Cycling Camp in Jasper - Day 2

On Saturday morning, we went to a nearby (deserted) parking lot to practice cornering skills, then again rode up Pyramid Lake Road to practice proper climbing and descending technique. That's a fun road to ride down - the pavement was great (not like all the potholes and gravel here in Edmonton at the moment), so I felt confident to just go fast rather than worry about cracks/bumps in the road - and short enough that I wasn't worried about going too fast either. We had a filmmaker with us all day today, Chris Wilberg, who directed the documentary about Lori-Ann Muenzer, "One Gear No Breaks" - Chris and Alex are apparently putting together a skills DVD about road cycling.

Then, we did our mountain climb up to the base of Marmot Basin.



This was our big climb, on Saturday afternoon - my group started from the turnoff from highway 93A, rode up to the base of Marmot Basin ski area then down then back to town. 11 km total from the turnoff to the top, average grade of about 5.5-6 % (calculating from the topo map, as none of the group members who had Garmins actually knew how to use the grade/elevation functions), 1 hr 15 min up for me. And we even made it to the top before the faster riders caught up to us (they rode from town then up the climb, whereas we saved our energy for the climb by driving to the base). Perhaps the bear seen by the two in front (we had to get passing-tourists' cars to ride beside us for protection just in case the bear hadn't actually run away like we thought) provided that last burst of adrenaline to get us to the top ...



I rode with Wendy, and it was a good feeling to finally realize what others have told me about climbing - you just get in your own rhythm and keep on going. The hills around home (what few there are) aren't really long enough to get into any sort of rhythm, the tendency is to just try to power over them - which wouldn't be the best strategy for these longer climbs.


Riding back into town, I rode beside Alex most of the way - just a neat feeling to be riding along in the mountains and discussing cycling with a former pro cyclist and Tour de France yellow-jersey holder.

We had a group dinner that night (and even Ed was invited), where "awards" were handed out - I got the "Cycling Fan" award (not sure if that was because of the Davitamon-Lotto jerseys I'd been wearing, or my conversations with Alex, or a bit of both - lol). We discovered that both Alex and Chris had ridden with Ed's brother Pete back in the day - small world (Pete was formerly on the national track team). After dinner, we went back to the hotel lounge and Alex showed a video from the Tour of Georgia as an introduction to racing to those who'd never really seen any before - plus some of his photos from his racing days and from his Tour trips. And we watched a bit of the Giro opening day Team Time Trial highlights on cycling.tv.