Family Fun, Warm Weather, and Racing

This past weekend we were blessed with our first taste of summer sunshine thus far in 2015.  Both Saturday and Sunday gave was warm temperatures and sunshine which allowed us to get in some biking.  I started off my Saturday with a 20 mile urban bike ride with my favorite riding buddy.  Addie and I rode from our new home to downtown Canton to our favorite coffee shop.  After enjoying a Frappuccino and way too many peanut butter morsi from Muggswigz we set off on a new adventure.  In all the years that I have been riding bikes I never rode around a parking garage.  As we left the coffee shop and rolled by a parking garage with no security guard in sight I did what most fathers would do and suggested to my daughter how much fun it would be to have parking garage races.  We quickly learned that racing down is much for fun then racing to the top.  What made it even more interesting is when a pigeon would fly out of the rafters and only inches over your head.  After the parking garage we made our way back to Sippo Lake and did a couple miles of trails around the lake. 

The next day was the first race of the season for us and Sunday proved to be just as nice as Saturday was.  Early Sunday morning we piled 3 mountain bikes into the minivan and Arryn, Addie and I set off to ride / race at Mountwood park.  My family has become much more fond of the mountain bike races compared to the road races because when we go to mountain bike races the entire family brings their bikes and they mostly offer kids races along with beer and something to eat following the races.  This makes it fun for the whole family. 

Mountwood started off with a kid’s mountain bike clinic followed by the kid’s race.  Addie did great in her race getting 5^th place.  She really enjoyed seeing all the friends she made last year at the OMBC mountain bike races.  It was my turn to get to race after Addie and I was really looking forward to it because I was going to get the chance to race with my teammate Chris Jones who also happens to work at Dynamic Physical Therapy.  I really enjoy racing and riding mountain bikes with Chris because my technical skills are not very good at all and Chris has great handling skills which helps me to feel more confident when I am following his wheel and riding the lines he takes.  On this day however the race did not start out that great because within the first 100 yards of the race I seen Chris get pushed into a ditch which happened to be about a 6 foot drop off the gravel road we were climbing.  This put him at almost the very back of a large field, but that changed very quickly when he got onto the single track and started picking other racers off left and right.  That is also when I lost sight of him myself.  He went on to have a great race going from nearly last place to finishing in 5^th place.  Great job Chris!  Following the race we did a cool down with Addie and Arryn and then got changed and enjoyed some good food while they announced awards.   The best part of the day was that all of our Cannondale mountain bikes from Pathfinder worked flawlessly.  The worst part about the day was having to go home and clean bikes, but with ProGold products it makes the job much easier.

Thanks for reading and God bless!