Goings on....

The sun has finally returned to Northeast Ohio after almost a week of solid rain. One of the storms that rolled through produced hail for about 5 minutes, something I don't think I've ever seen. Usually hail only lasts for a brief moment but it was actually starting to accumulate on the grass. The wet weather kept us indoors as far as riding goes. This was somewhat OK with me because last week was a bit of R & R as far as riding goes. The legs were getting a bit burnt out and even though I rode 5 days last week, three of those rides were on rollers and for only about an hour each. The other two rides were on our mountain bikes which I will elaborate more on below... We spent this past weekend with Marty up in Michigan, one of our usual mountain biking pilgrimmages of the year. We have some great mountain biking within a one hour radius of Wadsworth but Marty has even more within the same radius of Ypsilanti. We were hoping to avoid driving through any rain on the trip up on Friday but that didn't happen. We were 20 minutes from Marty's and we could see the rain in the distance... and it ended up pouring on us. The poor bikes on the roof had to be wiped down when we got there. Saturday we did our usual ride of the trail at Pinckney State Recreation Area just north of Ann Arbor. It's an 18 mile loop and you don't repeat any sections. They have pretty sandy soil so it drains well. On top of that, they have actually built the trail properly and don't have erosion problems like some trails in Ohio. Poor Heath had a flat about halfway through the ride and just when he had it fixed, he broke the valve core out of the tube as he removed the pump! We all got a pretty good laugh out of that. Nothing like insult to injury. Afterwards, we went to this great little pub in Dexter, MI called, appropriately, Dexter's Pub. They have great beers on tap (including Bell's Oberon) and pretty good food. The perfect combo after a tough ride. Sunday we went to Island Lake Recreation Area. It's a little further than Pinckney and the trail was supposed to be pretty non-technical and about a 13-mile loop. It lived up to its billing as I rode the entire trail in my big chainring. We finished the loop in about 1hr15min which is pretty fast considering we weren't even hammering. Heath wasn't feeling well so he didn't ride with us that day. The drive home wasn't too bad except for the Cavs losing to Detroit in the playoffs. I guess the best team won but we were sure hoping.... Lorena and I went out for a nice road ride last night and my legs felt great. I think the R & R really helped and I'm hoping that I can continue the good form tonight at the OCC ride. Looking forward to Memorial Day weekend coming up. We'll probably ride West Branch and maybe do some fishing. That's all for now. Only a few weeks until we visit Moscow, ID!! We can't wait. Chris & Lorena

And now it's May!

Wow. Where did April go!? It's been a while since the last post even though I've been wanting to write stuff for a while. I guess you'll just have to deal with a massive post now. Here's the rundown of what we've been up to for the last month.... As far as racing goes, we've spent the last two weekends up at Race at the Lakes. I always look forward to this race series because it seems as though I've done pretty well in the past. The first race went pretty well and I tried for a couple of primes and missed the 2nd one by about 4 inches at the line. I was friggin' cross-eyed sprinting for that one. I'm not sure where I finished but it was likely in the top 20. Our average was 24.5 mph! Lorena's race got goofed up because they were caught by the Cat 5 men when the women had 2 laps to go and the race official rang the bell for the men.... leading to confusion with the women and they sprinted on the wrong lap. That led them to start the women's race earlier the following week. Now we have get up even earlier on a Saturday! Last weekend's race was even faster than the first for us. With 5 laps to go there was a break of about 8 riders and coming into a sharp left, one of the riders in the break clipped a pedal and went down hard. Luckily, it didn't cause anyone else to go down but he did sustain a broken collarbone and rib. We went neutral for 30 minutes while they tended to him and when we restarted, we only went 2 laps and it was a 2.5 mile sprint. My legs didn't really like that too well and so I just finished in the pack. We did have two riders near the top though. Poor Lorena was terribly outnumbered in the women's race. One team had 4 riders and another team had 5. The team with 4 ran the race and swept the podium. This past Sunday a large group of us went mountain biking at Mohican State Park. There's some new trail down there and all told, we rode about 20 miles of really great single track. It was supposed to be a longer ride (50 miles) but some people in our group had to get back home and we had to stop early. I can't wait to go back. My new Gunnar performed beautifully. We were in Marietta for Easter and got in a great 45 mile, very hilly loop. Naturally, we visited the grandparents, aunts/uncles, and cousins and ate lots of good food. Other than riding, we've just been working and enjoying life. Lorena has now been officially accepted to the University of Idaho and just got notification of acceptance at Purdue. I haven't heard from them yet but we think that Idaho is probably where we'll be going. In fact, we'll be making a trip out there in the next few weeks to visit and meet with faculty. We're definitely looking forward to it. Hope all is well for everybody reading. ~Chris & Lorena