Tag: 50 mile bike ride

No Man Left Behind (aka EBC North Shore Century) – 9/18/16

north-shore-century-ebc

(Photo taken post race once we were off the bike. We both wore helmets throughout the ride.)

From the outside periphery, I’ve heard the phrase “No man left behind” when speaking of our Armed Forces. What it really boils down to is loyalty and not leaving a team member behind, as you know they wouldn’t leave you if the solution was reverse.

Earlier this summer, my uncle and I decided to do the 50 mile version of the North Shore Century. And a couple of weeks ago, one of my Dare2Tri Development teammates (Alberto) and his pilot Andrew decided to join us. So Sunday morning, we all met up at the park in Evanston and set off for the ride.

Things went well for the fiurst 4 or 5 miles, but near the bridge over I-94, they started to have issues. Andrew was able to get things tightened back up and we were back on the way. But that didn’t last. Shortly after that, they needed to pull over and we waited for the SAG wagon. Once the SAG crew had helped to tighten it up, we were back off again. But that didn’t last for long, and we eventually ended up at REI so they could have a bike mechanic look at it. Long story short, an internal bolt being too tight was messing things up.

They tapped out at REI, and we continued north towards the first rest stop. At this point, we were about 4 hours in and had only gone 10-11 miles. For others, it might have been easy to say at the second or third issue ‘you’re on your own’ and ride on. But in this order, (a) it’s not in my makeup to leave a friend behind and (b) I know that if things had been reversed they would have stayed with us.

After leaving the first rest stop (18.6 miles), we kept heading towards Lake Forest and then into Lake Bluff, which was the turnaround. On the way back, my body started getting unhappy with me. By about mile 32 (our own rest stop at Starbucks), my calf muscles had started to hurt. And by the time that we made it to the next rest stop (mile 44) in Winetka, it was hard to ride for more than a mile or two without it really hurting. I think part of this is that by that point, I’d been on the bike for 7 hours.

Even with the pain, we still made it back to the van by about 4:30 and back to much needed beer at the house.

Even with all the hurdles, it was still a great ride and a fun day. I look forward to doing the North Shore Century again next year!

Bicycle Ride – 9/4/16

bike-ride

Earlier in the year, I decided to do the North Shore Century (NSC) ride with my uncle. The NSC offers distances from 25 – 100 miles, and we will be doing the 50 mile ride. To get ready for the NSC, we did a training ride on Sunday.

After he got the tandem set up, we headed out towards Evanston and Lake Michigan. The first stop after about 7 miles was at the Bahai Temple. Really neat building from the outside. We continued on through Evanston to Glencoe, eventually stopping at a small convenience store. Once refueled in one sense and removing fuel in another, we headed back to their home.

On the way back, we went through the Frank Lloyd Wright street that’s in the area, stopping for photos. We also stopped at Lake Michigan on the way back for another break. I should have taken a gel when we stopped at the lake, but felt fine. A couple miles from the goal, I ran out of energy and had to stop and use it.

In all, we did 37 miles of riding for the day. And just like every long race deserves a beer, so did this ride. We headed to Ten Ninety afterwards for some great beers! I’m confident that we’re all set to ride 50 miles on 9/18. Come out and join us if you’re looking for a really fun ride and a great event!