Training for a Ride

In September, DW and I will be joining some friends for an adventure in the Saguenay region of Québec. And we feel that we need to be prepared.

Two other couples will spend about 10 days with us for an active vacation, where we will cycle 250 kilometres, over five days, around Lac-Saint-Jean. Each night, we'll stay in a different hotel, inn, or B&B, and will average about 50 kms each day.

When we finish this cycle route, we'll spend three days kayaking on the Saguenay River, taking in the splendid high cliffs that make up the fjord and, with any luck, spying some beluga whales in the distance (but, you know, if they swim up to us, that'd be okay, too).

We're sure that our Paddlefolk will have no issues in kayaks, and we'll be spending weekends, going out with our other friends, lending them our old kayaks, to get them used to paddling on larger bodies of water than the Rideau Canal. It'll be fun being out in so many boats.

But DW and I also want to make sure that we're in shape for the cycling part of our trip. We haven't cycled great distances in a long time and want to be sure that our legs (and butts) can handle multiple days of 50K.

The other weekend, we drove down to the St. Lawrence Seaway with our bikes in the back of our CR-V. We stopped in Prescott, for breakfast, before continuing to the Thousand Islands Parkway. We parked our vehicle at a free parking lot for the waterfront trail (there's a bathroom there, too), near Butternut Bay, and cycled westward, to Rockport.

On our handlebars, we mounted some carriers that we had purchased in 2020, when DW and I were planning a cycling trip from Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, to Bruges, Belgium, naively thinking that the pandemic would be over by autumn of that year. We've never used these carriers until this bike ride.

In our carriers, we carried swimsuits and towels, and I also threw in my drone. I plan to document our Saguenay trip and am hoping to get some aerial shots of us on our bikes.

The trail along the St. Lawrence is about as challenging as what we expect for the trek around Lac-St-Jean. It's mostly flat with a couple of gentle but long hills, and we think that the wind off the St. Lawrence could be similar to any wind we'd get off the large lake.

In Rockport, we stopped for lunch at a café that was in the harbour and had a patio that looked out into the river. The food was decent but not very expensive, and the stop gave DW a chance to rest, as it was her first time out on her bike for this season.

On our ride back, we stopped at Brown's Bay to cool off. It's a paid day-use beach that costs $21 for cars and only $5 for both bikes. The fee gives you access to a change room, with showers and toilets. We set our bikes up against some lounge chairs and we took turns going into the water, to cool off, while the other person watched our bikes.

The beach is close to the parking lot where we left our SUV, so we were still feeling refreshed when we made it back. The total distance for this round-trip ride was just shy of 40 kms, which was good for DW's first ride.

I also got a chance to use my drone, setting it in one of the automatic modes—Follow—and riding for about five minutes while it stayed behind me, despite other cyclists around me. I think it'll be a great addition to our trip and I'd like to try other modes on future rides.

Summer is our time where we get out in our kayaks almost every weekend, so we have no fear that we'll be ready for the Saguenay River in September. We hope our friends will have built up their confidence, too. And we're hoping to get more rides in, adding fully-packed paniers to the back of our bikes, to simulate what we'll be carrying as we cycle around Lac-St-Jean.

We have about two-and-a-half months. There isn't a moment to waste.