Sunday Bonk

Living and riding in Vancouver for the last few years, the "off season" has really just meant the wet season.  You ride less because you could be skiing instead.  Starting today's ride, I was faced with the thought that the Kelowna Off Season might actually force me off my bike.  Terrifying.

Luckily, my bottom bracket and I warmed up.  So far it has been the perfect temperature to keep the snow on the hills, but melt everything off of the roads.  The original plan was to do the Sunday ride, but no one showed up.  Sissies.  I decided to ride around the lake, which is something I wanted to try all summer - but the ride did not fit well with training for a Sprint triathlon.  I only had one Clif bar and one bottle of water, but on the past few Sunday Rides this has been more than enough.  I figured I could make it to Vernon and refuel there before finishing the ride.

Good fishing to be had off of log booms.

 In hindsight, there were a few problems with this logic:

- I had eaten a smaller than normal breakfast a few hours before leaving, rather than a large one 10 minutes before the Sunday Ride as usual.
- This route is 50% hillier than the Sunday Ride.
- Vernon is 90km into the route, not the 60 or 70 that I had thought.
- It is really cold out.  Apparently that burns calories.
- I have just had almost a month off.  Apparently that is not so good for fitness.

In any case.  I have never driven myself into such a deep hole before.  The first two hours got me 46 km into the route, at which point I hadn't eaten in an hour and a half, and had already done more climbing than the entire Sunday ride.  Things started to go downhill (figuratively only), fast.  All I could think about was Mars bars.  Baked Lays.  Tim Horton's. Gatorade.  Many Mars bars at once. At one point I actually caught myself riding with my eyes closed.  Things were not looking good.

What a 140km route looks like. An hour and a half into the ride - and I need to round the far end of this lake.

And then I saw it.  The convenience store. I would survive after all.

The brown bags are full of Chicken Samosas and Strawberry Turnovers (only 89 cents!).  After consuming almost all of that food, including the entire litre of orange juice, I felt a little better.  Not perfect though - I had to leave my stuff on the table to go to the bathroom.  I was very worried that someone might either steal or poison my remaining bag of candy, so I wrapped it up tight and took special note of exactly how it was sitting on the table.  When I got back, the candy was still there - and so was my phone and credit cards, just lying in the middle of the table.

I ended up deciding that I was too cooked, and there was too little daylight left to finish the loop.  Luckily, Caroline was able to pick me up in Vernon, so it was a relatively flat and easy 30 km into town for about 85 km total.

Next time: bring more food.