EPIC Bike Week 2010

Hey,

As hoped for, May has been a great month of training - lots of good weather and plenty of fun, hard, consistent workouts.  All this has left me short on time for updates, but I had to write about my soon coming adventure, the anticipation is killing me :-)

As of Monday morning (31st), myself and my uncle (aka - training partner and fellow friend of suffering) are heading out for another week long bike trip.  Last year, we rode around Lake Ontario.  This year, we are heading around the lake to begin our adventure - crossing by way of Niagara Falls, and then are hoping to make our way to New York City!  Once on the state side, our route will take us east all the way over to the St Lawrence River.  From there we will follow along a roadway that parallels it, and head south down to Manhattan.  We hope to ride to the tip of the island, give a wave to the Statue of Liberty and call it a trip :-)  We estimate the trip to be around 1000km's and will likely be riding anywhere from 180-200km's a day (we only have a week to get it all done :-)
Actually if all goes well, once we reach that Manhattan we will load our bikes up in the car (his wife will be driving along and meeting us at the end of each day) and on the drive back home we want to stop in Lake Placid and ascend Whiteface Mountain (on our bikes of course), which is an 8 mile climb of about 3500ft with averaged grade of 8.3%!  It should be a great week, and I'm really looking forward to it.  Cycling is a great way to see the land, and of course the long rides are great for Ironman training.

Here's a funny story - Upon hearing of my bike plans, one of my buddies at work asked me if I'd be resting this weekend before the big trip (they can't believe I'm riding that far, and that I'd do it on my "holidays as fun").  No, not really I said.  I have more training to do: a 25km run on Saturday, and Sunday I'm doing about a 100km ride, followed by a short run :)  What about my uncle you may ask?  He's no slouch either - tomorrow he is running the Ottawa Marathon, which will be his 25th marathon of his running history! Amazing!  I'm wishing him all the best, and hope he has a great run!

Well, that's a wrap on what's ahead.  I'll post little updates on my FB page each night (if I can stay awake)!  When I return, I'll give the full report here!

Cheers,
Jon