Canoes, Quebec, and Late Summer Recalibration

I'm still overdue on my complete Tour De Quebec race report over on the team site. It's coming up today, I promise.

Post TDQ, I took three days off the bike, then headed to Ontario with Char for some light bikin' and quality hang time with her parents. That was followed by another 4 days off the bike that included a marvelous journey deep into the wilds of the St. Regis canoe wilderness with Charmaine. The mosquitoes were the size of my fist, it rained, there were goblins, I carried a canoe on my head for 5k, we ate many marshmallows. Pictures to follow.

This past week I got back to training, putting in a big block of 24 hours and ~410 miles or so from Friday through Thursday. My ass is pretty thoroughly kicked but my legs feel like a bike racer's again--which is to say that they hurt.

The hurt leggies probably owe more to the fact that I raced La Classique Louis Garneau yesterday, aka Montreal-Quebec, which was 154 miles of rainy bike riding. It was a great race, I flatted 3 times and made it back to the group each time, which was an adventure in itself. We had good luck, then bad, and only put one rider in the money. I did win the field sprint (good news!) but it was for 26th place (bad news..). C'est la vie. Driving home alone from Quebec city took a looooooong time.

Today I play catch up and get another job application out to another Community College. Hopefully I'll be gettin' my teach on come September. If I don't get hired somewhere it's going to have to be substitute teaching, I think. We'll see.

Race reports and more thoughts to follow.

-n