Hardcore Mother's Day (Loop #6)

Joy here...It rained all night last night, and so when our alarms went off in our separate houses this Sunday morning, we were all greeted to wet roads and residual showers.  I decided that since April turned me into a "hardcore" kinda cyclist a little rain wasn't enough to encourage me to roll over and go back to sleep.  I mean, since my first full loop of the park (65kms) this season was done in -8C temperature, I figured that +13C and a bit of rain wasn't enough to daunt me.

Not all my cycling sisters were equally undaunted.

A few were, in fact, well daunted.

Overcast morning sky as we started.

Cili Padi and the Sashinator opted to roll back over in bed and wait for the sun to come out in order to complete their ride in the comfort of a lovely spring day.  Can't say that I blame them.

But the Spinning Instructor is a mom, and today being Mother's Day and all meant that her kids had all sorts of treats planned for her later in the day, so if she didn't ride in the morning, she wouldn't be riding at all.  Since I was game to ride in the wet, and she was game to ride in the wet, we headed out the door and into the park.

The air hung around us thick with humidity, making the first part of the ride feel rather gruelling.  We decided to blame it on the thickness of the air, clearly robbing our bodies of their full complement of oxygen.  Makes sense, right?  All the O2 in the air was turning into H2O, and we just aren't amphibious enough to breathe that.  So we just huffed and puffed and...you know what?  As the skies cleared, and the day dried out, our legs felt better and better.

View from Champlain Lookout, with only the merest
wisps of clouds left.

Last Sunday The Professor, Cili Padi, and I met at the same starting point at 8:30am, and pushed ourselves through the park so that we reached the finishing parking lot at 11:11am.  We were pretty proud of ourselves, and managed over 21km/hr as our average speed, despite all the slow climbing required when riding in the park.

But this Sunday, as the sun came out (and dried up all the rain, and the itsy bitsy spider...) we must have been pushing our pace without even knowing it.  We finished our ride at 10:42am, with an average pace of just under 24km/hr!  It didn't even feel like we were working that hard at all.  We surprised ourselves and had a fantastic Mother's Day ride.

Just don't tell the others, because we want them to think that we earned extra hardcore points for heading out there today.  Shhhhhhhhh....

Over and out,
Joy