Well, that took a while.

As I mentioned previously, I'm going to head up to Balm Beach sometime in late July. This sort of worried me, since up until now, all my biking was commuting (8 km one way, 12 km the other), or going on slightly longer group rides (21 km, but only 13.6 km/h). None of these tiny rides would prepare me for a 135 km trek up to Balm Beach.

So I decided to go on one of the PWA Bike Rally training rides. Specifically, the one this morning, heading up to Musselman Lake. It ended up being almost 94 km for me, instead of the 87 km they claim it will be, but I figure most of that is my walking my bike onto and off of the TTC. Even counting those slow kilometers, though, I still managed to average 23.2 km/h, which is really quite respectible, I feel, for my first time out. And yeah, it totally wasn't a problem. I mean, I'm quite tired now, but I'm still up and walking around, and I think I could even have biked home, if I had to. Much easier to pay my $2.10 to the TTC, and let them carry me, though.

What else... I met a bunch of really friendly people, and rode in a group of two or three most of the way there and most of the way back. I've heard that it's quite different to ride alone, and I expect I'll get the chance to find out (unless someone wants to ride up north with me... ;) Oh, yeah, and it took me five hours of wall time to ride the 94 km, but only 4 hours of riding time. I wonder why the huge difference, since I didn't stop for an hour at the midpoint. Ah well, one of cyclings unexplained mysteries, I presume.