Sunday Fun Day!

While I could spend the duration of this blog singing the praises of how awesome my teammates are, especially after this weekend's 6 Hours of Brady's Run Mountainbike race, I would be failing to share my favorite story from the weekend. But to start with, 6 members of the Dynamic Physical Therapy powered by Pathfinder competed in a couple classes.

Mass Start of the 6 Hours of Brady's Run

First off, new team member Billy Slutz raced the solo men's division and finished a solid 14th overall with 6 laps. He probably would have finished a lot better, but he's still running the tires that came from the Cannondale Factory while we wait on our order of new tires to come in from Kenda, and suffered a significant sidewall tear. He was able to finish his first lap running and managed to borrow a spare wheel off of a friend of the team, Glenn Gerasimek.  By the time Billy came back for lap two, Shawn Geiger had Billy's wheels set up with my spare set of Kenda Slant Sixes.  Nice job Billy, and welcome to the 2014 team ;-) . In the Co-Ed Duo, I again teamed up with Nikki and we had a blast.  Our results weren't as notable as they were the week prior at Cranky Monkey, but I don't think I have ever seen anyone have so much fun on the bike. She has definitely brought an element to the chemistry of the team that will be hard to replace, I vote she stays in Pittsburgh! JR again competed with the birthday girl, Stephanie Lamb. Due to some extremely fast couples, they finished off the podium.  Only newbie, Nate Clair (partnering with Veda Geramisek of Whole Athlete) managed to make an appearance on the podium. The two youngin's finished in 5th place with 7 laps. Well done!

Pre Race Photo... Nate telling Billy what he thinks of all his no-shows at races??

I love this smile!

Birthday girl cutting her cake... man was it good too!

After the race, most of us headed down to the Southside and took Stephanie out for her Birthday. Then back to her place where she "taught" us the how to play one of her favorite games. I still don't know what the heck I was doing, but she did tie JR for the win, so I won't complain too loudly.  Happy Birthday Stephanie, but don't think I've forgotten that you got away with out your birthday spanking.

And that leads me to Sunday... Early last week, Billy and I were talking about what we could do for a ride on Sunday. I joke about him being new to the team, but its just with family and the race calendar, he hasn't made it to any of the ABRA team events yet. But the truth is, Billy is one of my best friends and I've missed having him around so far.  So when I knew we'd finally be racing the same event, we got to talking and decided to set up a recovery ride on Sunday. We chose to ride at Bavington since it was "on his way home" if he decided to stay over, or at the very least, partway between Pittsburgh and East Canton. I threw out an invite on the team's facebook page and Shawn stepped up with the local information and volunteered to lead a ride.

Billy and I were joined by Nate and Pat Clair, Stephanie, JR, Shawn and his girlfriend Cassie hit the trails for what I billed as a "Slow EASY" recovery ride. But then Nate gets kitted up and is wearing a skinsuit and I was like... my slow and his slow must be WAY different. All told, we covered almost 14 miles with only 637 feet of climbing... just what the legs needed after 2 endurance MTB rides in a week. And while the ride would be considered Newbie Friendly, there were still some areas of the route that would be considered pretty technical.  One such part was a double log pile spaced about 10' apart. The first was about 16" tall and the second was probably about 14" tall. After riding them, I threw my bike down and positioned my self in a convenient place to catch Cassie, who was trailing behind me. As she approached it, I hollered at her to ride it, and without hesitation just went up and over the log pile, then preceeded to head right at the second, more difficult pile and rode that as well. I don't know who was more surprised at how well she did, me or her. Two weekends in a row, I have been impressed with the skills of two new riders. Nikki did awesome as a newbie to the sport of MTBing, but she does have experience as a cyclist, and has even raced cross on numerous occassions. But Cassie on the other hand, impressed me with her determination even as a complete rookie to the sport. She was taking on obstacles that even caused me to approach with hesitation.  Put that girl on a bike that doesn't weigh half as much as she does, and she could waiting for me to catch up the next time we ride together. I was totatlly amazed at how well she road, and didn't complain 1 time about how long it was taking or how many times she had to push her bike up a hill. Well done Cassie... now to get you signed up to race... :-)