28 August 2014

Epic Camp Canada 2014 Day 9 ( I think )

Epic Camp Canada 2014
August 27 - Day 9

Jasper - Sunwhapta Falls - 93km (including the bike commute to swim)
It always looks like a very manageable day on paper.
The schedule was ride 8km to lake, swim, ride back, pack up, break, 10:30 roll out for ride, run on arrival.  Doesn't look all that challenging does it?

But is day f... Day 9 and some of us are feeling kinda wh_uuuuu_pped.
So the sleep-in was much appreciated.
The cold lake probably wouldn't have felt that cold on days 1-3, but today it had a real bite to it.
My goal was to just cruise but after 10 minutes I realised I needed to hammer to not freeze to death so hammer I did. After the swim Douglas and I were berating ourselves for all of the cold-water neoprene stuff we left behind at home. My gloves, booties and hood would have been very nice today!
 But we found a nice fireplace to sit by for a few minutes and a coffee in a lodge right there with a great view and things changed from cold to OK in a couple minutes.
It ain't all pain and misery on Epic Camp (but sorry for the rest of you miserable plebs who missed out  .......).

Another good break from the crew and time to ride.
The route was changed a bit from the original plan due to a rockslide on one of the climbs so the only  KOM came along very soon on the ride.
Seems only one person mistook which climb we were doing and that D.O.T.D was me.
So feeling like it was time to show a bit of the ol' TERMINATOR I wound it up early to see who was committed for the KOM.  I zipped right on by the turn up the mountain we were supposed to go up and a few km later turned up the climb I _thought_ we were going to go up.
Kept the hammer down off the front for about 5km up the climb before looking back on a long straight to finally realize there was no posse chasing me down.
So I kept it steady to the top just in case and tried to enjoy the stunning locale. 12km up a magic climb.
After descending I still really had no idea where the hell everyone went as I asked the gal park ranger if there was any other big climbs like this one near-by and she described a few that didn't resemble any I knew we might do.
So befuddled and thinking I was keeping my streak of senior moments alive I wandered towards our destination.  Stopped to turn on an IMTalk podcast (got some catching up to do) and Charlsey and Rob Hill roll up!  they informed me what the hell happened and we kept rolling along with Charlsey pulling most of it as Hill and I weren't at our best to say the least.

Eventually Douglas and B2 motored past but the others didn't! So we all arrived at our accom close together except for Adam B, Gary, ash and Petro who added "my" climb to the route + more .

A bite to eat and drink, out for an hour run on some trails (and also the highway for me and a pretty tired looking John Ballard), some nice waterfall views, a quick catch-up on e-mails, dinner and a few laughs and another day done.  The Stanford Kid Adamski ripped off a sub-40 10km on the highway which isn' flat by any means which showed he's very sincere about staying in the hunt for the yellow jersey.
Poor Shannon was in tears (of laughter) at dinner when she ordered a lime and soda and only a slice of lime showed up!!!  Meals were pre-ordered once again due to John's efficiency so we didn't have to wait too long.
I had received a good tip on a good cocktail from Douglas - a drink called a "Rusty Nail".  I was going to save it for the last night but it was on the menu here (who woulda thunk it??? ) so seemed like a message from above.
Heard that David Rowe was way up there in the KOM battle today and that seems quite out of character for him so will ask him tomorrow how that all transpired.
Once again we had a spunky waitress, this time in wonderfully worn black leather pants so all is right with the world.  G'nite.


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