Sunday, August 09, 2009

Mt Seymour Hillclimb + 4 hours

Made a quick trip to Vancouver staying at friends' Guy and Killaine's North Vancouver home wayyy up Mtn Hwy. The lure was the Mt Seymour Challenge road race... a 12.2 km road climb up an average 9% grade. There was a light mist the whole race keeping us refreshed.
love the tall north shore trees
photo - Guy Trotter

Mass start of 20 women, the pace went out quite comfortable. Leah Goldstein soon shook up the pack. Leah gapped myself and the red/white jersey woman.

The pack... Marg standclimbing with Leah (in blue) just before making a break
photo - Guy Trotter

Another group of 4 riders were gapped behind us. I used my mental energy to stay with this powerful woman. We kept Leah in sight until the fog hid her. 2 km to go, my body cried that the pace was hard and it had been a good race up to that point. I hung in there until 1 km to go when I let red/white woman go. I needed that 30 second breather at my pace then I stormed on to the finish.
podium - marg leah powerful-red/white-jersey-woman

Afterwards, I joined Leah for more mileage. Leah is training for the Furnace Creek 508 in October (508 mile continuous road race!). We rode all the cool climbs on the North Shore... Lillouet road up to the Watershed (super scenic), Mtn Hwy to drop off my backpack, Lonsdale down Capilano back up to the mountain climb Cypress and to homebase. That was a good 5+ hour day for me, possibly 3000m elevation gain! Totally unexpected day to go on a long ride and have good company.

bear patrol volunteer duty with Killaine

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I think you tripled my climbing on Sunday in less than one extra hour.

Marg Fedyna said...

Riding the north shore climbs are like climbing Highwood Pass a few times. Heard your ride was good. Good job!

Killaine said...

Hey Marg, hope you're still having a great visit! I wondered if it was you who flew by me on the Lion's Gate Bridge Wednesday morning when I was riding to work? Did you do the Callahagn ride yet?

Hobo said...

I rode with Ann up/down Lillouet road before I rode with her to work. I don't remember passing anyone, and would have said "hi"! Made it to Squamish for an epic blackberry picking session. As beautiful of a day it was in Van, the rains were happening in Squamish. I took the rains with me to squish out the Kelowna fires. All good here now!