It’s almost time for commencement of the ridiculous – 320km in one day from Seattle to Portland. As July 17 approaches it’s becoming fairly obvious that there is not a whole lot more time for any meaningful training/preparation. Today Vince and I did what might be the last big ride before Seattle to Portland. The ride in question was a Canada Day randonneur event covering 143km, corresponding to the age of the country, between Fort Langley and Chilliwack.

Randonneur cycling according to the BC Randonneurs website is sometimes called “marathon cycling”, but isn’t a race. We arrived to the start area in downtown Fort Langley fashionably late, but still within the start window of 8-9am, and managed to get ourselves registered fairly quickly and painlessly. With the preliminaries out of the way we started off at a pretty casual pace under light rain. Since the start was spread over an hour long window there wasn’t any sketchiness for us involving other riders starting around the same time. The first 40km were great as we cruised along rolling, curvy, rural roads; the remainder of the ride was good also, but had some particularly long, not so interesting straight sections of road.

In the end, it took us just over five hours, including stops, to cover the 143km. I think we managed a pretty good pace and while I can’t speak for Vince, I felt reasonably good throughout the ride except for the last 20-30km (a hint of leg cramping and some general fatigue). I forgot my camera in Victoria, so no photos, but there might be something available on the Canada Day 143 Populaire web page eventually.

GPS Data: 143.6km – 5h09m (4h45m moving time) – 27.8km/h (30.2km/h moving speed) – GPS route

A 143km road bike ride between Fort Langley and Chilliwack. Click on the map to see detailed GPS information on the Garmin website.

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