Last weekend I participated in the Tour de Cure, a two day bike event to help raise money for diabetes. Brandon, Landon, and the crew did it last year, but I was not really that much into cycling then. This year I committed to it and glad I stuck with it. I was worried I might not have trained enough for the long distances but it actually went quite well. Amy and I were mostly matched and so we stuck together for the most part. And check out our jerseys!

Club4407 at the Tour de Cure

Day 1 was wonderful – there is supposedly a contest for the best rest stop and I have to say the first stop gets the crown. They were on the ball. There was one sort of barren and lonely stretch on day 1 that was pretty meh but it was followed up by a wonderful drive to a forest so that made up for it. Day 2 was pretty but had way more traffic and fewer signs than day 1 so I was fairly nervous almost the whole ride. In fact, I think my only suggestion for next year is to get better sag support on the 32 route day 2 or pick a route that is less frequented by traffic. There was one stop sign where I ended up racking myself pretty hard because a car ran the stop right when we were going to start going. I was trying to clip in quickly but my right clip was upside down so it ended up slipping off. That hurt.

Nonetheless I made it! All told, I did around 86.26km on day 1 and 51.84km on day 2 (basically the 53 and 32 mile routes). My sprints were still a bit slow – particularly for turns as I don’t like taking blind corners at high speed and things. I did pretty good on uphills though. I even had more umph for some of them than I used. I am fairly proud of myself! It was weird too. After we were all done on day 2 and heading home, my legs still felt like they wanted to be on a bike. In fact, I could have likely gone further if it were just about my legs, although my neck, arms, back, and hands were all pretty well done by the time I pulled into the finish line.

There were some pretty amazing cyclists out there. The 80 milers were fast. I guess they had to be in order to make it to the finish line in a reasonable time frame. The routes combined in a few places and so we would often get passed by a crazy 1337 group of cyclists. Everyone was nice and there were only a few idiots among us that would do stupid things (such as not get in line when someone yells “car back” – even after yelling multiple times). But all in all it was a great experience and I have a wonderful time! Need to work on my clip-in and clip-out though, but I only feel once – at the first rest stop when I was only clipped out on the right side and started slowly falling to the left. How embarrassing :)