Trucks, buses and motor homes bigger than my house back home!

By Richelle Olsen, She Science Ambassador

Revelstoke, quaint lil town surrounded by mountains, and 515kms into our 800km ride from Whistler to Banff...another well deserved recovery day today. We have ridden the last 4 days in a row, averaging around 60km a day...legs are happy bout the rest!

I'm pretty chuffed with myself that's more riding than I've ever done! Less riding than I'm about to do haha!

Last night we treated ourselves to our first steak since being in Canada...wow! Amazing, Shane's been raving bout how good they are meant to be, and well no disappointments there..yum!

We have also splurged and bought a new, bigger backpack, in lovely "Marvelous Magenta", for Shane to carry. He's trying to take as much weight off me as possible to make my riding easier, he's a good boy! He also doesn't want to be riding uphills at 3km/hr! It's soo his colour don't you think?!

So we have started the planning for the next few days...tomorrow we start Roger's Pass, a 70km climb out of Revelstoke, topping out about 1,400m, a rather long climb for the 1,000m increase in elevation. There's some hot springs halfway up, so we will stay overnight there, as 2 x 35km climbs seems so much more bearable!

I'm not hugely worried about the climb (tho I know it will definitely suck!), however there are several long dark tunnels we have to go through (to protect us and the traffic from avalanches apparently!), where the best method is to pedal like buggery through them, fast as you can, and hope like hell no truck, bus or humungous campervan catches you, as there's very little in the way of bike lane. Eeek! We have just visited the local Dollar Store for reflective strips to add to our panniers and helmets, in addition to our flashing rear lights, and headlamps! People will wonder why there's a couple of slow moving Xmas trees in the tunnel! We are also planning on setting off super early in the morning for minimal traffic. I'll be employing my usual method of holding my breath, as it means I take up less space!

Though checkout the map below, the downhill should be fun! It will be easier to go fast through the tunnels on the downhill! The aim is to sleep somewhere after the summit on the second night, and hit Golden on the third day...all going to plan! Least we know the tow rope works!!!

Ride profile from Revelstoke to Golden, over Rogers Pass...easy on paper yeah?!

As we won't see much in terms of shops for the next 3 days, we have done our biggest food shop to date! Cous cous, pepperoni, laughing cow cheese, tortillas, dried mash potatoes, cookies, tuna, baked beans, porridge you name it we have it! Nothing like the thought of a pepperoni stick smothered in cheese and wrapped in a tortilla for lunch to make you ride fast!

Plus there's a visitor centre at the top, so a can of liquid happiness (coke!) will def be in order!

Righto, time to sort out the bikes for tomorrow...wish us dry weather, and a tailwind!!!!