Pic Spocket

Last Sunday, this was my 3rd participation to the Detroit Half Marathon. It starts in Detroit, then we cross in Canada using the bridge, we run on Riverside Dr in Windsor before taking the tunnel back to USA for a final loop downtown.

Here’s our group at packet pickup and expo on the Saturday afternoon…

This Detroit race was my first Half Marathon, done in 2009. I did 1:35:05 at the time. Last year, I did it in 1:28:35. My PB on this distance date from this spring though, with a 1:27:31. With all the training I have logged for Ironman Training, I was hoping to shave another minute to that time.

Something was new this year: Corinne was racing it too! She could not train very much for the distance, but she was decided to tackle the distance and take this challenge.

We crossed the border very early at 5am to avoid traffic and the problems I had 2 years ago where I barely made it to the start line in time. So we had to kill time in the cars before heading out to race start…

 The temperature was ideal for running, around 7 deg. C - but quite windy. The usual “garbage bag” trick helps staying warm and protected from the wind before race start… you just have to ditch the bag right before the gun goes.

 This year, I was in Corral “A” which means I was in the first group going out. I saw many people I knew in my corral start, and I did not see the time pass before it was time to go. Coach James was also racing this year (I guess I should say “running” rather than “racing” since he did not train much at all this year). Before too long, we were off!

 Coach James ran with me up to the bridge, which was nice. The first km I ran deliberately slow - but I over did it at 4:15/km. Still, better than starting too fast and then bugging out later. I was holding my pace pretty good according to Mr Garmin: I wanted to hold between 4:00 and 4:05/km average or faster for a nice PR. The bridge went fast, then we were running in Canada. Here I am, on Riverside Dr (Thanks Syd for the picture!).

I had my “Malden Park Runners” singlet, so I was cheered a lot by the crowd in Canada. Nice! It helped holding that painful pace. And the MPR group had a cheering station near the tunnel which was awesome. Did a row of “high fives” on my way. Reaching the entrance of the tunnel, my average pace was at 4:02.. pretty happy with that, considering the conditions and the wind blowing!

My Garmin took a crap again in the tunnel… In 2009, all my data and average pace got screwed up at that point because I had the foot pod, and when the watch got the GPS signal back after the tunnel, it added the distance twice…. In 2010, I left the Foot Pod at home, and it seemed to work correctly. So this year I did the same, but this time the portion I ran in the tunnel without GPS signal was just lost completely, never added when the watch got the GPS signal back. Grrrr! Different software versions I guess. So I switch my view to the “lap data” screen and started to monitor my average lap pace (I have the auto-lap feature set at 1km). So I am not sure at what pace I ran the tunnel, but I know I was running on pace afterwards. The second part of the tunnel is always a tough time because of the temperature difference and the hill coming out of it. It did not seem as painful as the last years though.

After a loop in Detroit, I was making the final turn to the finish line, pushing as hard as I could at that point.

 I crossed the finish line pretty happy with my run.. I however did not like what I saw on my watch: I thought I was on pace to finish in 1:26:xx or even 1:25:xx, but  the clock showed 1:27:26. A PB by 5 ridiculous seconds. At least, it is a PB. Also, it is still 1 minute faster than last year on the same course. That time gives me a pretty good ranking though, with a top 50 in 8000 participants.

After chatting with friends in the finish chute - freezing - I made it to the car to get warm clothes and wait for Corinne! Here’s a picture of me waiting taken by Charlotte while she was walking to the finish line - she was injured earlier this year, so she decided to still do the half marathon, running a portion and then walking the other portion, taking picture and documenting the race “through the eyes of a runner”. Usually, it’s the spectators taking pictures of the runners.. hehe!

A little bit later, Corinne passed by me, running to the finish line. I screamed her name but she never saw me. I am very proud of her for finishing the race! The longest run she logged in training was 5 km, so this was quite the challenge. We were lucky enough to meet very quickly by luck after her finish.

I could tell she was really in pain though, as it took everything to walk back in direction of the car. In the process, we ran into our group! Awesome!

Congratulations to Tracy for also finishing her first Half Marathon distance, and big shot out to Craig for finishing his second full Marathon with almost a PR by 1 hour at 3h50.. woo hoo!

The day after the race, I was surprised to find a picture of Corinne in the official online gallery of the Detroit Free Press newspaper (picture #44 from this link):

A few more pictures are in my photo album:

Detroit Free Press Half Marathon 2011

On a diferent topic, my website was quite unstable lately and barely working… but I think I found the problem and it should be more stable now

It’s been a while since we’ve been back, but I just never had the time to write about our trip to France last September. My volume of training, few weeks away from Ironman Florida has just taken all free time away.

In the last days of August, we went to France to see Corinne’s family. She had not been in France to visit her family in over 3 years, 4 years for me. Soon after landing in Paris Saturday for our connection after an overnight flight, goodies were waiting for us to taste! Within 15′ on the ground, my mouth was full… hehe

We also had to try the famous “Macarons” from “La Durée”… Very tasty, but not necessarily worth their crazy price (couple Euros a piece if I remember correctly).

After our second flight, we landed in Lyon, before driving our rental car to Grenoble, where Corinne’s mother lives. The city is at the bottom of a bowl surrounded by mountains. Corinne was so very happy to see her familiar mountains when we got close. So much a change of scenery for her, when we move in the southern part of Canada, where everything is FLAT!

I was afraid training in France would be difficult as I did not want to burden Corinne with that, but opportunities presented naturally. The day after our arrival, the weather was just gorgeous and Corinne mother’s proposed that we go to “Les Bois Français”, and area with 5 artificial lakes dedicated to different activities, one of which was made as a beach and swim location. We arrived at lunch time, and had amazing Prosciutto Salads on the patio.

You know you are in Europe when you encounter these type of toilets… better work on your aim!!

The lake was perfect for swim training: about 120y on the narrow side, and 300y on the long side. Not many people were venturing outside the buoy line, and pretty much all of the people outside would cross the lake on the narrow side. I put my swim cap, swim goggle, and tackled the lake crossings on the long side. In addition to 2 short crossings, I did 6 crossings on the long side for a total of 1800y. Not bad for an unexpected open water swim practice!

Here is a picture of one of the other lakes, showing a perfect reflection on this beautiful day.

The Sunday evening, we met with Helen, a good friend of Corinne, for nice diner.

Monday, we took the road for the Alps, to go visit Corinne’s sister, Fred and the kids. This would be a surprise for the kids as our visit to France was kept “secret”. Few pictures of the drive to the Savoie area…

The kids changed so much that I barely recognized them (I did not see them in over 4 years… amazing how fast they grow!!!). Corinne has 2 nieces and one nephew: Deborah, Wynona & David. Wynona seemed quite happy to see us..

The light emitted by the setting sun just makes the whole area beautiful..

Tuesday morning, I eloped on my rental bike for pretty much the nicest ride I have ever done: Col du Petit St- Bernard before crossing in Italy. I have made a detailed post with many pictures about this ride. (LINK : “Epic Riding in France #1 : Little Saint Bernard Pass“)

As soon as I got back, took a shower, changed, and the whole team jumped in the cars to go the same route I just did with the intention to go have a late lunch in Italy, in the village of La Thuile, a big ski station in the winter. Pretty area!

The plan was to eat at “La Grotta” restaurant, but we arrived 10 min too late: the kitchen had just closed (near 2 pm). That really sucked because it looked AWESOME! I felt bad a bit because I did come back from my ride a bit later that I said I would…

Still, we had a very nice lunch on the terrace of that nice hotel, just by river.

Walked a bit though town…

And got desserts (I had TWO! Ice cream AND cake hehe!) from one of the local bakery. Mioum.. We ate our sweets outside.

Of course, on the way back, we stopped at the border between France and Italy to take many pictures. This time around, I had the big camera, so I could take better pictures than I could when I was on my bike ride with the pocket camera.

Wednesday morning, we went for a walk in Bourg St-Maurice’s nature park just at the bottom of the hill from Corinne’s sister house. Kids had fun on the rotating swing.

The afternoon, we all went to Val D’Isere where Carole (Corinne’s sister) works to try the new swimming and recreation complex OXYGEN they just built there. Again, nice opportunity to log some training while having fun and staying with the family during our vacation. They had a nice 25m lap pool, a lazy river, a gym, hot tub, sauna, steam room, cold showers, etc. It’s very upscale. The French National Swimming team was actually in town, doing a training camp at that place. I am just happy I came out of the lap pool before they arrived.

The car trip to Val let me evaluate the route that I would use the following day for my bike ride. It was not recommended because traffic is much higher in this area, there’s a bunch of dark tunnels and cars are driving fast. But after driving it, I thought it would be OK if I had a tail light on my bike. So I bough one when we were back in town.

We closed the day with an amazing meal typical of the area: Cheese Fondue! You dip bread chunks in a special mix of melted cheese, white wine and garlic. Awesome. Pretty heavy meal though!! Hehe!

Thursday morning, I did my second EPIC bike ride: Val d’Isere and Col de l’Iseran. Again, I made a long post about this ride with many pictures.. (Link : “Epic Riding in France #2 : “Col de l’Iseran” Pass“)

I came back late once again from my ride, just in time to have lunch with everybody and sign for Deborah’ birthday!

In late afternoon, Corinne and me left using treacherous but beautiful mountain roads for the next stop on our trip: the area of Chamonix Mont Blanc. The road was SUPERB, even if scary at times: small narrow roads on the flank of mountains, many of which are not even wide enough for 2 cars to cross. Lots of sharp blind turns, crazy descents and climbs. The pictures below are from the wide opened areas we also encountered.

Saw some goats on our way…

Cows and nice landscapes…

In Chamonix, we met Corinne’s mother and her boyfriend in the evening, just in time for a nice meal outdoor. MORE CHEESE! Look at this… This is out meal for two: Raclette. A Huge piece of smelly cheese in a special rotating fixture so that you can bring it really close to a heating element, before swiveling back to scrape the melted cheese onto baked potatoes and delicatessen meats. Very typical from the area.

To be honest, we were saturated and feeling pretty heavy afterwards from all the recent rich meals.

Rather than staying in your typical hotel, Corinne found us online a very charming room in a small cottage (kind of a bed and breakfast place): CHALET SUOMI. The room was all pine wood.

The view from the windows and the balcony was even better: it gave on the Month Blanc. Here it is, a bit before sunset, then a bit after sunrise the following morning.

Chamonix is a SUPERB little town, right by the “Massif du Mont Blanc“, a mountain range of the western Alps. Mont Blanc is the highest summit of the Alps, sitting at 4810m, with eternal snow on the top. To see it from up close, we can go up to the “Aiguille du Midi” using 2 cable cars, up to 3842m of elevation. After a big breakfast on Friday morning, we headed to town to go up there.

The second cable car you take looks kind of scary…. 2867m long, 1470 m of elevation gain, BUT NO PYLONS between the start and end point!!!! You really hope that cable does not break!

Up there, the view is STUNNING. I took hundreds of pictures.

For the adventure lovers, you can go up on your own hiking/climbing. We saw many alpinists out there.

An ice tunnel took you to one of the hiking path…

The place was perfect for portraits with nice backgrounds.

Friday afternoon, we got back down to Chamonix, and just took a nice walk downtown. Beautiful area.

We drove back to Grenoble in the evening, and passed our last day in France meeting with friends that we have not seen in a LONG time! We had an awesome time with them as usual.

Many pictures in the online album. Here are the ‘general pictures’ and ‘chamonix/Mt Blanc’ albums…

France 2011: Misc.	Chamonix Mt Blanc

I have been away from racing for several weeks, so I was eager to toe the start line at this late September race. I was hoping to have a good race before tackling the last training block of the season for Ironman Florida. The race seemed like a good idea when I signed up a few weeks before, but I have to say that the morning of, I was less sure: temperatures were quite chilly and water temperature was reported to a low 62 degrees F (16 deg C) on Friday.

Upon my arrival on the race site, worries quickly vanished though. Air temperature was a bit chilly, but the sun was getting out and it did not feel really bad. Also, the water temperature increased a couple of degrees during the weekend and the water was very inviting under the warm morning light: the river was very calm, mirror-like.

I was wondering if I would see people from Windsor-Essex there, but it seems a lot of the local athletes have closed their season already and/or shifted their focus to running for the fall races. It was nice to run into Mary Minutella (”Tri Like Mary“) that also crossed the border for the race. I was surprised to see her, knowing she did a 70.3 the weekend before. Turns out she does not want the season to end either hehe!

This race is on the same site as the 3D Motor City Triathlon which is in early June, so I knew the site (Belle Isle Island, between USA and CANADA on the Detroit River) from racing on it in 2010. Swim and Bike course were pretty much identical, but the run course was new.

Corinne unfortunately could not come. Not only I would have no pictures, but I would miss her support. Ironically, the only other Tri race she missed (I think), was Motor City at the same location.

For this race, you need to take a bit of time to make sure you set up your transitions properly, because there are 2: the swim site is in a different spot than the bike-to-run transition & Finish chute. So you have to make sure you have the correct equipment in each spot. T1 requires a bit more time as you need to make sure you put your swim equipment in a bag before leaving T1: race organizers later bring back your stuff to the finish area.

SWIM 1500m in 21:15, 8th overall

This is the fastest course I have been on. No, I do not think it was short…. And no, I did not start swimming like an Olympian haha! But the “out section” is close to the beach, protected from the current by the Marina. Once at the Marina, you venture out before making a turn back in West Direction, with a nice TAIL CURRENT. Pretty amazing to see at what speed the ground was moving under us in that section.

I had a very good swim, mostly because I started way right of the crowd. I actually enjoyed the cool water temperature with the wetsuit. I had a small moment after 200m where I was a bit out of breath, but the water was shallow allowing me a few dolphin jump to recompose myself and the resume my swim with a good rhythm. Before I long, I was on the beach. I was 8th overall out of the water, 1:45 behind the leader, not bad!

T1 in 1:07
Fastest transition of the race. Enough said…

Bike 36.5 km in 54:31 @ 40 km/h, 3rd overall
 290 Watts Normalized Power

The bike course on Belle-Isle is always fast, but is faster with a wind coming from the WEST. Unfortunately, the wind was in the opposite direction which means that we had a headwind on the part of the island with less wind protection. That also meant that the tailwind would not be as effective on the other side because of trees. Still, I was able to hold 36-37 km/h against the wind, and a nice 44-45 km/h speed on the other side. The bike course is a 4 loop affair, but comes a bit short from the official Olympic Distance.

In June 2010, I did the course with a Norm Power of 260 Watts. This time around, I pushed 290 Watts. I went pretty hard, but I was kind of alone without a sense of where the leaders were. If I would have been closer, I might have been a able to dig deeper and be closer to 300W.

On my last lap, I caught up with TREX buddy Shawn, with who I have a friendly competition. We are always battling on the bike together and finish within 1 or 2 positions. He was just back from the World Sprint Tri Champ in Beijing, so it was awesome to run into him. It actually gave me a second wind.

I thought I might have the fastest bike split, but looking at the results, I was 3rd over the ~100 participants. Eric Fernando, who I beat at the Tecumseh Tri had an awesome race, and he biked like a madman posting the fastest time. Pretty impressive knowing he did Ironman Muskoka (70.3) the weekend before.

T2 in 0:49
Top 5 times, within seconds of the fastest time so I was pretty efficient with my transitions.

RUN 10.125 km in 40:59, 13th overall

There was a bit of uncertainty before tackling the run. I have been battling with some pain (I hesitate to call them injuries) lately, and I ran very little and only slowly for many weeks now. So I was quite happy to see in the first kilometers that I was flying at a pretty good pace, very close to 4:03 min/km – much faster than last year (ran at an average of 4:16 pace at MotorCity Tri 2010).

I had no idea of my position since the Sprint Tri folks were already on the course when I got there. So when I finished the first loop and passed the MC booth, I was very happy to hear him say “Here’s Thierry Guertin from Windsor Canada, looking strong and currently running in 3rd position” – Whoo Hoo!! That gave me the boost I needed to push hard on the second loop too. I was able to hold my position and gain back 2 minutes on Eric Fernando in 2nd position, but he was still too far for me to be a menace.

After a last hard push, I crossed the finish line, very satisfied with my race.

Total Time: 1:58:39, about 12’ faster than last year on a similar course.
Rank= 3 / 100  PODIUM! Woo Hoo!

>Bike DATA
>Run DATA

>RESULTS

The race course differed slightly from an Olympic Distance. Here are my estimations based on my pace for each sport:

• Bike was short by 5:30
• Swim was fast by 2:15 ( tail current)
• Run was long by 0:30

So that would estimate my current OLY TRI time in 2:05:52 on a fast course.

3D always has a bunch of nice door prizes including wetsuits, which is pretty nice! I stayed for the beginning of the award ceremony to get my Trophy (my first!). 

I had to skip out shortly after though, as I needed to go back home, shower, and cross back the border to fly out to Germany for business. Big Sunday!

My first ride was on the Tuesday (see previous article). One route I had the intention to ride during the trip was the “Col de l’Iseran“. This is the highest paved mountain pass in the Alps. From our ‘home base’, it meant riding to Val d’Isere first from Seez. Problem is that according to our hosts, this route was not the safest: more traffic at high speed, narrow roads with blind curves and pretty dark tunnels.The Wednesday, we actually went by car to Val d’Isere and I carefully surveyed the route. It actually did not seem that bad for the most part. Tunnels would be the most dangerous part. The landscape was so nice on this part of the car ride that I decided I had to go for it anyway. So I asked the team to stop at a bike store on the way back, so I could buy a flashing tail light to make myself more visible the following day. My concern was mostly the tunnels at this point.

Thursday morning, I hit the road even earlier than Tuesday after a night of complete heavy rain fall. I was lucky: it stopped early in the morning. I started a bit after 8 am, with very little day light due to the mountains and the cloud cover. There was a lot of fog in the air.

Still, the road was beautiful even in mixed weather conditions. I had to be careful though because the road was still wet and I had an early warning. I had to go down to town before turning in the direction of Val d’Isere and in one of the switchbacks, I actually locked the rear wheel sending me in a small drifting motion just because I put a bit much pressure on the break. That woke me up… and made me more cautious for the rest of the ride regarding the use of the brakes.

Before long, I was done with the descent and started tackling the climbing part of the ride. That would be another ‘climb for half the ride, descent for half the ride’ type route once again. While I was impressed by the continuous climbing of Tuesday, it was worse this time with the average grade being higher (6-11% almost non-stop) and my bike did not seem to be geared for a spinner like me. So I used a LOT of the bigger gear. I also had to resort to a standing climb position for most of the first half of the ride.

Soon, I was hitting the smaller tunnels and ‘avalanche shelters’.

There was a sign a bit before Tignes giving timing of the Tour de France riders for the ‘Climb of Tignes’. They also had the now familiar kilometer-markers for the various climbs. Nice.

I started the timer, but it turns out the route I was following was not the same. They had to turn at the dam, and I did not. A bit later, I was at the Tignes Dam. The original village of Tignes is actually now in the bottom of the water, in the valley. They flooded it when they built the dam. The area is superb and the water has that blue-green color.

I stopped there and made several more pictures. Then I was off the Val d’Isere, the ski resort that sits at 1850m. Just before arriving though, there was a couple of longer tunnels, one as long as 800m without any lights in it. I really wish I had a headlight because I was feeling a bit uneasy in pitch black. I could not even see the road for craks or pot holes. But everything went OK and I arrived in Val soon after. Very nice village. At that point, I already had about 1000m of elevation gain done.

They had the pure water from the mountain flowing in fountains near the road, pretty useful to fill water bottles.

Then I was off to the Col, still 15-20km away. A bit out of the village, I passed near this awesome field in a hill, full of sheep. Then, I crossed this beautiful stream before hitting the serious climbing section, back to switchbaks turns on the side of an abrupt cliff.

I told the family I would be back around noon, and to make that happen I had to turn around at 10h45 max to make it. When the time came, I was still 10km away from the summit. I thought it would be stupid to go all that way and turn around so close to the top, so I continued, knowing that I could be in trouble. Lucky enough, they all understood. In the middle of that climb, I could see Val d’Isere already very small in the bottom of the valley.

The last 2 km were particularly tough. Temperature was colder and I do not know if it’s fatigue or the oxygen in the air getting rare at this altitude, but I started breathing pretty hard under the effort. Just when I was about to reach the top and feel proud of myself, I see this group of girl teenagers climbing in roller-skis (skis with wheels for summer training) about to reach the same summit?! Turns out it was the French Junior Cross Country Ski Team or something training in altitude. Their coach was waiting on the top.
Still, an awesome feeling to reach the top.

I got cold on the top of the pass, even after I put back all the layers I had with me. It was now time to hit the descent. To be honest, I was really not big in my shoes.. a bit scared actually, descending. The route was very technical with crazy curves flanked by a cliff, bike accelerating naturally due to the slope and I had to be careful on how I modulated the brakes to avoid locking the wheels on the humid asphalt. Not helping matters, I got so cold at speed that I started shivering with my whole body and teeth chattering (really!). Not easy to negotiate the technical route in this condition! When I got back to the outskirt of Val d’Isere, I actually went in a trash can to find a newspaper that I used under my jacket as an additional layer for the rest of the descent. It actually worked great to cut the wind and retain body heat.

I stopped one last time at the Dam of Tignes to take a few pictures under the better light.

Then it was time to enjoy the more gentle downhill route back to my home base.

Click the link below to see the map and all the data recorded during the ride.

Total elevation gain for the ride: over 2200m.

As usual, more pictures (and larger versions) in the album below.

Sometimes I deserve a slap behind the head. Before the trip to France to visit my in-laws, I was worried of the effects on my training of this vacation in the middle of the season. Corinne has not been visiting her family in over 3 years, so I really did not want to act like a diva over there, bending everyone over my schedule to try to get my training done. While I did end up cancelling my plans to race the 70.3 at REV3 in part because of this trip (but mostly due to some issues in one leg since IMFL), more positive came out of it than I expected. First of all, it turns out I needed the break. My worries were unfounded since I could log in over 10 hours of decent training without pushing it. And it gave me access to some incredible cycling opportunities!

Corinne’s sister lives in Seez, in the Alps, just above Bourg Saint Maurice. Some awesome cycling routes are over there, several of which were featured in the recent editions of the famous ‘Tour de France’.

They are very kind and they had organized a road bike for me from one of their co-workers, but the shifting was not working very well it seemed, so I ended up going down to town to rent a road bike. I was lucky to find a very good deal: a Colnago Extreme built in top of the line Shimano Dura-Ace. A superb climbing machine for 19 euros a day. Cool! I took it for 3 days, which would allow me to log in 2 long rides.

On the Tuesday morning, I left early while (almost) everybody was still sleeping and tackled the ‘Little Saint Bernard pass’ based on suggestions from Corinne’s sister and her boyfriend. This route is not very busy, so it was deemed ‘safer’ than some of the other options. Weather was nice: cool and sunny.

Instructions were simple : go down the hill in front of the house, when you get to the intersection, you make a left and then you go up, up… up…. Up……..UP. Turns out they were not kidding. After a 1’ crazy descent on the brakes (they live in the middle of a 13% grade hill), I made that left turn and right there I was in a non-stop standing climb situation. So much for warm-up… within minutes, my heart rate was through the roof. I had to tone it down a notch if I wanted to last.  I was really not expecting a 26 km continuous climb at 4-7% grade with switchbacks/hairpin turns.

Before too long, the view was AMAZING. Here is Bourg Saint Maurice below in the far distance.

My ride:

And more I climbed, the better the landscape views…

What was nice is that they had these mile marker every km, showing you the distance left to the top, and the current grade of the hill.

Reaching the top of the pass was just awesome and rewarding. At the highest spot of the route, it’s the border between France and Italy. I stopped there to take a bunch of pictures.

Also asked a tourist to take a photo of me there

My ride started at an altitude of roughly 1000m above sea level, and peaked at 2188m. My Garmin Edge 500 showed an elevation gain of 1400m.

I saw a few of cyclists near the top, which was nice to have some kind of company. Unexpected for a week day.

At the top of the climb, I had only 26 km to the trip computer, so I decided to cross in Italy and go down for another 4 km at least so that the ride would finish at 60km total. The route goes down to LaThuile, a very well known ski station in Italy. The descent on the Italian side was pretty steep so I turned around as planned without extra at that restaurant:

This lake was on the italian side…

The descent in Italy seemed much steeper than the French side, so after the turn-around my work was cut out for me to climb back to the top. Good thing it was only 4 km! After reaching the top, ‘careful’ high speed descent was in order. I was more cautious than not, to be on the safe side. So I used the brakes a lot. My bike skills for going downhill and negotiating the switchbacks on an unknown route with various road hazards and car traffic is limited at this time, and it looked like going off the road on the cliff side could be quite fatal hehe!

That’s the thing I found with riding over there: either you are working hard (climbing) or not hard enough (going downhill). So the return trip felt a bit too easy to be qualified as training, but it was a LOAD of fun!!!

Here’s the elevation chart. Pretty simple graph….

I made it back to the base not too late after my declared return time. Here I am, post ride:

Click on the link below to see the ride data as recorded by my Edge 500.

Full album with 1000 pixels versions available below.