On tour. Riders taking part in the Tour de Mississauga make their way north on Tenth Line this morning after starting their ride at Streetsville Memorial Park. There were various lengths of rides including a 25-kilometre family ride as well as 60 and 100K rides for avid cyclists who were up for a challenge. Photo by Steven Der-Garabedian

The Mississauga News has an online article covering the 2010 Tour de Mississauga cycling adventure. With numbers reaching ever closer to the 1000 mark, the Mississauga Cycling Advisory Committee knew we would have to extend our talents futher than ever to keep up with the demand.

We were for blessed to have many volunteers outside of the MCAC offer to help out on the weekend of the 3rd annual event; without their help, our proverbial gears would have jammed. MCAC thanks all the volunteers and participants who helped make the 3rd annual Tour the grandest one yet.

As the event grows, we are growing with it – and so is cycling in Mississauga. With the Cycling Master Plan gaining approval this week, we feel we’re on a roll (pardon the pun). The comments are coming in and we want to encourage more participants to send us your comments, constructive critcism, and kudos as you saw it. Don’t hold back. The praise encourages us and the criticism will help future Tour de Mississauga events be even better!

Here is an excerpt from the Mississsauga News article by Debbie Bruce. Please visit the article and click to rate it a thumbs up:

The third annual Tour de Mississauga rolled into town this morning, with enough registrants on the list to impress even Lance Armstrong. 
This year’s cycling tour is expecting over 1,000 participants, quite a jump from last year’s tally of 400.  
“We’re tremendously excited,” said Dorothy Tomiuk, citizen member of the Mississauga Cycling Advisory Committee (MCAC). “The Tour is a great adventure that doesn’t just promote cycling, but our city and our city’s identity as well.” Read the entire article here.

Bridges are a favourite metaphor for MCAC. Bike bridges close gaps and with them, bicycles become the ultimate shortcut to where you want to be.

Whew!  We are in our final week gearing up for the 3rd annual Tour de Mississauga: Sunday, Sept. 19, 2010.  The weather is looking promising (knocking on wood BIG TIME here).  The online registrations are pacing at more than double this time last year with hundreds already received (four came in while typing this far; wait, now it’s six, oops, seven…. well, you get the idea).

We are excited and humbled at the same time that folks from all over the City are willing to get out of their houses, come to Streetsville with their bikes, and try out the routes we’ve created to showcase the cycling infrastructure already in place.  No road closures, nothing special — it’s all here, everyday of the year.

VOTE WITH YOUR WHEELS:  By participating in the Tour, you help to show the importance of cycling in our City.  MCAC is advocating for cycling participation, safety and connectivity.  The Tour is a way we can showcase the great cycling infrastructure our City already has, and encourage more!  When you register, you support the increasingly connected cycling community.  Click to view our presentation ‘Mississauga IS Cycling’, made at Council in November 2009.

Just one of the many "hidden gems" in Mississauga you will encounter on the 3rd annual Tour de Mississauga Signature and Challenge rides.

We have followed this up with a lead item on our website citing the Mississauga News article of Sept. 10: Cyclists want bike network sped up and we are suggesting that riding on the Tour would support this effort.

It is a chance to learn about other neighbourhoods and see how we all live.  The cycling community also enjoys an opportunity to meet one another and there is a definite social aspect to this.  There is a camaraderie amongst cyclists, regardless of age, sex or level of athleticism, and being out en masse is inspiring and a source of communal strength (we’re used to the feeling of vulnerability when being up against the cars).

The Tour de Mississauga sub-committee is making a presentation to Council on Wed. Sept 15, 2010 with a slide deck that gives a sneak peek at the Tour (Download the PDF).

Pedal power. A lone cyclist winds her way over the Erindale Park bridge during the second annual Tour de Mississauga. This year's event highlights off-road trails and on-road cycling routes in the northwest part of the city. File photo courtesy of Mississauga News

There have been cyclists on all styles of bikes in past Tours which even included road racing and fixed-gear bikes. Truth be told, there were even more cyclists with those styles of bicycles that didn’t participate because our signature route followed packed limestone trails that they considered “unsavory”  for their narrow high-pressure tires. As a road racer myself, I had the luxury of also owning a mountain bike which I chose to ride. The signature route has always been a real eye-opening experience for me who normally spends all my cycling on the roads. It let me see a new and beautiful side to the city of Mississauga that I never had seen before. However, MCAC wants to give the more seasoned cyclists in the city a new challenge. This new challenge also presented me with challenges.

As one of the key designers of the new Challenge Road Ride, we reconciled the following guidelines in order to hold true to the spirit of the Tour de Mississauga:

1. The route should stay within Mississauga city limits. The Tour sets out to showcase new and existing bike infrastructures in Mississauga. Another secondary reason to this may be for insurance requirements for the Tour. I knew a sizable portion of Challenge Road Ride participants may spend much of their cycling time out in the Halton region. I had to avoid the temptation of sending cyclists out that way to some of my favourite rural roads while still keeping the epic ride interesting and non-disruptive.
2. The 3rd annual 2010 route should focus on the north-west quadrant of Mississauga. 100km inside just one quarter of any city is going to tie the hands of the planner. We were able to centre the ride on the NW quadrant with leeway to extend the Challenge Ride outside the quadrant.  This balance of form and function made it quite easy to get a good ride put together.
3. Long rides should allow cyclists to “open up” without unnecessary stops. This  would normally be tough if I wasn’t always out on a search for streets that let me turn up the speed when training for an upcoming event. I often don’t have time to cycle far from home so knowing from experience the  safer non-disruptive corridors was helpful. We also tried to pick streets that had all-way stops instead of traffic lights so wait times aren’t long at intersections. Streets with long right-of-ways were also preferred. Roads that may be quite busy on weekdays were chosen if their Sunday morning traffic loads proved to be light. This gives the cyclist more confidence on the road to use the space they need for safer cycling.
4. The Challenge Road Ride must be only on roads. With Mississauga’s expanding cycling network, this was much easier today than it would have been even 3 years ago. Much of the Challenge Road Ride touches on bike lanes or signed bike routes. With the Mississauga Cycling Master Plan coming close to completion, we are expecting the cycling network to even more rapidly gain connectivity.
5. The route should be fun and informative. The Challenge Road Road touches on interesting sites, scenery, and villages within the city. Even if you’ve taken the road a hundred times before in a car, taking it once on a bike will surely reveal new features and a better understanding of getting around an area. Perhaps a fitness cyclist who just takes a single route in and out of the city on their bike may now realize that there are other cycling opportunities in Mississauga. After the Tour, they may be encouraged to ride their bicycle to work, community centre, stores, or gym instead of driving after seeing new ways of getting around.

Riding a metric century is certainly a challenge. Creating a metric century route within a city is almost as challenging. Mississauga’s cycling network is coming of age. The fact that viable long routes can be created all within city limits is a testimony to that.

Mississauga is cycling!

Cyclists on a trail bridge

Our group started the ride heading east through Port Credit and the recently completed Stavebank Park. Slowing down to catch a glimpse of a breathtaking sunrise along the lake, we watched the canoeists practising their techniques on the mouth of the Credit River. We then headed north along Stavebank through the autumn beauty of the estate homes lining the river. Passing through the tunnel under the QEW  (most riders did not know of its existence!) we headed north on Camilla Road toward the Cooksville Creek Trail.

The ride wound through Cooksville Creek’s trails blanketed by golden autumn leaves which led up to Iceland and Hershey Centre. From here we travelled westward on road to the Culham Trail which winds its way back down to the Credit River. A jog off the trail and we wound up in Mayor McCallion’s home town of Streetsville where we stopped for some hot chocolate and lattes courtesy of the local Starbucks.

We’re not still in Mississauga, are we?

After encountering a string of tranquil autumn scenes, including an early morning white-tailed deer off Mississauga Road, one cyclist was caught asking, “we’re not still in Mississauga, are we?”. All the pictures we could gather really couldn’t do the event justice. You really had to be there to experience it for yourself.  

Three hours into the ride and three quarters through, we gingerly headed back down to the Credit and watched the salmon fighting the headwaters upstream. The river was a classic fall scene with anglers out fishing, and hikers on the trail. We then headed out through  Erindale Park to the Mississauga Road South bike lane. This led us back to Saddington Park.

Safely back, we all headed off to the Clarkson Pump (our sponsor) for some well deserved veggies, wings and liquid refreshments. The smaller group of cyclists who were featured in the Missisauga News took the shorter Tour which headed west up the Culham Trail to Streetsville. They loved it so much that they are anticipating giving the full length tour a try next year.
 
Our total distance travelled was 47km and the ride time with stops was about five hours. The Mississauga Cycling Advisory Committee is set to plan another grand cycling tour of Mississauga in 2009. We are expecting an even bigger group and look forward to seeing you there.

Follow the following links if you would like to follow the same enjoyable route on your own. We would love to hear your comments on the route:

Map of the 2008 Tour
Written Directions for the 2008 Tour