Epic Camp Canada 2104 - Day 2

Epic Camp Canada 2014 Day 2
August 20

Whistler - Lillooet

Had a few senior moments in today that have me in a bit of a sorry state!
To start the day we biked 8km to the lake where IM Canada (the new one in Whistler) starts.
We did an equation race that consisted of a 2km (approx) swim and 6km flat run.
I had put lace locks on my run shoes in the morning upon waking and left a massive, loop of shoelace on each shoe - you can tell already where this is going ........
Swim went good with Petrofessa, Newsom, Zach, Shannon and Lou all out together and the others not too far behind as it was a bit short.....
I was feeling OK after my usual crummy transition when I tripped on my shoe lace and went down hard on my shoulder. Got the stuffing knocked out of me and poor Shannon was right behind to witness it.
I recovered OK with some road rash and finished in the middle of the field with Newsom just taking it out from young Andrew with the surprising Barry 3rd? Phil patterson may have had the fastest run but the older Andrew can also f...n fly.  Surprise of the day was the mildly un-athletic-looking Gary who had a storming last km sprint.  Dude can motor!
8km "easy" (hilly) spin back to our accom and I was kinda ready to call it a day.

Bike - Was supposed to be a cruisy 50+ km to the bottom of a massive climb, a re-group then a KOM race.
But we don't tell anyone they can't ride hard if they feel like it, so we actually motored right along after the first 8km with some impressive pulls from Rob hill (9:0-something at IM Melbourne to take out the 50-54 age group) and Gary with Glen off the front for most of it.
This climb is a doozy.  If you look on Strava you'll see a very good time is under an hour and at this point into the camp I was thinking that target would be tough to reach.
But Zach and young Andrew obviously have eyes on the KOM jersey and rocked up that thing in 54 and 55 minutes with Petro 3rd.  I swear it felt like 100 degrees for the first 3 minutes which is about 15% incline.  steep!  Thank goodness I had my triple chainring cuz I was in my 30x27 a lot.
Suffice it to say I got up that damn climb, severe cramps again today.  I'm just not ready for this!
Poor Phil looked very unlike his usual self on that climb.  My guess is all the intensity of the first 36 hours has had a pretty big effect.

The reward down the other side was worth it though.
That road might be the nicest stretch of road I've ever ridden.  Magic.  Lots of 50-60kph segments, perfectly smooth road, incredible scenery, very little traffic.
Some sneaky kick-ass steep segments at the end but by then we were in the last 20k of the ride so was mostly recover by then.
Rob and I got a bit lost and took a detour to the lake we're swimming in tomorrow and it looks wonderful, if cold.  We'll see.

Dinner at a Greek restaurant tonight which was fine.  Everyone seemed in really good spirits.  Mostly liked it because it was right across the street from our hotel.  I'm pretty shattered. More tomorrow.