Monday, July 09, 2007

7 July. Brooklyn/ Scotch Village/ Cheverie/ Summerville/ Brooklyn

A cool grey start, but the sun eventually broke through as per the forecast (!that's a shocker!) which made for a pleasant swim in the abandoned flooded quarry near Cheverie. We also managed to pick up a tailwind of 20-30kph after lunch, perfect!

Stats:
Distance:55.6km
Duration: 5hours 27min
Riding time:2hours 41min (but varies by rider)
Time stopped: 2hours 46min (")
lunch stop: 1hour 19min
Average speed: 21.2 kph (pretty good for us)
Energy expended (varies by rider, but for me:) 1400Kcal... I think the excellent cinamon bun at the Avon Emporium probably gained that all back for me!

Total ascent 640m (descent 654m).
4 "official uphill slopes" according to the computer.

A dietary note: the hazards of caffeine-- I don't often drink coffee anymore (my usual habit being T) but at lunch I had a couple of cups of it (like everything else at the Avon Emporium, it went down really well!). After the ride, I cycled back home from Brooklyn: mostly uphill; halfway up the main long climb I noted that I had been putting my average heartrate for a 5km section up into the oxygen debt zone and I have to think the caffeine kick contributed to that, or at least to the rush of blood to the brain that let me do that without noticing. Anyways, that is not a good thing to do to the body at my age... once noticed, I definitely made a point of easing off on the pedals...

OK, enough of that stuff, here's the terrain graphs:

"Rolling hills" he sez... a bit sawtoothed at this scale covering the whole ride.





The first 10km at a better scale. The low spots are: km 1.5 River Herbert (an ugly climb out the other side); km 6 Kennetcook River. 149m of ascent in this segment. Stops at kms 2.2, 7.2.

Kilometers 10-20. Note how the road obligingly took us down to sea level before starting the day's highest climb. Nice engineering touch. 96m of ascent in this segment. Stops at kms 13.1, 17.0, 19.3

Kilometers 20-30. 142m of ascent in this segment. Stops at kms 28.5 (for the view), 28.8


Kilometers 30-40. 86m of ascent in this segment. Stops at kms 31.2 (at the quarry for a swim), 37.2 (Avon Emporium for a tasty lunch)

Kilometers 40-50. The really rolly bit. Nice 20-30kph tailwind pushing us along. 103m of ascent in this segment. Stop at km 42.2 (a very short one)

Kilometers 50-57. 81m of ascent in this segment. Stop at kms 54.2









For those who were wondering if the Quarry is below sea level (tongue in cheek), here is the altitude data from the swim. Not bad depths for free-diving!! A bit of highschool physics: it takes about 30,000ft of air piled up to create one atmosphere of pressure, but only 14.7 ft of water (if my memory is right-- I should look that up) So it doesn't take too many cm of water over the barometric altimeter to register a few hundred meters of depth. Obviously diver's depth gauges are calibrated differently from a cyclist's altimeter!!