. It was actually quite fun and I managed to get into a rythm for most of the ride. Seated I'd put my hands on the aero bar pads and concentrate on keeping the legs spinning, then I'd take a break and stand so I could use the body weight to push the pedals down.

The climb was spectacular, you could see for a longgg ways over the town of Osoyoos, although I rarely looked as I need to concentrate on what I was doing. The climb had long straights with switch backs so it did wind up into the tree line. Eventually we all made it up, at various paces, but we all made it.

Then came the fun part zoom zoooooooooooooom down we flew, we got to pass some vehicles including a semi truck. I guess they have to go slower so they don't have to brake too much. I have no clue how fast I went, just that it was fast, very fast. Some of the corners were so wide you could stay on the aero bars and hammer through them.

Once back at the Husky we re-grouped up and rode back to Oliver. At one poing Greg, Trevor, and I got a really smooth train going. With the wind, we kept our turns at the front really short and kept pulling along at a really fast clip, 45 km ph I think. It made the return trip very quick.

Greg and I went for a "quick" transition run after. I put quick in quotes because it wasn't as quick as we would have liked. We kinda got a bit lost and ended up doing a bigger loop then we had wanted. Secretly I was happy(don't tell greg) because we weren't doing much running for the weekend and a great HOT transition run really adds confidence to the program. It's nice the legs are willing to turn over when they are tired. I felt I could have kept going, good stuff!!

That was pretty much it for the day, we soaked our legs again in the Oliver lake(not quite as cool as OK lake) and made the trip back to our hotel rooms.

The picture is at the top of the mountain, the smile tells it all