fun in squamish
I’m still a bit tired today, but our trip to squamish on sunday was a great success. Jack and i met at 4:30am and rode the sea-to-sky highway, and then had a fabulous time bouncing around the squamish triathlon course trying to get pictures of our friends and to cheer them on.
We had planned to meet at 4am at the corner of Main & Kingsway, but it was about 4:30am by the time we left. it was still dark at that point, and i was surprised at how many cars were on the road, but it really wasn’t that many. We rode pretty quickly through town and went over the lion’s gate bridge at about 5am. the sun was just starting to light up the eastern sky. This reminded us of the foolishness of our earlier boasting, where we said that it’d be great to see the sunrise on the sea-to-sky highway. For those not familiar with this particular highway, it is basically on a cliff all the way. on the east side of the road is a vertical cliff and tall mountains, and on the west side is the ocean. so…sunrises are behind the vertical cliff, and we didn’t actually see the sun at all until we arrived in squamish later in the morning.
despite our blunder of not remembering which way the sun comes up, we still enjoyed the view. there’s fantastic scenery all the way along. We took several breaks along the way to munch food, chat, and enjoy the view. The riding itself was a bit of a workout, but not overly challenging. Most of it was great, even easy, but there were a couple of hills that took some decent effort. I rode it fixed (ie with only one gear, and always pedalling), and that was fine. For someone who’s new to single-speed cycling, or even those with gears who don’t ride that often, there’d probably be a decent amount of walking, but the hills are pretty doable if you’re fit. The worst 2 were Taylor Way in north vancouver (which i had to walk) and the big hill just before the britannia mining museum (which i managed to ride, albeit slowly).
If you’re considering riding to squamish, but you’re unsure, then i’d say go for it. it’s 75km of moderate hills, so maybe go try a 100km ride in town with your friends first. Just remember that you can rest as much as you want, so if that means that you rest at the top of each hill, then that’s fine. it just means it might take you a good portion of the day if you’re resting all the time. I’m pretty confident that we could have got to squamish in 3.5 hours if we hadn’t spent all the time chatting and eating, and if i didn’t get that flat tire half-way.
Anyway, once we got there, it was our mission to go find the triathlon route and cheer our friends on. We had to get to Alice Lake, about 10km past squamish, but we were a little late. It was uphill for several kilometers too, so that slowed us down. Once we got to the highway turn-off for the lake, there were already riders going past. Figuring that the swim portion was already in-progress or done, we decided to wait and watch. Unfortunately I missed getting pictures of both Robyn and Steph at that spot, so we rode along the course to another intersection that they’d have to pass later. We saw quite a few superbly fit athletes zoom past on their expensive bikes, although most of the competitors seemed to be just average-looking people with bikes like ours.
we watched the bikes go by for a bit, and then saw the leaders run by there on the next leg of the race while most of the people hadn’t finished the cycling yet. we wandered around a bit more, to various spots along the route. Most of the run was on a trail that went through the woods, so it must have been pretty comforting to the feet. Unfortunately there was this one part where they had to run uphill for about 2.5km in the blazing sun. that looked pretty torturous.
The race finished at a nearby high school, so we went down there to see the end. Our friends completed with admirable times…i’m blown away by their fitness level because i wouldn’t have survived that 10km run in the sun (especially after swimming 1.5km and doing a hard bike ride for 40km). Congratulations to Robyn and Stephanie for a job well done :)
After all was said and done, we got a ride home with Jack’s dad. they had a minivan with some bike racks on top, and we were still pretty tired from the morning ride (3 hours of riding time) plus the running around in the sun during the day. I got back to vancouver, and then went to the beach for a nice cold beer. i can’t wait until next weekend for more of the same :)
oh, and here are some details for the cyclists out there:
- distance from Main & Kingsway to the start of squamish: 70km
- Riding time: just over 3 hours for a pretty relaxed ride…but expect to spend a little bit of time resting on top of that
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Gear:
- nikon d70 camera + extra telephoto lens
- 1 small pannier (mostly for the camera + lens)
- fruit+nut mix, with added brown sugar for energy
- some baking dates (i.e. the ones with the pit removed)
- 2 bottles of water. i drank 1.5 on the way there, and it was in the shade the whole way. you’ll want at least 2 if there’s sun during your trip.
Ride hard, ride free