102 Reasons to Hate Centuries

So September 15th was the day of the big century. A full summer's worth of training would culminate with my dad and I departing Maywoods Environmental Park in Sheboygan, WI for a 100 mile bike ride. You know it's really funny how 100 miles really doesn't seem like that long a distance when you first sign up for the ride and yet, when the day of the ride finally comes, you find yourself thinking "What fool in his right mind would sign up for a hundred freaking mile bike ride?" My legs sometimes cramp up DRIVING 100 miles. As my dad pointed out during the ride, it's only 15 miles shy of riding from Milwaukee to Green Bay... that's a long ways!

Anyhow, once again we must back it up to get the full story of where I was at coming into the ride. In a word the answer to that question is Hawaii! Yes, my wife and I spent over a week enjoying the beaches and scenery of Kauai and Oahu. A great time! Unfortunately (as I knew would happen) I never got around to renting that bike and taking a ride to "keep my legs fresh" as planned. This meant my last ride was Sept. 2nd, in Minnesota which is a story in itself (let's just say that 30 mile an hour headwinds while riding past field freshly covered with pig manure does not make for a good time). So Hawaii was great for relaxation but not so great for getting ready for a century.

We arrived back in Minnesota on Thursday morning, drove to my brothers house on Friday and the century was on Saturday. When we left for Hawaii the temperatures were in the high 80's, I prayed it wouldn't be that hot for the century since, as previously mentioned, I hate riding in high heat and humidity. God sometimes has a funny way of answering prayers. I know this because the forecast ride time temperature was 37 degrees (yes thats Fahrenheit). But of course I planned for the possibility of cold weather and packed cold weather riding gear right? Well, not so much. But I at least did have a windbreaker right? Again, not so much yes as no. So... when my dad showed up at my brothers house we headed over to Wal Mart to see what they might have to help out. Selection wasn't great but I did find a long sleeve jersey and a pair of camouflage gloves. The gloves were under $3 so I figured if they got too warm I'd chuck them into the ditch or something.

The next morning we were up early to head to the starting point. It was butt cold. I mean see your breath and watch it freeze and fall to the ground cold. OK maybe not that cold, but it was freezing if you were dumb to enough to show up in a long sleeve jersey and camouflage gloves (oh yeah, I was wearing shorts too!). There is only one word that would describe the first 12 miles or so, that word being Brrrrrrrrrrrrr! My legs just turned blue remembering the experience.

Anyhow, because it gets light later this time of the year, the ride had a relatively late start time of 7:30AM. They announced in the pre ride briefing that they would like to have everyone off the course by 5PM if possible. That's 9:30 hours for you non-math types or a little over 10mph average including time spent on breaks. Based on our times for our previous shorter rides I figured this would be close to when we would actually be finishing.

So 7:30 AM we headed out led by a rider in a giant Badger costume (only in WI). The first 12 miles were, because of the immense cold, quite miserable. It was so cold nothing would loosen up and my heartbeat was about 200 bpm just trying to pump enough blood to the extremities to keep my body alive. I have to tell you that if I had been asked after the first 12 miles what are chances of finishing the century were I would have put them at about 10%. At least for me... My dad was chipper as ever talking about how cold it was but looking excited enough to ride a double century.

Luckily not long after the first rest break a couple of good things happened. Number one the sun came up enough that the icicle hang from my thighs started to warm up enough that they were dripping a little. Number two I caught myself worrying about how cold it was, and worrying about my knee that had been bothering me the last couple of rides, and worrying about my "nomads" and if they were going to give me trouble today. So I said to myself, "Self, cut that out. Look around, check out the great WI scenery, and just ride to have fun." So that's what I did. We really were in a beautiful part of Wisconsin. We headed out of Sheboygan past a number of dairy farms and headed into the Elkhart Lake region. My dad was hoping they'd let us do a lap of the famed race track there but we were thankful they didn't once we heard a race going on. That would've been interesting, race cars at 160 mph 500 cyclists at 15mph.

There were a number of challenging hills. I remember a couple of the better ones were on County MM only because as we were ascending one of them one of the other rides was talking about "oh yeah good old MM". I think by that they meant #@*!!& MM.
They were pretty fun hills though, more up then down on this particular portion of the ride.

After Elkhart Lake we were off into the Kettle Moraine forest (important note: I make no guarantees that any of this ride actually happened in the order I give here as by the end of the day I was required to completely shut down and deprogram large portions of my brain in order to finish the ride. The one exception is that I know the beginning came long, long before the end.) The Kettle Moraine Forest was beautiful. This alone made me glad we did the century as only the century riders completed the Kettle loop. We passed a number of lakes and streams and did quite a few more hills.

Lunch was being served at the half way point which was good because I was starting to get hungry. With about two miles to go to the lunch stop, however, (lunch was at the half way point) my left knee started to hurt BAD. What was worse the last section before the lunch stop was all uphill and uphill made my knee hurt REALLY bad. Just make it to lunch I thought and with a little rest maybe I can go on, but I wasn't feeling real confident at this time. But I did make it to lunch where we were able to refuel on some tasty subs along with the other typical rest stop food (bananas, gorp, etc).

Off we went again. My knee wasn't doing great but better than before at least. My dad's knees were bothering him some as well so I figured if he could do it so could I. The return trip was long! Much longer than the ride to the half way point. There were hills that I KNOW weren't that steep but it was all we could do just to get up them. There was one stretch between rest stops that was about 18 miles but I'm sure we actually rode 75 miles to get there. After that rest stop though (I think it was around mile 78) I think we both started to feel a lot better. We could finally envision ourselves actually finishing this ride.

Oh, but I need to back up for one of the funniest parts of the ride. As we passed the mileages of our different training rides we would take note of it and talk about the ride that we had done to that mileage. So at mile 50 we talked about the Ride for the Arts our first big ride of the season. Then at mile 64 we talked about the Pedaling for Kicks ride, the 64 miler we did by our house here in Normal, IL. My dad was hurting at the end of that ride. Apparently he was hurting even more than I had realized because as we hit mile 64 of the century he said something to the effect of "Man, if I felt that bad right now knowing we still had 38 miles to go I'd just aim for the nearest ditch and chuck myself in and end it." It was made even funnier because at the same moment we both looked to the right and the dropoff to the side of the road was about 50 feet and he quickly said "Well, maybe not this ditch..." Delirious as I was from having already ridden 64 miles I about drove over that dropoff I was laughing so hard.

So back to mile 80 where we find our two idiots, er , uh, heroes chugging along at a painful 10mph and now outside the 5:00PM finishing window but liking our chances of finishing none the less. We gutted the last 20+ miles out somehow. There was a good deal of downhill in the second half of the ride which made sense since there was so much uphill in the first half. In all I think our elevation varied from 600' up to 1100'+. We even managed to skip one of the last rest stops as they had 3 rest stops in a 15 mile stretch or something like that.

It was pretty exciting to watch the last few tenths of a mile tick down towards 100 on the GPS and finally see it roll over to 100. Even more exciting was riding back into the Environmental Center at 102 miles and making it back to the car. That was a great feeling knowing we had both made it. We discussed how we had both prayed frequently throughout the day and I'm sure we did it on alot more God power than on our power. I joked that next year we should shoot for a sub 8 hour time and my dad replied that he didn't even want to think about getting on a bike let alone riding a century for awhile. Pretty good for an almost 61 year old to ride 100 miles though. Just glad we both finished as I would've felt really bad if he had finished and this 34 year old hadn't!

Anyhow, gotta go. I'm riding my bike to work tomorrow so I should get some sleep! Ride on!

Pain, pain, and more pain

This is a tale of pain. Lots and lots of pain. The pain was incurred during the Planetarium Ride on August 11th but to begin the story properly we must go all the way back to August 10th.

My dad came down from Milwaukee the afternoon of the 10th. After dinner we decided to go to the local bike shop. I wanted to see if they had a replacement bladder for my CamelBak. The old one had developed a leak around the closure. At any rate, I ask the salesmen where they are and he shows me what they have (which was not what I needed). While I looking at what they have my dad approaches the salesmen and asks in his very loud voice "Hey DO YOU HAVE ANY CHAMOIS BUTTER?" Does he not realize some questions are best asked in hushed tones e.g. "psst... buddy you got any chamois butter?"

Anyhow... now might be a good time to mention I had not been doing a ton of riding since our Reno trip but I wasn't too worried. I had been doing 60+ mile rides all summer so it didn't seem like the 70 mile ride would be a big deal...

This might also be a good time to mention that temperatures for the next day were forecast to be in the high 90's with a heat index of 100+.

As a follow on to that I might mention I HATE riding in extreme heat and/or humidity. It just seems to sap energy out of you like nothing else.

Also, because the starting location for the ride was over an hour away we had to get up at 4AM in order to make sure we could start riding as early as possible (6 AM).

Did I mention I hate getting up super early the day of a ride? Can you see where this is all leading?

So we arrive at the middle school where the ride was to depart from dark and early. The temperature is in the mid 70's at 6:00AM and the humidity is about 1500%. OK, I may be off by a percent or two but I don't think so.

We get our registration packet, get on bikes and head out. The ride starts out with a long stretch of mostly uphill riding (I should mention here that I hate rides that start out uphill). Nothing felt right, I felt like I was riding in jelly. I was sweating like mad and could barely manage 12 mph (which later in the ride would seem like break neck speeds, cue the ominous foreshadowing music).

But after the first rest stop I started to feel alot better. The terrain seemed to have an equal amount of uphill and downhill sections and the route was quite scenic. Plus as the sun rose it knocked a lot of the humidity out of the air and it started to feel quite pleasant.

This lasted until about mile 42. At mile 42 two things happened. Number one a certain portion of my anatomy which we won't mention by name but will say it rhymes with nomad (the right one if you must know) began to hurt. Luckily it only hurt when I pedaled (by that I mean bad luck seeing as I was continuously pedaling and still had 29 miles to go). Number two was that the temperature began to soar. In fact it was so hot the tar on the road started to bubble and you could hear the bubbles pop as our bikes rode over them. It was HOT!

My dad on the other hand was looking down right chipper. He looked ready to take off on Lance's wheel if the opportunity presented itself. Every time he looked at me, however, he got a really worried look on his face and gave me encouraging comments like "You want me to call the SAG wagon?" or "You don't look very good."

I don't remember much of the rest of the ride except for constant pain and the urge to stop and just chuck my bike into the nearest field ( I think the only thing that stopped me was I didn't have the strength to chuck a pebble much less my bike). Even when we got within two miles of the finish I wasn't fully convinced I was going to be able to ride the whole thing. My speed had dropped to the point where as I leaned over the bars trying to ignore the pain and heat, I could watch ants slowly pulling away from me. I tried to latch on and draft behind them but those ants are just too fast...

Finally, we arrived back at the start point and I slowly got off my bike and made my way inside for the lunch. I've never been so glad a ride was over in my life.

A visit to the old haunts

The last week of July found our family all together in Reno, NV for my sister's wedding. I grew up in Reno, living there from 1980 - 2005 minus six years while I was in the Navy. I'll always love Reno especially given the plethora of recreation options, my favorites being biking and snowboarding.

Monday (July 30th) I was able to get together with one of my best friends, Ken, for a ride up Keystone Canyon. Ken and I started biking at about the same time. We both started out mountain biking and didn't get into any serious road riding until much later. Over the years we've accumulated a proverbial butt-ton of great stories riding together. Most involve something bad happening to Ken or something stupid happening to me.

A couple of quick examples before continuing... One of our first mountain biking trips was to Mammoth Mountain a few hours south of Reno. (Cue sound of angels singing) Mammoth has some of the best riding (both mtn biking and snowboarding) I have ever seen. Miles and miles of singletrack await and even better you can take the lift up and ride down which is great since the summit is at an oxygen deprived 11,000+ ft.

We timed out trip to coincide with the NORBA championships which at the time were held at Mammoth every year. The first day we got to see all the greats of that time including Ned Overend and Julie Furtado. At the bottom of the run they came down a short but pretty technical section that was followed by a little rise. Ken was explaining to me how it really wasn't that big a deal just let it flow through the technical bunny hop off the little rise and off you go. I had never seen Ken bunny hop anything prior to this trip so I challenged him to give me a demonstration. One thing you need to know at this point is that if you tell Ken he CAN'T do something he will do one of two things:

A. Do it and prove you wrong
B. Hurt himself in the process of trying to prove you wrong

In this case it was a combination of the two. He nailed the technical section, completed the bunnyhop, but landed off balance and veered off the trail into a section of fencing laying of to the side. Luckily the injuries weren't too serious and we were able to ride the infamous Kamikaze trail the next day where I did an endo and landed on my head (thank goodness for helmets).

Another time we decided to rent full suspension bikes to see what they were all about and take them up to Squaw Valley for a day of fun. Upon reaching the top of the mountain, as is usually the case, we immediately missed one of our turns and ended up in some pretty gnarly terrain. Ken took off ahead of me and made it all of a quarter of a mile before I looked up and found him rolling around in pain on the side of the trail. A ditch (he later referred to it as a small waterbar but trust me it was a ditch) ran right across the trail and he though he could let the suspension absorb it. This in the day when 2" of rear travel was great. Despite the intense pain he wanted to ride his bike back down. Fortunately the front tire was extremely tacoed. So the Squaw Valley staff brought him down on a quad while I rode down. Then we got in the car, drove to Tahoe City, returned the bikes (he had to pay for the tacoed tire as well), drove back to Reno and straight to Washoe Medical Center. Nothing major... just a punctured lung and broken collar bone.

But I digress, back to the current story... Ken picked me up at 7:15ish and we headed off to Keystone Canyon parking in a nearby subdivision. I immediately realized I had already committed my stupid act for the ride when I went to put my riding shoes on and found in my rush to get out of our rental house I had grabbed one riding shoe and one of my brother's sandals. Great... Luckily I was using Ken's wifes bike and it had pedals with wide platforms around the cleats so I would be able to get by with tennis shoes. Ken was also riding a full suspension he borrowed from a friend of his.

I have to admit I was pretty worried about this ride. As is the case with most rides around Reno, Keystone is almost non-stop uphill until you turn around and come back down. Plus we were starting at roughly 3700' higher than here in IL. But I figured I could probably hang and if nothing else now I can blame any substandard performance on my lack of proper shoes.

So off we went. Keystone was a bigger blast than ever. It was a great day for riding and it was great to ride with Ken and catch up on what was going on in Reno. We had barely started when we came across a pickup truck rolled onto its side. A notice from the local police dept. indicated it had been stolen and driven down the canyon until they rolled it.

The bottom part of the canyon wasn't too bad. It's not too steep and except for a couple of short technical sections that I've ALWAYS had problems with I was doing pretty good. Then we got past the radio towers and into some of the real climbing. It was like someone had sucked every atom of oxygen out of the atmosphere. My heart was pounding, my ears were pounding, and despite the fact I was breathing in 76 Liters of air with each breath I was light headed. I'm sure my hear rate was 185+. Knowing Ken always wears his heart rate monitor I asked him at the top of this climb what his heat rate was. 150 he tells me. 150!!! I don't think he realized how close he was to being hit over the head with a rock and left to die in the desert at that point!

But soon we got to the section of very tasty downhill singletrack towards some old mine tailings. It was a blast and I was really starting to like the Marin full suspension I was on. After the downhill it was one more lung busting climb up a fireroad to the pond that is our official rest / turnaround point for the ride. The road was EXTREMELY dry and very loose powdery dirt. Traction was hard to come by and right before the pond it gets really steep. More dizziness and heart pounding ensued but finally we made the pond. Some type of large bird (heron maybe) was flying around the pond as we crested the final section.

We headed over to THE tree to catch our breath and take a breather before heading back down. As we were discussing how deep we thought the pond was Ken told me to take a look at my 11... er... 1 o'clock. I looked in that direction and there standing in the shade of a tree just a stone's throw away was one awesome buck. He had an 8 point rack and was just standing there looking at us. Ken called out and told him we weren't going to hurt him and, as if he understood, the buck walked out of the shadows down to the lake and started drinking and drinking and drinking (apparently he was thirsty). He then took a long look at us and slowly turned the other way and walked up and over the hill. It was one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

Having had our fill of wildlife we headed down the trail. Now I REALLY started to like the full suspension. Almost the entire ride back to the car is downhill. Let me say here I'll never be accused of being the fastest on any section of downhill, but with that full suspension, I felt like I was breaking the sound barrier the whole way down. Being able to just fly downhill and keep going downhill for literally miles is one of the great things I miss about Nevada.

As we descended the bottom portion of the trail, Ken decided to make the ride a complete success by performing a nice endo on a little technical drop. To further top it off he then got mad at the little drop and headed back up the trail so he could come back down the drop again this time cleaning it quite nicely.

All in all, it was a great day that made me really miss being able to ride virtually any type of terrain you want within minutes of Reno and even more so, being able to ride with a good friend like Ken. There are alot of things I love about riding, being able to challenge yourself to make it up that climb or clean that technical section... but riding with someone else who shares your love of cycling just makes it all that much better. Maybe that's why I haven't ridden since I got home... or maybe it's the 95 degrees w/ 90% humidity we've been having. Probably a combination of the two.

Note: I just read that two days after we rode Keystone a mountain lion was spotted in the lower reaches of the canyon. Story can be found here: http://dhreno.wordpress.com/2007/08/03/mountain-lion-sighted-in-keystone-canyon/

Pedaling for Kicks

Last Saturday my dad, brother Jeremy, and I rode in the Pedaling for Kicks just north of here. We were all signed up for the 64 mile route but Jeremy was unsure if he was actually going to do the whole 64 miles but the way the routes were set up he had the option to bail about 35 miles in and do the 40 or 50 mile routes.

We got an early start heading out from the start at White Oak Christian Church at 6:20AM which was good because it was forecast to be hot (near 90) and HUMID. Surprisingly the day started off feeling quite comfortable although I had to resist the urge to knock my dad off his bike when he said, "You know it's actually almost too cool... " I'm convinced that as soon as those words came out of his mouth the temperature rose 20 degrees along with a 30% increase in the humidity.

At any rate the route was a terrific one. We started out heading toward the northwest over lightly travelled roads bordering the farmlands of the area. We then turned due north towards Lake Bloomington. The roads near Lake Bloomington were nice and windy and it was a great day to be near the lake. The first rest stop was also at Lake Bloomington. Bananas, trail mix, pretzels, home made cookies made up the solids while Gatorade and H2O were available for liquid refreshment. As expected dad immediately headed for the restroom while Jeremy and I consumed large quantities of calories ("I'm sure I'll burn it off and I need the energy for later"). Upon returning from the restroom dad had a peanut, half a pretzel and a swallow of Gatorade and I'm sure felt guilty about the extra Weight Watchers points involved (just joking, it was two peanuts and a raisin).

Heading east from Lake Bloomington we pointed our bikes toward another local reservoir, Evergreen Lake. This is an area I frequently ride both on my road bike and on my mountain bike as there is some excellent single track near the lake created and maintained by the local Comlara mtn bike association.

At the far end of the lake was another rest stop. We repeated the drill, Jeremy and I sampling (aka scarfing) some of the food while dad headed for the rest room. I knew dad was burning some calories because this time he had some banana w/ his two peanuts and raisin. This rest stop was also as far as Jeremy could go if he wanted to bail early and he decided to just do the 50 mile route (what a pansy!). This may have been one of the smartest decisions Jeremy has ever made in his life. This might seem like I'm exaggerating but if you're familiar with the rest of Jeremy's decisions you would know it doesn't take much. He promised to wait for us before eating his lunch at the finish line (remember this for later).

My dad and I continued on. We were now headed into an area I hadn't ridden in yet from Evergreen Lake to Congerville. Right off the bat we had some fun with roadkill as we passed a dead skunk. The smell was like riding into a wall. Yuck! It was immediately followed by another dead animal of unidentified species.

As we approached the next rest area we started to encounter some hills, some pretty steep hills. Alright I thought, hills are great! And we really need the practice for the Maywoods Earth Century we're doing in September in Sheboygan, WI. After three or four of these hills we got to the next rest area. This rest area was actually in the shop behind someones house. I rode by it before realizing it was the rest area and had to do a quick u-turn in the road to get back to it. The house itself looked huge from the outside and the food was setup in one garage of a huge shop / multi-car garage area that may have had more square footage than my house.

My dad's first stop at the rest area was, can you guess, the restroom. While he was doing his business I sampled the food (I hate to be rude after all the effort they went to to prepare the food). This rest stop had pretty much the same type of food as the other stop with fresh strawberries added as an additional bonus. One thing I also noticed at this rest stop was as soon as we stopped riding the sweat stopped evaporating and a sweat flowed liked water during monsoon season. I'm sure by the time the last riders arrived at that rest area they needed a rowboat to get to the food.

While my dad savored his 1/2 a strawberry and a full glass of Gatorade (the pig :0) one of the attendants was talking about how the hills up ahead were unlike anything we had seen so far in the ride. Steeper and longer, yee ha!

The next 10 miles get a little fuzzy as to what happened when. I remember a lot of climbing, and then doing some climbing, and then climbing some more hills. Along the way there was a deer that had to have been dead for at least a month, a possum that smelled like a skunk had crawled up another skunk's a** and died., and lots of pretty colors that danced in front of my eyes at the top of the longer climbs. During one stop to catch my breath I remarked to my dad that Jeremy was starting to looking like quite the genius for bailing early.

The next and final rest area was in Congerville where dad made a beeline for the bathroom (he really needs to work on staying hydrated during the rides I just don't think he drinks enough fluids). While I socialized in the food area I heard some comments to the effect of we were done with the hills and it was pretty much an easy ride back from here. I'm glad I don't know who that person was which is good because I think by the end of that ride I may have hunted down said person and put a hurt on them because they were WRONG.

Immediately after leaving Congerville we started up another hill. And then another, and then another, and then another... They weren't quite as long or as steep as the others but we were at mile 55+ at this point. My legs were hurting and dad was starting to look like I might have to carry him the rest of the way. But we pushed on, we laughed, we cried, and we climbed more hills. Having averaged around 15 mph early in the ride we were now doing about .75 mph. At one point I looked down and saw an ant blow by me like I was standing still (OK, that may have been heat exhaustion talking I'm not sure).

Finally the church came into view and we rode into the parking lot and started looking for Jeremy so we could all have a great lunch together. We found Jeremy standing by the car EATING A BOWL OF ICE CREAM! He explained that he just couldn't wait any longer and that he just had to eat... blah blah blah. So dad and I went and got our lunches and sat down to eat. The seating to eat was inside and the main dining area smelled SOOOOO BAD from the large group of extremely sweaty riders in the same place that I seriously considered going into the bathroom to eat there as it had to smell better. Unfortunately dad got to the bathroom first (he just had to go he didn't eat in there). Instead we ate in the church's gymnasium which smelled slightly better, I'd put it somewhere in between dairy farm and pig farm. But the food was great and hit the spot after a long ride.

I was very impressed at the effort my dad put in to finish the ride. He admitted afterward that it was the most effort he ever had to put forth to complete something. All this from a man who's old enough to be my father... wait, he is my father! And how Jeremy completed his 2nd 50 mile ride without any practice boggles my mind. It sure makes the ride more fun, though, riding with them.

Next up... The Interplanetary Bike Ride in Peoria, IL in August.

Ride On!

Crash and Roadburn

Today was the Ride and Stride to support our local American Red Cross. My wife and son decided to do the three mile stride while I did the 35 mile route of the ride. We've done this the past two years as well. The last two years my parents have joined us for the fun but this year they had a wedding to attend so they were unable to come down for the ride.

Temperatures have been rather HOT here in central Illinois this week and the forecast high for today was 95. Hydration was definitely the word of the day.

The first surprise of the day came when I picked up my map and realized we weren't going north to Towanda as we had the last two years but were instead heading SW towards some of the same area I rode in last weekend's 61 mile ride.

Since this is Illinois I was not surprised to find the wind blowing as we began the ride. Of course it was at our back the beginning of the ride which had me thinking about the ride back into the wind. GREAT! But it was nice while it lasted as the wind pushed me along and I was able to cruise at 20-22 mph while the route continued East.

It was short lived as we soon turned South which meant riding with a fairly decent cross-wind. The route actually had some fun little hills which was a welcome change from the relatively pancake flat route of the past two years. I even managed to break 30 mph which may have been a first since moving to IL.

The first rest stop was at the 17 mile mark. Gatorade, bananas, and PB and J. Not the best of rest stop fare but it hit the spot. I didn't stay long and was soon back on the road now headed back to the west. About 5 miles into the next leg things got interesting. I was cruising at about 15 mph. Our next turn was a left turn off of the country road we were on onto another smaller country road.

I didn't scrub a whole lot of speed and instead leaned into the turn pretty good. Unfortunately there was a large amount of gravel built up right where these two roads come together. The result was one of the better cases of road rash I've had in awhile as illustrated by the following pictures.








Luckily it all happened too fast for it to really hurt. One minute I was up enjoying the ride, the next I was laying on the ground hoping nothing was broken. Lucky for me damage to both myself and the bike was minimal. I got away with some road rash and a pretty good bruise/ swelling on my left side and the bike was fine with the exception of some of the bar tape getting torn up pretty good.

At the next rest area I was able to get cleaned up and apply some first aid ointment and was good to go.

After that the rest of the ride was pretty uneventful. My average fell off some thanks to the wind I got to ride into for most of the rest of the way but still managed to maintain a 15.4 mph moving average for the ride.

At the finish line I met back up with Heather and Joshua. Joshua was playing in the splash pad area they have at Tipton Park where the ride starts and ends. Heather informed me that Joshua had tricycled the entire three miles of the walk save for a short section that he walked. Looks like my dreams of him being a professional cyclist will live to see another day!

The post ride lunch, as always, was excellent. Pork chop sandwiches along with a ton of sides to choose from.

Now time to get ready for the metric century at Pedaling for Kicks July 7th. Can't wait!

Ride On!

Does Wind Suck or Blow

This is the question that I contemplated on my 61+ mile ride this past Sunday. I mean on the one hand you have the lower pressure that would seem to "suck" in the air around it. On the other hand you could say that the high pressure "blows" itself into the lower pressure. I finally decided that wind both sucks and blows especially when you're riding into it on a bike.

As soon as the ride began I realized that once again the forecasters were off with their predictions of 5-10 mph winds. More like 15+ and early on I was riding right into it. No big deal as my legs were fresh and I pushed pretty hard. I initially headed out to Moraine View Park to the southeast of my home in Normal,IL. I was maintaining around 15-17 mph which is pretty good for me.

The route was a good one taking me through the farmlands of Illinois and past row after row of GIANT windmills that are part of a new green energy producing project. It is amazing how big these things really are once you get up close to them.

I reached the farthest southeast point of my trip at about 27 miles. There were actually some real hills in this part of the county which is pretty exciting when you live in Illinois. It was fun to get the legs working.

Once I turned back north I realized just how hard the wind was blowing as I now had it at my back and was cruising at between 20-21 mph. By the time I finished the next 12 mile segment my average for the ride was up to 16.4 according to my Garmin GPS.

Alas, that would not last long as I now had to turn back into the wind to head for home. This was definitely the hardest it had blown all day and I was headed right into the teeth of it. On top of that I had quite a bit farther still to go than I thought. I stopped around mile 51 to take a look at the directions I had hastily jotted down on a sheet of paper. I didn't realize quite how tired I was until I tried to get going again and somehow ended up slowly falling over when I lost my balance and couldn't get clipped in in time. That was definitely an omen of things to come for the rest of the ride.

At mile 52 a dog came charging at me. The owner yelled "Don't worry he doesn't bite..." but judging by the barking I wasn't convinced so booked it out of there as fast as I could. Then at mile 55 while praying the ride would be over soon, I apparently ticked off a bird watching its nest and it came after me cawing like crazy and swooping down at me. Great, now I had to pick up the pace again to outrun the crazy bird from hell.

Lucky I was almost into town by then and managed to crawl into the house and collapse on the couch until the tunnel vision cleared. Man I love bicycling!

The next day we took the TrailBlazer into the shop and found it had blown a bearing in the transmission (this after the tranny being rebuilt 30,000 miles ago) and it's been in the shop since. That made the decision to commute to work by bike this week an easy one. I was really hoping to have it back by today so I could rest the next couple of days before the Ride and Stride on Saturday but it looks like I'll be riding in at least tomorrow yet.

Ride On!

Ride for the Arts

Last Sunday I joined my dad and my brother, Jeremy, to complete the 50 mile route of the Miller Ride for the Arts in Milwaukee. It turned out to be a great ride. The weather was perfect for riding, not too windy, w/ temps in the mid 70's.

Literally thousands of riders participate in this ride making it very exciting to join riders of all shapes and sizes on all types including mountain bikes, hybrids, road bikes, recumbents, and tandems. The best part was that this ensured we would not be the slowest on the route. My dad and I were on our road bikes while Jeremy was on my dad's old hybrid.

The start was rather anti-climatic. We were about half way back in the pack and once they announced "go" and started playing the Rocky theme song we stood there doing absolutely nothing waiting for the hundreds of riders ahead of us to get moving so we could finlly go. Some early comedy ensued when we saw not one but two female riders stall out in traffic and, unable to clip out in time, fell in slow motion.

Finally, we were off. Our initial goal was to average 10-12 mph but this was soon thrown out the window as the early stages had us cruising right along at around 16 mph. The route was great with a good portion of the early miles right down along Lake Michigan. The rest stops were also excellent w/ banananas, sliced apples, Gatorade, and some excellent fruit bars and granola/chocolate/nut bars.

Our pace did slow down some on the second half. For the most part the ride was an out and back with a few small deviations. It was Jeremy's first ride of the season - nothing like starting out w/ a 50 miler to get the blood going. He was definitely hurting towards the end but I'm very impressed he actually made it the whole ride.

As we rode along the lake towards the finish there was a nice mist rising off the beach and the water. Made for a pretty cool view.

Overall this was an excellent ride and I felt really good the whole ride. It definitely increased my confidence that I'll be ready for the Maywood Earth Century in September. We've already signed up for our next ride right here in Normal,IL July 7th. We signed up for the metric century for this one and chances are it will be both hotter and windier so it will be another good test.

See ya next blog!

Introduction

Greetings one and all. I intend to use this blog to jot down my random thoughts as I attempt to get back into decent cycling shape and hopefully lose some weight along the way.

I've recently started commuting to work on a regular basis. It's a nice flat 7.25 mile trip through the booming metropolis of Bloomington/Normal Illinois. With gas prices as high as they are, it seemed as good a time as any to begin riding to work.

Also in the works are a few longer distance organized rides during the summer. The first will be a 50-mile jaunt throught Milwaukee,WI and points north in the Miller Ride for the Arts that will be held this Sunday, June 3rd.

July 7th I'll be doing the Pedaling for Kicks ride in Bloomington, IL. I hope to do the 64-mile metric century route. Then August 11th I hope to do the metric century route of the Interplanetary Bike Ride in Peoria, IL.