The Life of Evan Guthrie

Monday, 16th
Todays ride was probably the worst ride of my life. We started at 9:30 am sharp and headed to downtown Palm Springs to meet up with everyone else at the Rodeo house. It was pooring rain and I didn't dress warm enough in the morning and I got the chills and was shaking on my bike and was barley able to shift gears and brake. Which was horrible. Dan Proulx just told me to hop in the van and sit in there the rest of the time. I was only riding for 2 hours when that whole situation happened. I really wanted to ride longer because thats what I came down here to do. But I would rather not get sick and hypothermic! Some people rode for 2 hours, other 3 hours, and some rode even for 4 hours of what I would call miserable conditions, but normal to people from Vancouver.

Tuesday, 17th
There was a change of plans today and we a different ride than planned. We rode out and did a 20 min climbs three times at a good hard pace. It was sweet because Catherine Pendral and Jean-Ann McKirdy and so on were out with us for the ride and for the rest of the week of training. I rode pretty hard up the climb the first couple times then on the third I just toned it down and rode in the pack we had going. Then we headed back into Desert Hot Springs where some riders could head back to our house. The ride would then go back into Palm Springs to the Tram Way climb for some and other went back to their homes in Palm Springs. Owen, Kevin, Evan and myself did our own loop rode by Kevin's house to drop him off and then we headed for the Tram where we ended up meeting up with the rest of the group. They had just ridden the hill, so Owen, Evan and myself decided to just ride back with everyone. We had heard from the rest of the guys when we met them that Jacob Shwingboth had had a bad crash when the group was doing 50 kp/h. He had pretty bad road rash and was banged up a little. SO Dan took him to the hospital to get all bandaged up. He should be back and ready to ride again tomorrow, just with a few more bandages than today. We rode for 4.5 hrs today, felt like 5.5 because of the efforts we did up the climb earlier. Great day in the sun though. This is what we came down here for!