Gearing up for Montreal

Dearest and most beloved readers,

I'm baaaaaaack! I've missed you, and I know you've missed me too. I'm so excited to bring you along as I train for, and eventually complete, the Friends for Life bike rally.

This blog will be a little different from the others. My previous blogs were about the destination; this one is about the trip itself. The Friends for Life (F4L)  bike rally is the awareness-raising and fundraising stunt of a lifetime. Along with 200-ish other cyclists and 85 crew, I'm going to ride a bike from Toronto to Montreal to raise money to support the Toronto People With AIDS Foundation. That's 600 kilometres over six days. Actually, that's six-hundred kilometres over six days in the heat of July. Am I nervous? Yup. Am I excited? YES! I've never done anything like this before.

I've been training since January by swimming and cycling (stationary bikes in the winter and on the road once the snow melted) several times each week, gradually increasing the distances and difficulty. I took a bicycle repair class, learned how to fix a flat tire, and made my peace with how I look in spandex. I've met all my training milestones, including the mandatory 50 km bike ride on May 15th (remember that day, the day when it snowed and we all wanted to die?), and the 100 km training ride. I did all my post-winter training on my trusty steel-frame hybrid, affectionately known as Blue Steel.

The 100 km ride was a big deal for me. First, I'd never ridden that far in one go before, so that was cool. Second, on that ride I learned first-hand what people mean when they talk about "saddle anesthesia." I could tell you to look it up on your own, but it's probably better to educate you so that you can avoid this yourselves. Saddle anesthesia occurs when an important nerve gets impinged because you're using a bike seat that doesn't fit you properly, and/or you spent too long sitting on your bike. When that nerve gets impinged your whole butt and surrounding area goes numb. It's not normal, and over time you can do permanent nerve damage. I got saddle anesthesia after the 100 km training ride and it freaked me right out, but it went away after about ten days. I've since bought a lighter bike (which I've named Le Tigre*) so that I can go faster and spend fewer hours in the saddle, and I went to a bike shop and got fitted for the right sized bike seat, which I then bought. Hopefully that'll do the trick.

By far the best part of training this hard is that I can eat whatever I want. I am constantly hungry and I eat so much cake now! It's awesome. Speaking of food, many of you know that I'm a pescatarian and that I only eat land animals when I travel to places that have never heard of tofu, like West Africa or the Ottawa Valley. So I haven't eaten red meat in years. And then I went on the 100 km training ride, got lost, and arrived at the lunch spot so late that all they had left were beef burgers. I ate two of those suckers. I am telling you that I put two patties into a bun, and devoured it like it was my last meal on earth. Then I got a protein high. It was glorious.

The F4L rally begins July 24th, 2016 at Allen Gardens in Toronto and ends July 30th in Montreal. Along the way there will be hills and valleys, laughter and tears, and lots and lots of spandex. I can't wait to share this with all of you!




*FYI, Blue Steel and Le Tigre are Zoolander references, in case you're not lucky enough to love that movie and quote it verbatim.