Our friends mom has MS, and we have been doing this ride for about 4 years now to show our support and raise money for cure for MS. It's a great cause and hopefully we will continue doing this annually.
The support, volunteers and riders at this event are great, everyone very helpful and friendly.
For this ride we wanted to have our own jerseys and we got them just on time. It was great to see 6 people wearing same jerseys and what made them even more special is that they were ours. By the way if you are interested in supporting us and getting one, you can check them out here: http://www.tribug.com/tri-bug-bike-jersey-by-craft-p-149.html
Saturday we got to NIU, got our packets and ended up waiting in the pavilion for 3 hours due to the pouring rain. Also the long option of 100 miles was canceled and we only rode 60 miles 1st day. First 40 miles or so, the rain kept pouring on and off, it was cold and my fingers were frozen so much that i could not even point at the pot holes on the way. Also we did not want to stop at the rest stops for too long to let the muscles cool down. Finally towards the end of the ride the weather warmed up and we even saw some sunshine.
After we were done with the ride on Saturday, we had some good pasta, and some beer. Went to our room at the dorms of NIU and fall asleep. I guess the bad weather took the toll on us even though it was only 60 miles.
Unfortunately Saturday night 2 of our friends had to leave because of some family emergency. So Sunday ride was promising to be less exciting.
Sunday turned out to be a beautiful day, sun shinning, birds singing, had some very good breakfast and took off for another 80 miles. Weather couldn't be better that day. We rode in a column of 3 people rotating every few minutes to pull. Some people tagged along during the ride and drafted a little of us. Some guy was riding with his daughter 2 seat bicycle, he was doing great and when he asked if he could draft of us we gladly offered him the ride. He was doing a very good job going at this speed with some extra weight.
We averaged about 18 mph for the 80 mile course. I think it's not bad for some windy open planes.
Finally we go to the finish line, had some post ride food, which i thought this time was not very good.
And took off.
It was a great weekend, we had a great group of people riding with us and looking forward to next year!
