Ride Report, Ride Schedule, Ride, Ride, Ride!

A total of 11 committed ped’lers made the looong and arduous journey up to Whitehall last Saturday for 31 hilly miles or 41 flat (really!) miles. On the hilly route, we had a trio of Scheidels, JD, Nicole, SGS&ACTW Kirsten, SGS&AC’s Mom Ginger, and yours truly. I’m pleased to report that we all pretty much stayed together, and everyone in the group did all the hills despite being offered opportunities to cut ‘em off. Extra hardcore points all around!

We all rolled back to our cars, noshed a bit, then some of the folks headed out for family activities while we picked up some new riders. 5 of us rolled for 41 miles: Me, Kirsten, Chris R (who had apparently chased us for about 12 miles of the first loop), once-and-future-rider-and-always-on-the-team Jack C., and (making his team ride debut, and doing so most excellently) Randy D.

Let me note that the only person (other than me) to do the whole 72ish mile shebang was My Trophy Wife Kirsten. Yep, she’s that awesome.

Anyway, the idea of split starts for rides has kinda taken hold here in the coaching pavilion, so I think we’ll be trying that again at future team rides. AND, MC and I have done some revisioning of the team ride schedule for the rest of the year, so, here ya go:

8/21 – ODRAM!

8/22 – MOST Ride (tour opportunity)

8/29 – Team Ride hosted by the Poeders in the Gun Lake area

9/5 – Team Ride hosted by Cindy A. in the Cedar Springs area

9/11 – Maple Leaf Metric (tour opportunity)

9/18 – Team Ride from the Walk in Downtown GR!

9/19 – Leelanau Harvest Tour (tour opportunity)

9/25 – Team Ride from Ada Park

9/26 – Apple Cider Century (another tour, assuming it’s not full!)

10/2 – Team Ride from… somewhere!

10/9 – Colorburst Tour, GR Area (if we still have bikes!)

As always, we’ll have more information to ya as we get closer to the various events. ODRAM starts from Meinert County Park just North of Montague at 6am this Saturday; you’ve got cool teammates riding and working the event!

The MOST tour is a very scenic and pretty dang hilly 75 miler, starting from Oehrli Elementary School in Montague. Looks like there’s a fair group o’ folks riding, so, again, good company! There are 50 and 25 mile options as well; those are progressively less hilly.

Sorta the point we’re making here is that we’re about 8 weeks out from ride day – now’s the time to hit a few really good long rides, and we want to make sure you have opportunities to do so!

My apologies if this is kinda disjointed; it’s been a day, y’know? Anyway, you get the picture. You guys rock! See a bunch of you this weekend, and a bunch more next weekend!