[darkpuppet]

First off, thanks to everyone who donated money to me for this great event!..

I didn't bring my camera as I'm usually too busy trying to draft faster riders to take pictures of the event, but here's how things shaped up..

5:00am Alarm goes off.. "UGHHHHHHhhhhhhh"
5:30am Roll out of bed.. "Brrrrr.r... .cold!"
6:00am Pack up the bike and bottles of water...
6:45am ride down to Exhibition place.
7:20am grab a bite to eat at the corporate table.. hmmm.. fat free muffins and strawberry bannana orange juice.
7:45am line up for the start
8:00am THe event officially starts, and I start threading my way through bike traffic as I head up the lakeshore onramp to the gardiner expressway. I find a couple of roadies and a tandem who are riding slightly faster than I and I fall into their draft to beat the wind.

This year was a bit different than other years in that the wind was blowing southwest, not coming off the lake like in previous years, so you suffer up the climbs, but you don't have to suffer the wind coming back... woot!

I decide to turn around at the 25km turnaround point as I didn't wish to do the full 50k as I still needed to be alive enough to do work this afternoon.

On my way back, a girl who used to courier in vancouver pulled alongside to compliment my choice of brakes on my bike as she was running the same front brake as mine. So we chatted and rode, and in less than half an hour were back at the starting point.

Event volunteers offered us foam hats and a free polaroid... so what the hey..


so in all, I did the 25 km route in 1 hour and 2 minutes, averaging just over 24km/hr.. which isn't bad for a fat guy... I passed my fair share of people and had a great time.... and with the ride to and from home, I put in just shy of 60km on my bike today.

coupled with 8 hours of work (and counting), it's been a pretty productive day!

thanks again for your donations!