Century Ride (or 25 miles if you aren't an Ironman)

Remember how amazing the weather was last weekend?  It was the perfect fall weekend, maybe a smidge on the cool side, but it was sunny, the skies were blue and the leaves are finally starting to change colors and show us what they've got.  Well, the weekend before, when we decided to do a 100 mile (Ryan)/25 mile (everyone else) bike ride, the weather was crap!  Complete crap I tell you! 

Every day up until the Sunday of the ride I told the group "I won't shed one single tear if I don't ride this ride.  I have zero desire to ride in the cold and the rain".  When Ryan left the lake house around 5:30AM and I heard the rain banging on the windows I just rolled over in bed, pulled the covers to my nose and went back to sleep.  An hour later when he was about to start his ride, he texted me to say that if we bail on the ride to let him know and when he's finished he will head home.  I asked, "Is it pouring?" and he said "Not yet", I snuggled even farther down and closed my eyes.  Then about 10 minutes later I decided I needed to get my big butt out of bed and get ready.  I had a ride to do and I wasn't going to be the one holding up the crew. 

To be clear, the weather was pretty crappy.  It was cool, maybe low 50's with a drizzly, misty rain most of the ride.  See that lady in the back?  She even has a scarf and hat on!! 

Here's a shot of the whole crew.  Well, not quite.  Greg didn't actually ride (even though he totally could have, we had an extra bib number) and Ryan was out at probably mile 50 when we took this so he's not in there.  Can you tell that it's crappy out?  TM has a rain poncho and B and I have our hoods under our helmets.  And yes, we rode the full 25 miles with them up like that.

Check out these great action shots that B and I snapped of each other.  Probably the best part of this whole process was me passing the camera to B and then her having to switch hands while riding.  We managed to switch it back and forth between us, and grab a few shots without dropping it, or stopping.  Yep, we were proud of ourselves.

Not bad right?

So, B and I were the first ones done with the ride.  At some point we sort of pulled away from the rest of the group and just kept going.  It was easier to keep riding, knowing we were getting closer to the end, and the warmth, and the Packers game, than it was to pull over and wait for the group so we kept riding.  We finished maybe 30 minutes before the rest of the crew.

Actually, somehow we finished before Ryan.  I was a little worried when I realized he hadn't finished yet but he crossed the finish like about 20 minutes after Brenna and I.  He was surprised that we were finished and for some reason just assumed that we didn't even ride.  When I told him that we had, he then asked if we did the 15 miles.  NO JERK!  We did the whole dang thing :O)

Ry sort of blew up near the end of the ride and wasn't feeling too well when he finished so we grabbed two huge plates of spaghetti and a bunch of drinks for him so he could get his blood sugar back up.  He's not really sure what happened in the end, but he didn't look so hot when he finally finished the race.

We didn't have a ton of time to hang out and enjoy the nice crap weather...we had the Packers v. Bears game to get to for goodness sakes!!!!  Since I'm still about a week behind on the blogs we all know how that turned out.  I'll just say, B and I were pretty happy campers!

We spent the game at Johnny and Celeste's house, about half way home from the lake, and we had a great time.  B and I got tons of crap for showing up looking like this:

But hey, we were excited to support our team!

Go Packers!