Hell Week
Waking up Sat morning the first thing I do is to check the weather, -1C, lighter winds, clear skies, things are looking good. As I get in the car and head towards the starting point for the Pancake Ride, the first of 4 rides in Hell Week, I pass through my first set of snow flurries in Whitby, as I pass through Brooklyn its now full on snowing and by the time I get to Port Perry and the starting point for the ride it’s a full on winter wonderland, -5C, blowing wind, and snow everywhere, Welcome to Hell Week!!
Hell Week has morphed from what was originally one ride, to Hell and Back, put on by Michael Barry Sr, a cyclocross event that took in a bunch of pave roads, gravel roads, farm track and single track over 140km and went from the Toronto Zoo to Lake Simcoe and back to incorporating 4 different rides over the course of a week. I was introduced to the Hell and Back event by Gerard Vroomen (cofounder of Cervelo Cycles, you can find Gerard’s original race report from our first Hell and Back ride here) back in 2000 and we have been doing the ride every year since. With the popularity of cyclocross exploding we have found more and more great routes and we felt we wanted to add more rides to the Hell event so we made a Hell Week. This has helped give a bit of focus to athletes in a time of year when many athletes are putting on a layer of warmth for the winter and are entrenched in hibernation in their basements. After having ridden inside for countless years and hours I find I can’t do it anymore, being outside is what I enjoy about riding my bike and cyclocross is the perfect off season option, it’s very different from riding your tri bike, it’s great for bike handling, its much warmer than being out exclusively on the road and it’s a great workout that you aren’t even really thinking about, and in the end it’s just fun! I am very lucky in that I love what I do and I get to train and talk about training every day. I get to ride my bike all over the world on all kinds of terrain and conditions but this week of riding is always some of my favourite riding of the year!
Our 4 rides in Hell Week offer a great mix, thanks to Lorne Cunliffe as the course creator of the Pancake ride and Durham Roubaix routes that we start off with on the first Sat/Sun of Hell week, these are both 70km loops with a great mix of terrrain, we then add in a City Loop of 90km on the Wed. The City Loop is an amazing ride through the ravines and parks of Toronto, its really hard to imagine that there is that much great riding in the city, but the fact that we have a large number of athletes who drive into the city to ride should tell you enough of how good it is. We then finish off on the last Sun with the traditional to Hell and Back ride (which has changed a little as we have added in more single track as more of the gravel roads get paved over each year).
Here are some details of this years events:
Day 1: The Pancake Ride
The Pancake ride goes from Port Perry over to Uxbridge and out a long (19km!) old rail bed before heading back to Port Perry. This years conditions where hard, -5C to start, winds gusting >40kph, 3-5cm of snow on the ground, this was going to be a tough day and yet there was still 25 athletes there at 8am ready to give it a shot! The ride starts off into the wind, with the biggest hills on the course, this quickly broke up the 25 into numerous smaller groups. As we headed west into Uxbridge we came across more and more snow, by the time we got there there had to be 10cm on the ground, but thankfully it was light and fluffy and cross tires still give you great grip so the riding was fine (but slow!). The single track section down into town was a lot of fun and if nothing else all the tire tracks made it easier to find the route! As we left Uxbridge and hit the rail trail, the first bridge was fenced off, so this involved a little extra climbing and hike a bike section, but is all part of the fun. Out onto the rail trail you feel like you are in the middle of nowhere, riding through a beautiful blank of fresh snow that looks great, but definitely slows you down! 45min later you head off the flat rail trail onto a steep, slippery gravel road hill before hitting some great rolling gravel roads, one short section of paved road then takes you to the last couple of sections of off road, these are tough at this stage of the day and take some concentration and hopefully still some power in the legs to get up and over some of the grassy hills. Back to the start finish in Port Perry and a 70km ride that takes 2:40, in the summer on my tri bike for that power output I would average 40kph, I averaged 25kph on Sat, that was tough! But also not cold, I was never cold all ride, the right gear makes all the difference. You can see a map of the loop below:
Some pictures:
Getting ready
Scott looking ready to get going
Shannon looking happy to be done (And this is Shannon who just finished Ironman Hawaii and the following weekend was begging to be able to get out on her cross bike to get ready for Hell Week, thats hardcore!)
Day 2: Durham Roubaix:
Durham Roubaix starts in Whitby and with a temperature of 1C, no wind and no snow, it started off looking like a much nicer day for the 25 starters! DR is a much different type of route than the Pancake Ride, the Pancake is very rural quiet dirt roads and in the middle of nowhere, DR is much more urban and a lot more variety. Lorne has managed to link together some great single track and quiet side roads to get us north and out of town to some great gravel road and off road sections. There is always a bit more mellow start to this ride as we weave our way north, but as we did the snow flurries started again, right about the time Andrew Stewart flatted so after a quick change I helped bring Andrew back towards the front group who we told to keep riding, as we caught them we where also back into the snow for real and we got to a few key sections, one 1km section of bumpy farm track that is slighly uphill, this is quickly followed by a couple of rolling road hills, then a couple of rolling dirt road hills, into the hardest section of the course, a hilly, bumpy, grassy Oak Ridges Moraine trail section,its starts by climbing a fench at the bottom of a step hill, then getting started on the other side going back up a steep grassy hill! This section really sucks the power out of your legs and tends to split the group up pretty well. After this there is a great off road/dirt road section, this was completely snow covered and so required some luck to try and navigate all the bumps you couldnt see under the snow! As the ride makes its way back south to the finish there are a number of tough, wet, slippery farm track sections that are really draining at the end of the second day of hard riding, but once back into town there is a super fun single track section that loops around the Oshawa airport before it links into a number of differnt parks and back to the star finish. This was another tough day but really a great weekend of riding!!
Yes your bike does need to be cleaned on a daily basis in Hell Week!!
For <$10 Gerard enjoying a post race meal better than any Ironman Finishers banquet!!
This actually counts as recovery food when you ride Hell Week:
Next up the City Loop!
