Monday, May 9, 2011

Training Ride with the Ladies

Training Ride Blog Entry.




The above is the song I referenced below, give it a play

Wow, what a busy morning. Between a neighborhood yard sale and 5k to raise money for someone who is very sick, family pictures up the canyon, a dance recital and everything else you might try to cram into a Saturday; it’s a wonder we got any ride time in at all. As many of you readers know biking takes immense planning and available free time. I often find myself mowing the lawn at 8:30 at night so I can keep Saturday s free. With that in mind play this song, one of my favorites as I am riding away.


Yard Sale & 5k


Our good friend and neighbor has been battling cancer for more than five years. It has been said that when you are diagnosed with cancer you are literally in the fight of your life. Our friend has fought the battle with cancer to a five year stalemate, but each month that passes brings new challenges, new treatment regimens and aggressive therapies that her medical insurance does not cover. Throughout all of this, many of us have asked ourselves "Is there anything we can do to help?" The answer, on Saturday May 7th, is an emphatic yes!

 It was actually a great turnout for the yard sale and 5k; we ended up raising over $3,000 to assist with medical bills. Although that was a rewarding feeling, I can’t imagine it making that big of an impact on the mountain of doctor and hospital bills. I think we all knew that going into this, but that wasn’t the goal. The goal was to show this person that we all care and love her and that she is in our thoughts and prayers. And with that there was a great turn out of support and a lot of fun.




Our Very Own Matt







Window of Opportunity

It started to look like we may all just end up doing our own individual rides. But after checking schedules, coordinating with spouses and kids there was indeed a small window of opportunity that was closing very quickly. After some finagling we all realized it was now or never. With imdeebers, off to work and Matt taking care of the kids I was fortunate to be the only guy invited to join the wives of, The Sons of perdition*. A couple last minute details and it was settled we had enough time for a 2hr ride.

I should mention that we have done a great job of slowly introducing the characters, but there is still one yet to be announced and I don't yet have a great nick name for her. For now lets call her the Swiss Miss double pigtail lady... nick name pending. (Deebers, I think your on for an introduction of the Swedish fish girl)

We posed for a quick picture and we were off. We decided on a 32 mile out and back course with the turnaround at Camp Williams on top of Redwood road. I was impressed cause I know their legs were tired from the earlier 5k (Nice Job Ladies)  If we had engines on our bikes we would have roared past our friends and family still at the yard sale as we tore off out of the neighborhood heading directly into the wind.




Why so much Traffic?

As we hit Draper, we started hitting a lot of oncoming traffic, bike traffic that is. I kept thinking there had to be a race as I noticed a lot of race numbers on the bikes. I pointed this out to the ladies and they noticed that they were all female riders. A few more miles and passing another 100 riders it was confirmed there was a women only ride that was unfolding on our exact route. Later inquiries would determine the race to be the Goldilocks century that none of us knew about.

I think the ladies I was riding with enjoyed seeing all the other determined cyclists and agreed that this race would be something they might be interested in doing next year. Although not planned we benefitted from traffic police and crowds of people cheering for anyone on a bike even a Rodzilla who looked nothing like a female rider.

This aggression will not stand, you can’t ignore Rodzilla

At the top of Redwood there was a rest station with lots of goodies, I wasn’t hungry but I love me some goodies, we posed for another quick picture and we were off again. Looking forward to a favorable tail wind all the way home we roared down the hill.


I ended up catching a group of other ladies and being the friendly guy that I am I started chatting with this group of about 7. I commented on how fast they were going down the hill, and they didn’t even acknowledge me, they continued talking as if I wasn’t there. They then began talking about their friend who had already gotten two flats, and I tried again making comments about how much debris there was on that last stretch and again I got nothing. As you can see from the picture above, it isn’t like I go unnoticed. I can only imagine what they would later talk about (this creepy guy picking up ladies on a women only bike ride and how he didn’t catch the social queues they were throwing my way.) Lucky for me this is when my own group joined and I didn’t feel so awkward.

We continued home and the race traffic was eventually eliminated and we were back to just our group when the unthinkable happened. The wind in all its glory decided to shift 180 degrees. So now we had the pleasure of a stiff head wind both heading out and coming home. Yeah!.

It was a great ride 34 miles, although we wanted to have a little faster average it was still great fun to get out with the ladies. Personally I enjoyed riding with them as I didn’t have to deal with all the typical man posturing and competitiveness. The ladies are in it for fun first, and that was nice change of pace.


Thanks for reading and blog more with you later.
Rodzilla


Rodzilla.

6 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. So you brought a harem of three lady cyclists on your last ride. I'll resist the impulse to ask you how many of them dropped you on the hill climbs and just point out that when you're riding with your lady posse it's considered bad form to scout for new recruits, especially from the participants of the annual Goldilocks All Women's Ride (see future blog entry, 'Rodzilla pedals to a near top-100 finish in the second annual Goldilocks All Women's Ride'). It occurs to me you fail on every level for participation in said bike race. You lack the requisite number of X chromosomes, you're bald and when you did have hair it was hardly golden. Maybe that explains the frigid reception you got from the lady cyclists you tried to chat up on Saturday?

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  3. One more thing, you grabbed Goldilocks snacks? It's one thing to draft behind riders who are paying for the privilege to be out there, but then you ate their shot blocks and oatmeal cookies too? You're lucky you returned home with your manhood intact. I'm just sayin'.

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  4. That was a fun ride-even if the goldilocks riders assumed you were hitting on them. They totally would have had a conversation with the Rodzilla if one of them had a flat tire and there wasn't the traffic cops to help. Maybe they were intimidated by your size. It was a great day for a ride. Take away the wind coming home and the deep red sunburn on the legs-it was perfect and looking forward to many more. Lady Canada (dont' want to try and figure out how to spell the La Canad------ thing so I won't) and Red Rider are the best girls to go riding with! Rodzilla (like Red Rider said) was great to have a long and draft off of. The yardsale/5k was a huge success too.

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  5. It was a good ride. So much better than the ride Liz and I did in the snow the week before. I, fortunately, wore sunscreen and had no burn but I am starting to get helmet-tan with the white lines where my straps go. (Hate the helmet-tan.) Anyone up for 45 miles this Saturday?

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  6. Loved the ride. Was very fun! I enjoyed having people cheer us along the way - even though we weren't part of the race. I also loved hearing the race ladies comment about Rodzilla after he rode past them - my favorite being - "Did you see that guy? He was huge!" :) And he's all mine ladies!

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