It has been mostly commuting mileage on the bikes. I have been riding either the Vandal Bike or the Giant with trailer to work and back. I did do one long ride at the end of March with a small group of people. It was a ride on the back roads to Troy, Moscow on the trail, Pullman on airport road, and back on the trail to Moscow. I put in a good 50 miles that day.
Road Race Ronde van Palouse Style
The Ronde van Palouse Road Race happened on the 13th of April and it is a very hard race to have as your first race. This race was so brutal that it could be used to get prisoners to spill the beans. I don’t know how many times I was willing to take the blame for things when the wind would come up and toss me around. This was 16 miles of hoping that you could make it to the finish line so that you could do another lap of torture. I have ridden in wind before but it seemed like the wind was taking this ride very personally. It seemed like something had made it mad and it wanted to show us who was boss. There was going to be no prisoners and a lot of anguish. The wind knob was turned to 11 and we were going to suffer for it. Not only did the wind have some fun but there were also bouts of snow and hail when you really did not need them to show up.
There was some interesting scenery along the route. The cemetery at the half way point was a grim reminder of the suffering going on. I kept wondering when the workers were going to show up to start digging new graves. Mt. Hope was the name of the cemetery and the little church located right nearby. The snow that I could see gathering in the mountains really made me feel glad that the snow that was falling was not sticking where we were riding.
I did have fun during the race and was glad to finish 46th out of over 50 people in the CAT 4/5 group.
Ronde van Palouse,
Nothing to lose,
Windy, Snowy, Windy, Pain,
At least there was no rain
The Northwest Collegiate Cycling Championships are coming up this weekend and I will be helping out by driving one of the lead cars for the “C” class of racers. After I get done doing that then that afternoon there will be a citizen’s road race that will do the same route that the college racers just did that morning. The road race is located in Palouse, WA and it is a 23 mile loop. I will be doing the loop twice for a fun filled 46 miles of racing.
