Sunday April 23, 3:23 pm

Things you see on a long bike ride in Alberta. Cadillac Ranch indeed! This is just outside of Lamont, Alberta. This wasn’t the only thing in this person’s field. There had to be 1000 vehicles parked on this piece of land. All makes and models and all in bad shape. Maybe it was a pick a part business, not sure. 1000 vehicles would be a conservative estimate too.

Winter is back😡 Has it ever left? It feels like groundhog day. Every week it is the same. Wednesday, Thursday are nice and then Friday hits and the weather goes to the dogs. Joe and I rode yesterday for 2 hours 15 minutes, about 52 km. Nice easy pace. The temperature got to a high of 0.9 celsius. You did not read that wrong, 0.9. We started off at zero, it reached 0.9 and when we finished it was 0.4. Our feet were frozen but other than that it wasn’t so bad. We did a 10 minute brick run right after so that brought some feeling back into our toes.

We started our bike ride in Elk Island National Park. It has a nice road right through the middle of it, relatively new pavement and if there is traffic the vehicles are moving slowly. We came upon 3 Buffalo early on in our ride. My god they are big up close. (like I didn’t know that before) One of them ran beside a cyclist ahead of us for about 50 feet and then the Buffalo turned right and headed into the bush. The other two just stared at us. We passed very slowly and quietly😃 Didn’t want them to charge us. I am the slow one so you know they would have caught me☠️

April has been a brutal month for riding outside. I really thought I would have at least one 100 km ride under my belt by this time. I have one more weekend so lets hope the weather is better than it is right now. Today it is snowing.

Other than the weather being terrible nothing else to complain about in my training. The swims are going well, the runs are good. Not much mileage this month in the running department. Will start to increase the run distances in May through August.

From here on in during the long rides I will be fine tuning my nutrition plan. Going to the foods that I know work for me, maybe try something new if it catches my attention. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, you don’t want to go into the race trying something for the first time. That includes what you are going to wear race day. All I have for cycling gear are bib shorts so I need to find cycling shorts that you tie up at the waist, not with the straps that go over your shoulder. Also, at some point in late June or early July I will get a new pair of runners and make sure they are broken in before Aug 27. I have go into my storage locker and see if I still have my wetsuit. We are a long ways away from an open water swim but I better start looking for it soon. If I find it I will have to take it to the pool to see if there are any holes or leaks.

18 weeks to go. They will fly by.

Take care
Scott