Tereza Macel's Blog

Training has been going fine here in Western Canada. When I came here I didn’t realize that Penticton was such a vacationy kind of place. The beach is packed on sunny days, and there seem to be lots of fun activities to do. I have stuck to my trusty old activities of swimming, biking and running.
As I bike around however, I notice that some of the others around here are taking a bit of a different approach to cycling.
Perhaps a little less aero, but definitely much more of a social ride.

Of course it depends how many friends you have that have the leg power to make it go.

Do you go double, or up to six?

I wonder how fast a TBB contingent we could put on one of those. It could be a very, very fast ride, probably fast enough for a speeding ticket. I wonder if we could have two carts, and race ‘em. Maybe at the next camp.

So finally a sunnier kind of day, and I headed out for a longer ride here in Penticton. I had a rough map, and a description of a few bike routes to choose from, all on a piece of paper, in a trusty old ziplock bag, in my pocket. It all started well enough, I found my way out of the apartment and onto my bike. But unless I am in a mall my sense of direction is a little suspect.

The first hour and a half went by well enough, I seemed to find all the landmarks the little white piece of paper described, but shortly thereafter I started to doubt I was on the right track. I was in the middle of nowhere, or at least felt like I was. All I could see where hills, dry grass, an odd road kill snake and that’s about it.

It was when I saw the salt pond, was running out of water and still did not know where I was that I had a choice to make. Keep going forward and hope I come across something that might make sense to me. Or just turn around, go the way I came from and instead of a loop the ride will be an out and back. Well, I am very fond of out and back runs and rides, since then the chance to me getting lost is decreased. I didn’t say eliminated, just decreased. So I turned around and had a chance to be pleasantly surprised and realize that on the way out I had climbed more than I thought, and hence the way back was not as tough as I expected.

I did make it back to civilization. And found out that I had been on the right track, apparently the salt pond was a good landmark. Who new?

It seems like my most used piece of clothing lately is a raincoat. Forget doing a rain dance if you want rain, just invite me over.
The province of British Columbia has been having a very, very hot dry summer. Forest fires are everywhere, and each day on the news it is a matter of updates how many people have been evacuated and how many firefighter experts have arrived from all over the world to help. Since I have spent most of my summer in much milder weather I headed out west to get in some heat training. And of course the day I arrived it was raining. Which is a good thing, since the area is in need of the liquid gold.
However when I headed out for my ride the other day, skies were clear, it was warm. Half way through I find myself under a grey sky, wet, cold and cranky. I keep heading towards the clear sky ahead, but somehow the rain cloud keeps following me around, and it is not only till I am almost done my ride that I find dry pavement again.
Kind of reminds me of doing a bike ride in St Croix a few years back. It is a very dry island, where it rains for about 4 minutes each day. I headed out for a ride, managed to get rained on the entire ride, and when I got back talked to a couple of other athletes who also rode, without even as much as a drop of rain falling on them. So I must have a talent for attracting a rain cloud, and having it follow me around.

I wonder if this would make my P4 less aero?