Day 16 – Borden-Carelton, PEI to Charlottetown. Total 50km. Total to date 1317 km.

This morning we awoke to windy and rainy conditions in PEI. Suffice it to say that they stayed that way for the entire day.

In really short today was brutal and by far our worst day of cycling yet. My knee was in constant agony and there was no way PEI was planning to take it easy on me. With the hills and wet pavement it was very slow moving. With the insane winds it was a fight to stay in the side of the road or to maintain any semblance of momentum.

My knee was in such a bad state that I ended up walking several hills that I should be able to cycle without problems. The issue now is with my right knee sore (which is my lead leg)  I am having to rely on my left leg to do 80% of the work. This is of course not sustainable.

I did manage to grab a photo of the confederation bridge as we got a view early in the morning:

Also notice how angry the sky looks…

So Julie and I spent some time discussing my knee situaton the last few days. You may or may not know that last year on  a 2 week trip Julie had similar knee issues, and on the 2nd to last day her knee entirely gave out. A dislocated kneecap, 2 weeks of barely being able to move, 6 weeks of physio, and almost 2 months of the.summer she couldn’t cycle. All of this to say that I am worried that I am bordering on exactly that.

As Julie and I have said from the getgo is we have to listen to our bodies, and that health is the most important priority for our trip. For these reasons we are making the very sad and difficult decision to postpone the remainder of the trip for the time being. One day we plan to tackle the West Coast, but in current state it is not wise.

We will be taking a couple days in Charlottetown to prepare to fly home and drop off our stuff. Then we plan to vanish for a couple of weeks and fall off the grid. We need a vacation to process all of this and to celebrate our wedding anniversary.

This will likely be the last blog post for a while. I may start a new blog for our cycling and other adventures, as I am really enjoying writing and sharing photos and fun.

Thanks to everyone who replied to the blogs and on facebook. We really enjoyed hearing from you, getting your well wishes, and support 🙂

Here is a big cheers to all of you out there!!

Day 9 – Drummond to Hartland. 104 km. Total to date 786 km.

Today again was a later departure time. With the change in time zones disagreeing with our natural sleep cycle that we worked so hard to establish before leaving, we cant seem to get up in time for early departure.

Last night I was suffering from some major muscle spasms in my legs I didnt get much sleep. Starting a long day already tired is a recipe for disaster. Add to that some insane hills, headwind, and terrible road conditions. I know people say Quebec roads are bad but if ever you cycle the 105 in NB you may draw the same conclusion of roads here.

All this to say that today was a rough day on the roads, again every kilometer was hard earned. 104 kilometers was quite a challenge in these conditions.

As a result of this I didnt get many photos though we did see some daffodils growing, a true sign of spring!

Much of the day was spent in forested hills and following the St John river. Below is a pic of a hydro dam I got on a little break:

One highlight was meeting a friend Charlie on the road. We have been chatting on Facebook for several weeks, and unfortunately missed him in Grand Falls, but he caught up with us on our way to Hartland today. Charlie is also a crazy cyclist and doing a trip soon from Moncton to Halifax. His trip is a fundraiser and you can get all the details or.make a donation here:

http://iwktelethon.kintera.org/faf/donorReg/donorPledge.asp?ievent=1046145&lis=1&kntae1046145=A36160E74D7740DC9EB61ED5AD1EB2C1&supId=379316594&team=0&nmv=true

Tonight we relax in Hartland at a cute hotel waaay up on a hill. Seems appropriate after our day. Here we have a nice view of the world’s longest covered bridge. Here is a distant view:

Julie took more shots with her camera so will have to wait to share.
Tomorrow we hit the road again for another 104 km to Fredericton. Hopefully the terrain is less hilly and being away from the river we will have favourable winds. I guess we will find out tomorrow!

Here is a rough pic above of our morning view, the vast potato fields in Drummond.

Until tomorrow thanks for reading and all comments! I am off to bed to hopefully repair my muscles for tomorrow 🙂

Less than 12 days…

This morning marked the 12 days countdown to departure! As I write this at night however it feels way closer. It is so strange looking back through the blog and seeing numbers of weeks / months but now counting days and hours!

It is a stange mix of feelings from being excited to really overwhelmed about all the things we still need to do before leaving. Also feeling bit nervous for the weather still but that is beyond our control, at this point we have to dive into whatever is thrown our way!

Tonight was a great example, we finally get a nicer day with some sunshine so for sure we decide to hit the trails after work. All geared up we pop over to the Lachine canal with the intention of doing 30-40 km. Heading west it was awesome, we were easily rolling at almost 30kmph without any major effort. This would all change when we got to Dorval and turned back eastward to go home. The wind was grueling to say the least. It was hard to maintain 20kmph (riding unloaded too!). We has a tough crawl back home to cpmplete 35km. Good exercise and training but on windy days that is going to really take its toll on us. Please wish us some nice winds west to east, which are the normal prevaling winds in Canada.

Tomorrow morning we plan to get up and get in a 30km before work. This should be a good shock to the system but it will help to kickstart the muscles into rapid repair mode. We will also start our vitamine and supplement regime tomorrow to get our systems regulated before departure.

Here is a quick pic from tonight’s ride. This was taken at the end of the canal in Lachine.

Until next time thanks for reading and joining us on the countdown to departure!

The importance of setting goals

I know I have been MIA for a few days but I had some thoughts I wanted to share tonight, and I will get back with a new post tomorrow as well. For those of you who have been following my posts for thhttps://cyclingcanada2013.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.phpe past few weeks have undoubtedly seen my “weekly training summary” pop up a couple of times. This is where I like to share a few stats of the trips I am taking, thoughts about my training and my goals for the week.

For tonight’s post I want to focus on the importance of the goals section. In order to achieve anything you need goals. It is no secret that setting these goals brings to life the personal challenges. What I am finding almost more important than just setting goals is to write them down, and making them public. I can easily make myself a bunch of goals in my head, never tell anyone, and then if I dont achieve them, only I know. If I put them on “paper” here, at the end of the week when I write my training summary, I have to go back to the goals of the week, and indicate if I reached them or not. It is not a place to make excuses, it is a place to reflect whether or not I was able to achieve what I set out to do for the week. Equally important is looking at them during the week for motivation and to see how I am measuring up to what I have set out to do.

So why is this important and why is it so relevant to me tonight? Thanks for asking! In my training summary for last week, here is one goal for this week: 1. Bike every day at least once per day. Let me tell you that I am running really tired this week and struggling to catch up on a bit of sleep so that my muscles adequately repair and that I can focus at work. This evening after work I had a meeting at 6pm. When I got home the last thing I felt like doing was going to the meeting then going cycling. Why, you ask again? Well it was a stormy afternoon and the weather network was posting winds of 33kmph from the west (I mainly bike west then return east) plus gusts of 55kmph. For a cyclist this is really significant, getting hit with gusts like that can grind you to an entire halt. So I see the forecast then I open my blog with my goals clearly written out, with goal #1 staring me in the face (side note I didnt bike this morning, I could NOT wake up). Just the thought of first entering “0” in my excel spreadsheet for the day made me feel like a failure, then the fact that I would have to report back at the end of the week that I didnt reach my goal was devastating. Had I not put that all in writing I could have easily skipped biking and thought nothing of it.

So after my meeting I got my ass in gear and was out on 2 wheels within 10 minutes of getting home. Was it a hard ride? Yes. Did I have a great time? Hell yes. I used the wind as an opportunity, and I swear I pushed myself to the limit going into the wind trying to maintain speeds of at least 22kmph, and at times I was 2-4 km faster. When I got to the end of the circuit and turned back east I was so rewarded. I got a gorgeous sunset warming my back, and the wind pushed me with all it’s might all the way back toward home. I posted speeds of 30-33kmph consistently on the way home.

I had such an awesome ride that as I approached the turn-off to go back home, what did I do? I blew right past it (pun intended) and tacked on another 6.5 km loop out toward the old port and back. I felt strong, energized and pleased that I kept my goal of biking 7/7 days alive, but I also took a small bite out of my goal for the year (5000km) and my goal for the week (200km).

This one is for all of my CRLT friends / alumni / peers / professors… SMART goals are goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound.

Thanks again for reading and I hope that you can find motivation from my story tonight to help you achieve your goals. Until tomorrow where I think I will tackle the subject of cycling etiquette, I wish you happy and safe cycling. There is nothing to compare with the feeling of freedom and contentment you get from cycling.