GearUp Day 9: Invermere-Banff

We made it!!!!  I am happy to report that all riders made it into Banff accident free!!!  Yesterday was an awesome day for me.  It was a long day, 150km's, and I rode most of it all by myself...it was actually quite nice.  Nothing against the other riders or anything, but it was nice to be able to go at my own pace, take a bunch of video (battery went dead before I finished) and just soak in the most amazing scenery I have ever seen.

The ride yesterday went straight through the Rockies.  We were surrounded by mountains all day long.  Amazingly we did not get rained on, the cloud above us did not look pretty but luckily they left us alone :)

The day started out with a big climb out of Radium and the best thing happened on it; I over estimated the km's we had to ride!  For some crazy reason I thought the summit wasn't until the 46km mark, so I set myself a nice easy pace and settled in for a lot of pain and a long climb.  However, as I came around the corner of the 24km mark there were the support vehicles!!  How I over estimated by that much I will never know, must of been a combination of the elevation and total exhaustion.  However, that nice little surprise set the mood for the rest of the ride...I was so happy!!!  We still had some climbing to do after this but that was out last major ascent and it was a great feeling to know that the climbing was all behind us.

From here the Rockies really opened up and the ride was amazing.  It was a long day and a lot of people could feel the exhaustion, as could I, but I also just felt really good, we were almost done and I was able to ride the whole thing!!

This fact really is what I am most proud of this year.  I think I have said it before, but many of my rides this year were slower than last year and I did not feel as strong on the climbs.  But this year I was able to accomplish the goal I set for myself last year and wasn't able to meet, and that was to ride every inch of that ride!  After I checked into the hotel at Banff I had to do a reality check to make sure I wasn't dreaming, that I really did ride the whole thing and the ride really was over.  So I do feel a huge sense of accomplishment in doing the whole ride this year.  It was very tough, I think tougher than last year.  This has a lot to do with the weather on days 2, 3, and 4, the hot sun and then the pouring rain.  But once those first days were over everything went a lot better.  I know that as time goes on and I recover from the ride I will look back on this trip with awesome memories and a lot of pride.

Thanks everyone for following along on the ride and thanks for all your support and encouraging messages...I could not have done this without you!!

If you have been following along and would still like to donate to the fight against CF, you can do so here.

Climbing out of Radium.

Me and my favourite volunteer!!

Keeping the legs warm during lunch.

Made it...where is everyone?