Racking it up

Today is Victoria Day public holiday in Canada - celebrated in honour of Queen Victoria's birthday. As if London is not quiet enough already, the long weekend made it even more of a sleepy town. But I quite like it this way. As I did my 2.5 hour run this morning, up until 10am there were still barely any cars on the roads.

The training miles have indeed taken up a notch, bringing total hours for the week to just over 17 hours - and that's after having one less run session than I normally do! On the weekend, Sheri organized what she calls a Megaday training at her parents' place in Grimsby, which is about 1 hour 45 minutes drive from London. There were two groups riding that day - one doing a 3 to 3.5 hour ride, while I joined the 4.5 hour one. There aren't many hills in London, so this was a good opportunity to do some hill training. There were others in the group who came from Hamilton, about 30 minutes drive from Grimsby.

I had a few close calls that day. The first one actually happened as I was driving on the way to the place! I exited on Casablanca Blvd intersection from the highway and it was one of those moments where I forgot which direction to look before I merged into the intersection. A car zoomed past from the left and I jammed the brakes from moving forward. Thankfully nothing happened!

During the ride, I had a soft fall on a slight descend, I was avoiding the holes in the middle of the road and kept moving right and got onto some gravel. Luckily I braked and just toppled to my side. I wasn't hurt and the bike had some minor marks. These things happen and sometimes some scuff marks are unavoidable. The bike is after all, a machine rather than a work of art.

At the end of the ride, one of the guys actually had another 30 minutes to ride in his program. I was up for it, so we went up Wolverton, a 12% slope - pretty decent climb that one. As we descended down the same road, although I was tapping my brakes and being cautious, my wheel must have hit a small bump - I was airborne for a split second and landed back on two wheels. Luckily I didn't fall over as I would have definitely lost some skin and my bike would have needed a new paint job.

There was a feast at Sheri's parents' house before the drive back to London. Li-Ann baked some nice brownies which everyone were raving about. It was nice meeting new people and they were really friendly and welcoming. Looking forward to training more often with these guys in the summer.

It's not all training over here... well mostly is but we try to get out and about too. Li-Ann and I tried a new place called Tuscanos as I have been yearning for some Italian food. I ordered the panzerotti, which actually looks like a giant curry puff! I ordered the one with ham, bacon and Italian sausage. So basically like a covered up pizza.

It was a bit too salty for my liking unfortunately. Li-Ann was a bit disappointed with her pasta too, it lacked something... The staff were really friendly though and the restaurant had a nice set up. Aah... maybe we should just stick to our nearby diner, Maxwell McCoys...