60.9 mi / 5:37:21 time / 10.8 mph avg. / 3649 ft. climbing
Staying at Auberge La Charmille

I’m always behind Rett when we ride, since she’s still not comfortable riding with someone blocking her view. So she sets the pace, and I follow along.

Up until today, I’ve been going at something like 80% effort to keep up with her. That told me that she was in excellent cycling shape, and though she was frightened by the planned quantity and type of climbing over the next two days that she’d never experienced before, I could extrapolate from my experience and knew that it would be difficult for her, but well within her current abilities. 

After a couple of days of her dreading today, I finally convinced her to put her fears aside, and I think she entered the day with some confidence.  Unfortunately, the ride told us that I’d made a grave error in my extrapolation. The ride was much harder for her than I expected it to be, while my own relative effort level to keep up with her was reduced, compared to her near-constant struggle. The 80% rule seems to fail in the mountains. 

The most frustrating part is that I’m still not sure how I miscalculated so badly, so that means that I don’t know what to try to make it easier. She now has low enough gears to spin up all but the craziest of hills, and the 5-6% grades that constituted most of today’s big climbs were still within her aerobic range. She’s climbed a lot of hills in that range before, but not at the length of these. There is just no way to practice 300 foot climbs around Chicago. So that’s my only clue to work with. 

That doesn’t mean there wasn’t good stuff tucked been the hills. Beautiful hilly farms, woods, and more of those mountains rising from the plain. 

Corn in one field, and a Christmas tree farm in the next. The contrast between this rural area of Quebec with the nearby rural areas of northern New York is remarkable. I don’t think we’ve seen a single abandoned house or decaying car, and most of the farmhouses are beautiful and well-kept. 

And for the first time Rett tried listening to music from her phone’s speaker strapped to her arm (no headphones), and I think that helped at least a bit. 

The most exciting moment was when we were pulled over by a cop! The motorcycle officer in the big city of Sherbrooke lit us up and turned around to stop us, ostensibly because we had shifted to the left lane to early in order to make a left turn. That was nonsense, since we would have had no opportunity to merge left had we waited any longer, but no matter, since Rett brilliantly played the “sorry officer, we’re kind of lost!” blonde-girl card. At which point he immediately changed tone and happily started giving bad directions (“just go down some stairs to get to the bike path”?!?) which we smiled and nodded and thanked him for, and then promptly ignored. Figures I’d have to go to Canada to have my first police encounter on a bike; too bad it wasn’t a Mountie on a flesh-and-blood horse! 

We ended the day as planned at Auberge La Charmille, a beautiful bed & breakfast a bit in the middle of nowhere, but a perfect location for our route. Despite my horrible miscalculation, I had at least figured from the initial planning stages that a roof and a jacuzzi and a bed would be appreciated by Rett after such a ride. There was also a kitchen for us to make fancy grilled-cheese sandwiches for dinner, a very good doggie, and nice bike accommodations. For our efforts on the road, we even scored a free room upgrade, to spacious and beautiful multi-room suite!  We enjoyed an Asti Spumante in the hot tub, and a La Fin du Monde beer with dinner (both lugged up the hills from the last town). Rett fell asleep at 9pm, and after a brief awakening, was then out like a rock for the rest of the night. 

And despite the struggle, I must note that our average speed for the day ended up being faster than all but one day on our last tour, a 14-day tour where the total amount of climbing (10261 ft.) would be exceeded by a mere 3 days like this. She’s really more incredible than she realizes. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 13th, 2016 at 8:00 pm and is filed under 2016 Bike Tour, bike. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.