by Robin Ferguson
The ride was great!! Very hilly, even hillier than I remembered and as you know there are no hills in lafayette to train on!!! Thank goodness for cycling classes..they are really the only way to train for these rides without going to St. Francisville.
There were over 1300 riders this year. This year's pack of riders included not only road bikes, but also mountain bikes, recumbants, tandem bikes (I drafted behind a tandem bike for the first time ever on this ride. It was the best draft I have ever ridden at 22 mph!! WOW), and the first time ever in the ms ride…an elitpibike!!!!!!!
Here is a link to show you what an eliptibike is (it is a cross between a bicycle and an eliptical machine..pretty interesting ( I finished the first day in a little over 4 hours, and the lady on the eliptibike was about 30 minutes behind me!!!–I did not see her on day 2 however 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67i6d9Hxjgg
Robin Ferguson-left & Terri Dawes-right
Here is the link to the team that Terri Dawes and I were on. There were 36 members on our team and we raised $29.486.50 for MS!!!!! We were the second highest fundraising team this year. The entire race raised $650,000 for those living in Louisiana with MS.
http://main.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR?pg=team&fr_id=16602&team_id=261918
It is always a fun time in the park after the ride….they have massage tables lined up and all the food and beverages than you can possibly imagine!! (red beans and rice, stuffed chicken, boiled shrimp, salad, corn and crab soup…then the next morning they have a whole breakfast spread out for us…eggs, bacon, biscuits, muffins, yogurt, cereal and most importantly…COFFEE!!)
78 miles day one, 79 miles day 2…a little over 4 hours both days….I feel great today…muscles are tired, but not sore….
another first….as I was struggling up a particularly long and steep climb a guy rode along side of me and said "Imagine you are a pretty flower floating up the hillside…" So of course on the next hundred climbs, I was a flower floating up the hill!! 🙂
also, every time I do a long ride I always have a song that gets stuck in my head and will play over and over during the ride…I never know where these songs come from (on the ride I did after my mother died, it was an elvis presley song…so I am pretty sure mom sent that one to me!!!)…well this rides song was "ride like the wind" by the Eagles…I coudn't even tell you the last time I heard that song….
as the lady's t-shirt read in the park after the ride…"Only a biker knows why a dog sticks his head out of a car window"
Robin, congrats and thanks for the info.