Survived my first fondo!!! Huge shout out to the organizers and all the wonderful and very plentiful volunteers of the Tour de Victoria!! The 2nd annual Ryder Hesjedal event was a huge success with over 1700 participants!! 3 distances this year, 140, 100 and 50 km gave people of all abilities the chance to be a part of this event. Too bad Ryder is off being such an amazing Canadian ambassador for cycling and Victoria, missing his event this year...I would have loved kicking his butt up Munns Road....HAHAHAHAHA!!!
I rode the 140 with the Pro City Racing road team, thanks guys for letting me tag along!! Nothing like hammering with a dozen very fast men to make me hurt for 4 hours. The entire field splintered fast as we started climbing, so we stopped at the top of Munns to regroup the team. It was pretty cool seeing the faces of some of the riders coming up and over the summit of Munns Road, excited to have conquered a nemesis hill for a lot of people. I popped a little on the punchy, rolly Ross Durance following....there’s a lot more climbing through there then you actually think...but regained my rhythm once I hit Willis Point and had to hammer to catch back up.
Quick stop for a mouthful of the new Chocolate Honey Stinger Waffles.....this was my first taste and BEST FLAVOUR YET!!! Though I actually couldn’t taste them while riding because I was just stuffing my face as fast as I could, but a taste test at the finish confirmed my observation.
Making really quick work of the rest of the route...relatively flat compared to the first half. Though there are a couple big surprise hills that you just seem to forget about when concentrating on Munns Road. I was seeing stars on a couple of the hills just to stay in contact with the pack. Don’t lose that wheel, don’t lose that wheel!!!
Starting at Munns Road with about 12 guys and me, we rounded those final couple corners with about 50 guys in tow. With the Pro City Race team working smoothly at the front, we were picking up lone riders left right and center. I managed to pull through a couple of times, but when we were hitting speeds of over 50 km/h it was all I could do to just hang on a couple of times.
I was really amazed at the finishing time of about 4:10...that’s including a couple of stops to regroup and eat.....140km in 4 hours!!!! Blew my projected 5 and a half hours outta the universe...okay a little overkill.
Couldn’t have asked for a better day. Sunny, not too hot and nooooo wind...first day in....I can’t remember the last time we had a day like that. Big Salmon burger at the finish was the perfect cap to the great ride!
Yup, I love bikes! Thanks Sara and Russ for hosting the Tour de Victoria clinic after party. Burgers, wine/beer and cakes...multiple cakes! And thank you Bill Fry for not crashing in front of me when you clipped your pedal!!!!
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