Today was the hardest day of biking I have ever done. Not necessarily because of hills or high gradients, but because of the heat and long distance. I didn’t really understand the importance of waking up early to ride until today. We rode 150km in temps that topped out at 40C by the time we arrived 9 hours later! Leaving at 5:30am, we were able to beat a lot of the heat. The first 100km were very doable. It wasn’t until around noon, right after lunch that I could barely handle the riding. It was so incredibly hot and the road didn’t seem like it was going to ever end. The road was twisty and windy, so you, literally, didn’t know what was around every bend. This probably added to the dread of facing another hill, because you wouldn’t know that it was coming on until you were already at it. Even though we left super early, we didn’t get in to Sicamous until around 3pm; it was a very, very, long day.

Tomorrow we head up to Canyon Hot Springs, about 30km outside of Revelstoke. It’s supposed to be thunder stormy so we shall see how that turns out. I am in no way willing to face the heat again tomorrow so I’m making us get up at 4am to leave by 4:30am. If you know me, I NEVER wake up early. I don’t even get out of bed for school until 10 minutes before class starts, so this is a big deal for me.

We are learning to focus on the importance of replacing all the calories we burn off as best we can in a timely manner. Today, for example, we burned around 5,500 calories. There is no way we made this up with the regular-sized dinners we ate, so we need to continue to eat as many carbs and calorie-loaded foods as possible.

The terrain is starting to turn mountainous again after the farmland and rolling hills of Merritt and Kamloops. Roger’s Pass is the day after tomorrow and I’m starting to get a bit nervous! It’s only 7:30pm, but I’m ready for bed. Nothing’s too sore, so let’s hope it stays that way until morning!

Thanks to my mom for being the photographer today, but she should really be featured in more pictures.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.