Bike

• 1h 22m 28s
• 22.64 miles
• 16.47 Mi/hr

This was a good ride. I wanted to go west and get away from the people on the bike path. Mike and Zach are not used to riding the road and dealing with traffic but they did great.

A few miles into the ride I thought I had something stuck to my tire. Turned out I had a flat! The boys were impressed with how fast I changed the tire and how well the CO2 cartridge worked.

I struggled on a few hills but we kept up a good pace. My goal was a 15-16 mph ride. We averaged 16.5 I'm happy. Now if only I could get rid of the cough!

Bike

• 1h 24m 46s
• 21.90 miles
• 15.50 Mi/hr

Only had 3 other guys go today. Too many girl friends getting in the way.

We had a good west wind and we were going east to begin with so I kept the pace down so not as to blow up the slower riders just in time to turn back into the wind.

We dropped Chris really bad on the big hill up from the river. I kept the pace up until the turn in behind Target Field and waited for him there.

As we went up the rammp across the street there were a couple of punk/emo girls in front of us. The one almost rode her bike straight into the brick wall! Downtown people are wierd.

Jeremy and I kept a good pace wiating for Chris at every split in the trail. Once we hit the north end of Cedar Lake I figured Chris could make it back on his own and we took off.

Jeremy tucked in behind me and never took a pull (that is OK I'm looking for a work out). Eventually, just as I was tiring, I was able to latch onto another wheel and he dragged us for a couple miles and let me recover.

After I got back and changed Chris rolls in. He was all hot that I hadn't waited at a split and he ended up lost. I was very confused. It is a trail for God's sake.

He ended up taking an access off to a road and came back on residential streets. The access was about 100 feet long. You would have figured he would have known it was the wrong.

Bike

• 1h 12m 57s
• 18.79 miles
• 15.45 Mi/hr

Rode down to the Opus Crit and watched some friends race. Then I did a cool down ride with Tim where we went around the Cedar Lake loop.

Bike

• 2h 06m 24s
• 34.60 miles
• 16.42 Mi/hr

I am still hacking up chunks of lung on occasion so I had no intention of going super hard today. 15-16 mph with the wind and hills seemed about right.

5 riders showed up (some later than others) and we got underway about 15 minutes late.

Randel dropped his chain just before the first hil so we were all pretty much so together when we hit 10.

As we decended the Old Creek Road Randel, Mike and Adam slowly pulled away from Andreas and me.

Andreas was great. When I would start to lag he would drop the pace and let me get back into his draft.

I led the hill up out of Chaska to the Carver turn off. I struggled but got us there. The down hill into Carver was BEAUTIFUL!

When we hit the turn off to East Union it was uphill and into the wind. I had been hacking and snot rocketing so Andreas once again took the lead. This is a long not too steep hill and again when ever I would start to drop off he would back it down and let e get in his draft. At the top of the hill I took over again into the wind.

At one time I thought it seemed like we were moving along well and I looked down to see 15.9 on the bike computer :( Serious dissappointment.

I got us to the turn on CR 52 and hoped to take us to the corner of 43 but just did not have the juice in my legs. about a quarter mile short I let Andreas lead.

We took a little break at that corner. Andreas stretched his back and I had a couple Perpetum Solids.

When we took off again we had the wind at our back. Adreas set the pace at about 20 mph and we just burned the miles up.

My bike computer gives me splits every 5 miles. It was in here that we had a 16 minute split!

At Gotha we turned back towards East Union. This stretch is a nice rolly piece of road ending with one major down hill with a serious uphill to follow. It totally amazes me how fast you can go from 38 mph to 10 mph!

At East Union we went north again - and had the wind at our back. In here there were a long climb and a shorter steeper climb. We just hunkered down and spun up them.

After that we were back to our 18-20 mile per hour pace. It almost felt effortless at that point.

Part of what I enjoy with this ride is being out in the country. We saw some snow geese and heard LOTS of birds singing. Talk about relaxing!