Breaking in my new ride

As I've been doing more and more urban biking over the past few years, I decided to get myself a hybrid bike, in addition to my suspension bike.

Though it gives up a bit of comfort compared to the suspension bike, the added shock absorbing seat post and double springed seat, makes it barely noticeable. On the flip side, I gain about 20% in speed using the same energy, and significantly less energy wasted due to the bikes design, bigger wheels, and reduced weight.

After the initial 14 KM test run on mainly flat roads, I've taken it up Mount Royal a couple times over the past 2 days, hitting both steep paved hills, as well as the main dirt/gravel trail that runs to the summit.

With the bright sun shining this morning, I decided to shoot some more scenic pics for my blog.

The view of Montreal East from the Mount Royal Lookout, allows one to see the Jacques Cartier bridge:

Moving further Northeast, a view of the Olympic stadium, and the port of Montreal in the background.

Heading down the Eastern Slope towards Avenue du Parc, the hill is significantly steeper than the Western Slope. A few months ago, a cyclist was killed when he collided with a car pulling an illegal U turn, and a memorial bike was hung for him at the spot.

Notice the hockey stick added to the memorial bike, I'm guessing it was added due to the tragic Humbolt hockey team accident a few days ago, in which 15 teenagers were killed when their bus collided with a truck in rural Saskatchewan.

All in all, I'm glad with my new ride, and hope to put many miles on it exploring new areas in the future.

Spring is here

Spring has finally arrived. As I've been keeping devoting more time to my fishing blog, I haven't done much posting to this blog since last spring.

My summer and fall biking season was quite productive, spent most of it biking to fishing trails while the bite was still good, then focused on Mount Royal in fall all the way until we got our first snow storm in December.

On the circuit training side of things, fall and early winter was devoted to building some muscle mass using a variety of dumbell exercises, as well as upper body cardio workouts boxing my wavemaster punching bag. After an intense 8 week, I was due for a break, as certain muscles were getting sore from the wear and tear.

For the winter, I decided to focus more on calisthenics and endurance exercises , yoga type stretching and light dumbell work. Cardio wise, it was mainly indoor biking, along with some walking in snow with either weight in my backpack, or towing a sled full of ice fishing gear on frozen lakes. Topped of with hand drill most of my ice holes, the 12 week regimen went quite easily, and I remained injury free for most of it.

As February rolled in and snow cover was minimal, my outdoor biking season kicked in. First few rides we in the 10-15 KM range, mainly around neighborhoods adjacent to where I live. Finally got back up Mount Royal late in March, when snow cover on my route was gone, but snowbanks had not started thawing yet. As a warm front moved in a few days later, I opted to ascend the Southwest summit in Westmount to avoid wet and muddy condition in the Mount Royal park.

The Belvedere in Westmount at Summit Circle was my destination.

A view of Montreal thawing out after a long and snowy winter.

Tried to zoom in on the new Champlain bridge construction, but my camera isn't top of the line, and it was a bit hazy as well. I highly doubt they are going to deliver the bridge by 2019 as promised...

Planning to circle the summit after stretching at the Belvedere, I ran into a surprise. Seems like the city of Westmount has decided to close off Summit Circle to traffic, turning part of it into a pedestrian trail.

So much for riding there in the winter, trail is no longer maintained, and I wasn't able to plow through the slush and melting ice by pedaling on my bike.

Was forced to pull a U turn, and head back down the same was I came up.

Now that my 12 week regimen is done, I'm taking a good week off to rest and enjoy our passover holiday. I'll be back.