Long Over Due

Wow! I am horrible about keeping up on this!!!  I guess it's that time of year when the weather is so nice that you'd rather be outside than messing around on a computer!  Let's see what I can remember to do a recap of my most memorable training rides so far!

First Ride of the season... and I know this will never happen again... St Patty's Day Eve!!! Yes, the middle of  MARCH!!!  We had unseasonable warm weather and it was hard not to get out on the bike and enjoy it!  Almost 27 miles right off of the gate and it felt GREAT to be back out on the bike!

The second ride was a different story!  I knew that we couldn't get lucky enough (we are in NW Ohio after all!) for the warm weather to stick around.  Kelli and I decided that since we will be rooming together when we go to Wisconsin for our ride, that we should start riding together!  We met up in Xenia and headed South on the Little Miami Trail.  And when I say it was cold, I mean it was cold!  We had rain the day before, and if it was 50 degrees the whole weekend, it was a cold 50 degrees!  I was underdressed because as cold blooded as I am, I never would have thought that I'd be out in that kind of weather.  After that ride, I have decided to stick with the warmer temps!  Our feet were so numb after we got done because of the way bike shoes vent!  That was 28.5 miles and for at least 15 of it I was miserable!

In the beginning of May, we had a training ride as part of the Young's Dairy Ride.  This is a great ride that Young's put on where you have an opportunity to ride from Youngstown clear up to Ohio Northern University in Ada for a whopping 83 miles! And you can even bike your way back the next day!  The money raised from this ride go to 4 different charities, with JDRF being on of them!  This training ride was also my first ride with other members of the SW Ohio JDRF Cycling Team!  I was stoked!  And 44.7 miles later I was exhausted!   But I did it and felt so good because that was a great accomplishment for being my third ride of the season! The hills right off the bat really got to me, but I managed through them and was glad the ride back was flat! I also got to meet other members of the team, and every single one of them are wonderful people!  On the way back from the last stop I got to ride with Coach Scott for a little bit and he gave some great pointers!

A few weeks later I participated in the Kenton Buggy Ride.  And that was 43.7 miles of pain! My exercise induced vomiting reared its ugly head and I worried that this would plague me for the whole season if this is how it's going to start out.  I signed up to do the Metric Century (which turns out to be around 60 miles).  14 miles in at the first rest stop and can feel my stomach turning and my legs are getting weaker.  I found from the previous ride that the bagels I ate at the stops didn't bother me.  Since eating bread helped, I had some delicious Amish cinnamon bread!  But I also made the mistake of eating some strawberries too.  Feeling so sluggish early on, I decided to skip a loop which knocked about 14 miles off of the 60.  I went the rest of the route and even took a short cut to take off a few extra miles.  I think my body knows me and decided that it will hold on until I am absolutely done.  I no sooner made it back to the parking lot and my stomach let me have it! I made a mental note to talk to the JDRF coaches and see what they think will help me with this problem.

Kelli and I were able to talk Coach Scott into doing a bike maintenance class for some of us newbies!  It was very early the morning after my Kenton ride and an hour and a half down to Centerville where it was being held!  The class was great and I took away two great pieces of advice... a simple way to get the back tire off & on and how to wash and grease your bike! I was sore from the day before and really didn't feel like riding afterwards, but Coach talked me into doing an easy recovery ride.  It was an easy 16.5 miles through some neat areas!  And being Dayton, it wouldn't be a ride without hills!  I was told by a few of the older guys that they were impressed with my climbing skills for 1) being from a Northern, flatter area and 2) for being a fairly new ride!  I'll take that as a compliment!