A fall bike ride

If I look back in the blog I find another post about cycling in the fall. I wrote that one 16 years ago when I was newly retired. The bike is different but I think the route is similar to the one I took last Friday. I debated about whether to go for a ride or not and then I checked the forecast for the next day. Rain. That settled it. Much better to get out when the temperature was just about right and the sun was shining. I think it was 13C when I left. I had on a light fleece, a wind vest and gloves.

The bike is the e-bike R gave me for Christmas last year, although we didn’t get around to actually buying it until May. Last Wednesday, we stuffed both e-bikes in the van and headed to Canmore where we parked and rode the Legacy Trail to Banff. On that ride my saddle slipped down about an inch even though I tightened up the clamp as hard as I could.

When I set out Friday I had no particular plan except to drop in to the bike shop to see if they could rectify the problem. The guy took the bike right away and, while I waited, he cleaned off the seatpost and regreased it. That was entirely counter intuitive to me. If the thing was slipping, why would you want to grease it? But it seemed to work. I thought of just riding around the neighbourhood and then decided to ride down the Edworthy Park hill.

The road down to the river has improved a lot over the years. When I first rode there it was mostly gravel and now it is mostly paved. That makes the riding nicer both up and down the hill. At the bottom of the hill is a parking lot and a playground as well as a few picnic spots and one picnic shelter. At the north end of the parking lot is a concrete barrier with an opening in it that leads across the train tracks. I decided to carry on across the tracks and the bridge to the north side of the river. As I approached the tracks I saw a young woman with a camera and a tripod taking photos. If you look either way along the tracks it’s easy to forget you are in the middle of a city of 1.3 million people. You might be looking along any treed section of track in the foothills.

I crossed the bridge and turned to the east along the divided pathway, one path for cyclists and a separate one for pedestrians. From there I could make a shorter loop on the pedestrian bridge under Crowchild Trail and come up the hill by a golf course, or I could carry on, turn around at some farther point and go back up the hill the way I came. Thinking of the photographer I opted to carry on and get some photos with my phone on the way back through the park.

When I decided I had gone far enough I turned around and retraced my route, stopping this time for a few photos along the way.There were a number of people out on bikes and walking along the river pathway. As I toodled along a few guys on road bikes and mountain bikes passed me. I’m happy to have fit individuals on light bikes blow by me. The point of having an e-bike is not to go as fast as I can but to enjoy cycling again with a little less effort.

Don’t get me wrong, the kind of e-bike I have is still work. If I don’t pedal it doesn’t help. You can get e-bikes with throttles but mine doesn’t have one and the info from my fitbit tells me that I’m working hard enough on these rides. Today I was in my vigorous heart rate zone for 50% of the time, the moderate zone for 40% of the time and the peak zone for 9% of the time. I don’t know where the other 1% got to. Perhaps it was for the photo stops.

I set out to ride for 40 minutes and by the time I got back home I had ridden for an hour and 59 minutes. It was a very satisfying and enjoyable ride. I certainly used the highest level of assist to make it back up the Edworthy Park hill and that probably accounts for the 9% of time at the peak. It’s the difference between struggling with each pedal stroke in the lowest gear on a normal bike and feeling that going up the hill is hard sustainable work.

I hope to go on as many rides as I can before it snows and the paths get icy. Next summer I’ll test how far I can go on a battery charge. So far I haven’t even drained the battery half way.