With my family being away for most of August I was looking for something to do while they were gone. The last time they went I did my bikepacking trip up to Manitoulin Island. This time around I knew I wouldn’t be able to do a trip like that so was just looking for one-day events or overnighters that might work, and in my looking I came across the Voyageur 200, a gravel race out of North Bay that has races of 30, 65, 100, and200km. It seemed like it would be a fun experience (maybe type 2 fun) and so I decided to sign up for it.
Now I’ve never ridden 200km before at once but last year I came pretty close (185km) but had to cut my ride short to make it home in time so I thought I’d be able to make it, even if I were just toughing out the final hour or so. Even still, I’d like to be ready so I planned a practice run the week before. I’d start from Uxbridge, take the rail trail to Lindsay, then Fenelon Falls, roads to Peterborough, and then rail trail to Lindsay and then Uxbridge. The two worries with the route were how the roads would be between Fenelon Falls and Peterborough and what would I do if I ran into trouble during the ride. I decided to change up the route, keeping the endpoints but as a series of out-and-backs from Lindsay.
My plan was to leave home at 4:30 AM to arrive in Lindsay by 6:00 AM. First ride to Uxbridge, have some coffee and carbs, and ride back. Then ride to Peterborough, have a snack, and ride back, and finally ride to Fenelon Falls, get some ice cream, and ride back. Sadly the plans were mislaid from before the beginning. The night before was the Metric/Broken Social Scene/Stars concert so I’d be getting home late so I decided to give myself a bit more time to sleep and set my alarm for 5:30AM instead of 4:00AM. Also, I hadn’t fully packed my stuff so I still needed to do that in the morning which meant I didn’t leave home until around 6:30. Then on my drive to Lindsay it got extremely foggy so I had to slow right down to make sure I’d have time to brake if I saw something ahead of me.
By the time I started my ride, around 8:30AM the weather had gotten pretty nice, not too warm or sunny so I wouldn’t burn up. I set off for Uxbridge at a good pace and had a pretty uneventful ride. In town I was hoping to get some coffee and carbs near the trailhead but there wasn’t really anything nearby. I saw a massive line outside one bakery (Little Thief) but elected to ride down to McDonalds, which was almost 3km from the trailhead! Anyways, an iced coffee and two hash browns later I was back on the bike heading to Lindsay. I was taking a break on the trail by Mariposa when a biker came down the trail with some massive bags, he was obviously going on a trip so I asked him where he was going. He had done a week of touring in Quebec with his brother and was now riding from where he was dropped off in Lakefield (outside of Peterborough) to his car in Guelph, but his plan for the day was to ride to Aurora. We both remarked how we were lucky that the forecasted thunderstorms hadn’t materialized yet. It started raining about 15 minutes after we both left. I was able to make it back to the car before the rain got too hard and waited it out for around half an hour while snacking. Once the rain had subsided I started the second leg to Peterborough.
The trail to Peterborogh was fairly similar to the trail to Uxbridge. Not a lot of people, not a lot to see because of the trees on both sides, but a good surface for riding on. A bit before Omemee I saw 3 birds running on the trail ahead of me. They were in a group and would take turns leading, but they weren’t running away from anything, so maybe they were just doing it for fun. They were kind of big so I think they were turkeys. I gradually caught up to them and just coasted behind them for a couple of minutes, I didn’t mind because they were running at a good pace, around 18-20 km/h. Then all of a sudden they split up, 2 going to the left and 1 going to the right, and disappeared into some bushes. The trail was under construction in Omemee so I had to make a brief detour into the town/village to cross the river and then come back to the trail. A bit farther on there was a historic bridge, Dobe’s Trestle Bridge, which actually had groups of sightseers on it. I took a brief stop there but the bridge was mostly over vegetation, there was a river or creek underneath but it wasn’t very big. From there it was a short, downhill ride to Peterborough and the trail went through a park and passed a nice community garden. In town I asked a police officer where the nearest McDonald’s was, and he gave directions but it sounded pretty far. He mentioned there was a Harvey’s down the next street so I figured that would be the better option. The streest were one-way and I was going the opposite direction so I decided to walk my bike on the sidewalk figuring it wouldn’t take long. It actually did take pretty long but it was a good rest for my legs in any event. From Harveys I got an iced tea and some french fries and then made my way back to the trail. Only it started to rain hard so I had to take shelter in the community garden. I was there for close to an hour waiting for the rain to end and as it died down I decided I’d just go even if it got hard again because the ride back to Lindsay would just be like P2A then. Between the waiting and the rain I really had to pee and I dreamed up the plan of peeing off the Trestle Bridge because with the rain no one would be there. As I approached the bridge the last road had a bunch of cars on it and there were groups walking ton the trail towards it. There were people on the bridge too so no way for me to implement that plan. For whatever reason my stomach started acting up on the way back, probably because on the bike the only food I was eating was sour patch kids. So not in the best condition I made my way back to Lindsay. By the time I got back it was already around 6:30pm and too late to ride to Fenelon Falls and back unless I wanted to ride in the dark. I’d already ridden 185 km and felt that was good enough preparation so decided to call it a day.
The ride helped me adjust my plan for the race. Instead of relying on sour patch kids for my main source of sugar I would use the fig bars and have the sour patch kids as asupplement instead. Also, I have a tendancy of not thinking of my pace for the first 100+km and then finding the last 20+km difficult. For the race I’d try to reduce my intensity early on so that I’d have more in the tank for the finish. That was the plan anyway.
Because the race has an early start the rider registration and meeting was the night before. We left Toronto around 3 and got there around 7:30. We were on track to make it for 7:00 but I wanted to stop off for gas and food. Registration was a breeze and there wasn’t really a meeting to speak of, or if there was it had already finished. But we asked the questions we had and then set up our tents. I forgot to bring a small hammer with me so I held one stake horizontally in order to push the other stakes in. The stake I was holding rotated on one of them and I ended up jamming the stake I was pushing into my thumb! It gave me a nasty cut and cracked the nail. Not a good sign and I hoped it wouldn’t be a problem the next day. It definitely made finishing my set up a lot slower! The sky was pretty clear and I was hoping I’d see some meteors, it was only a couple of days after the peak of the Perseids, but I didn’t end up seeing any, although I did fall asleep pretty quickly. I briefly woke up a couple of times at night but didn’t see any then either. One time I woke up and I could hear really loud snoring. I looked and someone had pitched their tent right by mine and was snoring really loudly! I was a bit annoyed, why did they have to be so close to me, but then my mind unfogged and I realized that it was Warren’s tent and somehow I just had my directions switched.
Onto the morning and the start of the race! Before we started they made sure we all had our tracking set-up. They also let us know that a sweep would be following us and that there was no official pace we had to beat but that they’d pull anyone still riding if it got too dark out. Considering the race was starting at 6:30 it didn’t seem very likely that anyone would still be out riding that late, but I guess that was good information to know. We had as much time to finish as we needed as long as we could beat the sun.
The race starts and we head out of the park, make a quick turn to ride down a road and then are onto some ATV tracks. The lead pack bursts ahead quickly but I don’t mind because I’m keeping my pace. Pretty quickly I come up to a guy sitting on the ground in the bushes, while his bike is lying on the trail, and a couple of other riders are helping him. Not sure exactly what happened but there was a big water pipe crossing the trail so I’m guessing he wasn’t prepared for it and lost control. He had some blood on his face and didn’t look too good. I stopped for a bit but the sweep was there to help out so Icould continue. After a bit I came to a fork and I wasn’t sure which way to go so I had to load up my map but took a chance and went one way while it was loading up. It wasn’t the right way, but I’d only gone maybe 10 metres so it wasn’t a big deal. When I got back on route another rider came and we ended up keeping the same pace for the rest of the ATV section. We talked a bit and then once we got onto the pavement he said he was going to increase his pace so I let him ride off without trying to keep up with him. The paved area turned onto the Trans Canada Trail, which was just the side of the road, but then there was a turn-off onto a multi-use-trail, Kate Pace Way, that went through the city to the waterfront. Then for whatever reason the route had us go onto a trail at the back of the beach just so we could ride on some sand for a while. It wasn’t needed because the multi-use trail was still parallel to us. But the trail did give nice views of the water, Lake Nipissing is quite pretty and the city has great views of it. The sand gave way to a proper trail and while riding it I came across a pair of ladies who sternly told me that bikes weren’t allowed there. I just told them that it was part of the race course but they weren’t having any of it. A bit after that Jeff, the sweep and race organizer came up on an electric mountain bike. We rode together for a while, talking on the way. As we were riding I noticed a large hill straight ahead and asked if that was College Drive, a steep hill the other rider had told me about. We didn’t go up College Drive itself but some trail that followed it doing a switchback up the hill. It wasn’t crazy steep but still a good workout, and when we came out of the trail we were right by Nipissing University.
From there it was a mix of paved and gravel roads as well as seemingly random trails that would start and end in the middle of nowhere, one even going through some kind of gravel pit. The final stretch before the first rest station at 54km was along a major road with a fairly wide shoulder. As I was riding I could see the rider from earlier up ahead and this other rider came from behind me and just blew past. I guess he had some bike issue and was not making up for lost time. They weren’t too far ahead of me so I thought they’d still be at the rest station getting some snacks when I arrived but it was just me and the helpful volunteers. I had brought my own snacks with me so I didn’t get those but they had some sliced pickles out which surprised me. I even said “pickles?” in a questioning tone, but I tried one and boy did it hit the spot. So much so that I took another. I also finished drinking my gatorade bottle and refilled it. By my eating and drinking schedule both of my gatorade bottles should have been empty at this point, but I had only drank some of my first bottle. I resolved to do better for the next stretch and continued on my way. I kind of wanted to go to the washroom but there were no port-a-potties and while there was a general store I didn’t feel like asking permission to use a washroom so I figured I’d go at the next rest station.
From here on were nice rolling gravel and paved roads. I did end up catching up to the rider from earlier and we ended up riding together as our paces more or less matched. After about 15km we made it to the VMUTS (Voyageur Multi-Use Trail System) section of the race. I was looking forward to this because it looked like a pretty neat resource and something to come back to explore later on. Pretty much as soon as we turned onto the trails we got stuck in sand. I tried to fight to stay on the bike but the sand was too loose and dry and I couldn’t move. So we had to push our bikes until the sand was a bit better and we could ride some more, and then there would be more sand. The sweep vehicle, a jeep with an intake, was just behind us at the edge of our sight. It was kind of like on Old Enough! with the cameramen following the little kids around. It kept on going like this, alternating between riding and pushing our bikes in the sand. Not very fun, and not only was it killing our time but pushing our bikes was also tiring us out, what a terrible combination! Eventually we got back onto regular gravel and could make our way to the next rest station. I was a bit more aggressive on the downhills, they were steep with loose gravel and it’s easy to fall if you are unlucky, and pulled ahead of my riding partner but I figured he wasn’t too far behind me. While I was refuelling at the rest station he came in the sweep jeep. I guess he had had enough. It was a bit sad to be back on my own but that’s what I was expecting anyway. They also were keeping track of all the people that had gone through the rest station already. I got there around 12:30, so after 6 hours of riding, but the fastest person got there around 10:30. I have no idea how they were able to manage going through the trails so quickly. Bike, fitness, skill, all of the above. There are definitely levels to this.
The best thing was that right ahead was a nice paved road. I started towards it and then was told that I was supposed to turn on this gravel road instead. So close! After a couple km on the road it turned back to the sand, and I had to go back to pushing. In addition to the sections which were just total sand, a lot of the hills were filled with really large rocks, between the size of a fist and a head and it was difficult to find a line to avoid them, especially as it was mostly loose sand where it wasn’t rocks. There were a couple of downhill sections where I could see no good way down and had to walk my bike instead! It was roughly another 10km of this extremely tiring, extremely slow going. It was another hour to make it through this section and then I was into Mattawa.
There were parks along the Mattawa river and lots of people playing in it. Looks like a nice town to visit in the summer. I crossed a bridge over the Mattawa river and off to the left was the much larger Ottawa river. I was pretty spent so it was nice to ride on some paved roads for a bit with no real climbs but once I got out of town it was back to the gravel roads and rolling hills. I knew from the route that it would be a general uphill until the next rest station which was roughly another 35-40km away. Under the hot sun I was pretty miserable and was extremely tempted to call it a day myself and let the sweep take me back. I resolved that I would make it to the next rest station and see how I felt then. My riding now took the following pattern, I would ride at a reasonable pace on the flats, when there was a hill I would shift into my lowest gear and slowly make my way up it, and coast on the downhills. I wasn’t going particularly fast but I was too drained for anything else. I even stopped at one point to check that my bike was working OK because I was feeling slow. The bike was fine which meant the problem was with its rider. On one such uphill I saw a rider already halfway up walking her bike. From a distance I shouted that the hill was pretty steep. I then noticed that she was walking in her socks, she had taken her shoes off and was holding them while walking her bike up the hill. She told me that she had hit her derailleur a couple of times and that she couldn’t keep going. I told her that the sweep would be on her soon if she wanted to use it.
After seeing her I realized that I wasn’t mentally broken yet but that I had to adjust my attitude and try not to look for excuses to stop but reasons to keep going otherwise I’d be soon giving up too. I played some music on my phone to motivate me and then took inspiration from my daughter and her beach volleyball partner. This year they were competing at the highest division and had lots of tough games against kids that were bigger, or just better than them, and had long days sometimes in the cold and usually under the hot sun. They never gave up or used an injury or complaint as an excuse to stop playing, even if the games didn’t go their way. If these kids could push through like that then I could push through today. For the remaining distance to the rest station I was listening to my music and thinking about their determination.
I finally made it to the rest station and refilled my gatorade bottles. I was talking with the volunteer there when the sweep vehicle with the other rider came. She said she was cheering for me when they were watching me ride. It was good support and another reason for me not to give up and to keep going. The volunteer mentioned that there was one more VMUTS section. I wondered if it would be sandy like the first section or if it would be more rideable. I guess I’d find out soon enough. From here to the next rest station was only around 28km but it would be mostly uphill until then. I focussed on the fact that once I hit the highest elevation it would be downhill all the way to the finish. Not going to lie the hills were not fun at all but I could feel that the end was reasonably in sight. As I was riding I could hear a clanking sound from my bike and I wasn’t sure what it was, and then looked more carefully at my bike and saw that one of my bottle cages had broken and my bottle was rattling around. I had to put the bottle in my jersey pocket, it fit but it would also leak on me. Not great but if that was the worst of my bike problems then I was doing fine.
As I was riding at the highest elevation section, anticipating the nice downhills to come, the course went off onto another trail, this must be the other VMUTS section. It was sandy just like the other one but because I was also going downhill I could push through some of the shorter sections as long as I kept my speed up and didn’t try changing direction. There were still sections I had to walk, including climbs and descents because of all the big rocks again. Mentally a section that I had planned would only take me 20 minutes thanks to the descent ended up being another hour of fighting through the sand. I was starting to get worried about the time because it was getting late and it might actually get dark before I made it to the finish. If they were going to stop me then that’s one thing but I was determined to keep riding until the end. The sweep here was on an ATV and stayed a bit closer to me than I would have liked. He was playing music too, I recognized some Soundgarden amongst other songs. As I exited the trail I saw that I was at the final rest station. There were a ton of volunteers there including the race organizer and they gave a big cheer when they saw me come out of the trail. I asked if I was still OK to keep riding to the finish and they said I was and that they would all be following me (once they cleaned up the station I guess). I turned on my lights anyway just to be a bit more visible.
For the final section the roads were all paved and the course was on a general downhill path. Knowing the end was in sight I had a renewed surge of energy and took the rolling hills properly, pedalling hard on the descents to gain enough speed and momentum to carry me over the climbs. It wasn’t easy but I knew there were only 20-some km to go and that it was getting dark. I could push through whatever to make it to the finish. As we were getting close to the finish the organizer shouted that he’d go ahead of me and lead me in. There was still one hill to go and as I could see its top I thought I’d stand on my pedals to power through it. I got up, immediately realized there was no power to use, and sat back down and spun my way up the hill. As we turned into the park he was honking his horn and I could see Warren waiting by the entrance. The people that were still there all cheered. I got a lot of high fives and fist bumps from everyone which felt nice. One of the volunteers later asked if I was OK with all the attention I got and I said that I kind of expected it because the top finishers and the last finisher all get the most applause. A couple of people asked me if I would do it again, and I think I would but with either much wider tires or on my mountain bike. Also I wouldn’t take so much stuff with me, just my water, sports drink, and a small bag to carry a couple of snacks for eating between the rest stations.
Race done I could enjoy my post-race veggie burger and pop and rest my legs for a bit. We had the option of camping out for another night but to me nothing would be better than a hot shower and sleeping in my own bed at home so we slowly packed up our stuff and headed home. I asked Warren to drive for the first bit because my legs felt like they were on the cusp of cramping and I didn’t want that to happen while driving. We switched up at the Innisfil OnRoute and I drove the west of the way home. Didn’t get home until almost 2am, so it was a very long day, but I made it!
tariq.ca 