Ride for MS

You know you have been too busy when you forget to blog about riding your bike for 175 miles for a weekend with a bunch of your best friends. Below is our out-of-chronological order post about the MS150.
(Team Revolution/Peak Fasteners before the MS150.)

The Harmon's Best Dam Bike Ride to raise money for multiple sclerosis research was held in Cache Valley, northern Utah on June 27-28. These MS rides are done all over the country, and Drew has done them in both Texas and Utah. Lucy had not had the opportunity to participate before, but figured it would be good training for the Laramie race and was for a good cause too, so we signed up with the Revolution/Peak Fasteners team. This is our same mtb race team, but we all ride road bikes too. We were honored to be able to ride with and for Sandy P., our teammate who has been diagnosed with MS. Another of our teammates, Gigi A., also has MS, so we rode for her and for a number of other friends and relatives that have this devastating disease.

We arrived Friday evening at the Logan fairgrounds to set up our tent in the team campsite. We enjoyed a fun evening with friends cooking up a nice dish of pasta and chicken. Everybody brought a little something to put in to the pot. We sat around in lawn chairs telling stories and laughing as the sun set.

Everyone retired for the evening fairly early with thoughts of the impending many hours in the saddle. Saturday bright and early we made our final preparations for the day's ride. On day one riders may chose one of several different distances to ride. We as a group decided that 100 miles would be a fitting distance.

After a solid breakfast and cowboy coffee from the organizers, we hopped on our bikes. The temperature was perfect and the sun was out in force. We wish we could say that the wind was always at our backs, but where would the challenge be in that? The organizers had well-stocked aid stations along the way, and our sometimes-15-rider-strong pace line the 100 miles almost seemed easy. We averaged 18.5 mph on the first day. We returned to our campground around 3 PM and relaxed for a bit before we went into town and enjoyed a fabulous dinner at Elements Restaurant. We cannot say enough good things about this place. Great food, up-scale decor and service, and very reasonable prices.

Sunday allowed us to complete another 75 miles of great riding. We had the benefit of the local police closing down part of the road for us to enjoy a traffic free climb in and out of one of the local canyons. The climb up the canyon was into a 20 mpg headwind, but after we cleared the mouth of the canyon and formed up a pace line, it was manageable.

(The team at the top of the climb.)

The best part of the canyon was that we were able to turn around and ride back down. We got in our fast pace line again and Lucy actually had to ride hard to keep up with them on the downhill. Quite a change from her usual coast behind wind foil Drew.

We rode with a really fun group. Travis and Jim (above) kept us smiling even when our legs were tired and our behinds grew tired of our saddles.

(Jim looks dashing in Rhonda's new hat, don't you think?)

Cache Valley is a perfect place to ride, as it has many farms, wide shoulders on the roads, and light traffic. Click on this link to watch a really cool 4-minute video put together by one of our teammates from the ride http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E-3soMS4Tg

(That is Lucy's behind you see in the first shot, and Lucy and Drew are both in the third shot.)

Thanks to all of you who together donated $650 to the National MS Society in our names. Without your support, the MS chapter in Utah would not have been able to raise more than 1.5 million dollars during this ride!