Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Nearly 30 for Women's MTB Ride!

(photo from Nancy, from CAMBr)

Tom & I decided not to do Wausau, mainly for financial reasons, which was bummin' but did give us the opportunity to do quite a bit-- a Friday evening ride with Rachael and Ryan; the Women's MTB Ride on Saturday and way too much fricken' stuff on Sunday.



Friday's ride I wasn't feelin' quite right-- turns out I have a cold but I think I'm getting over it soon. It was still fun and Tom & I rarely get to ride together.






Saturday was the women's MTB ride. I didn't know how turnout would be with WORS and the Iowa road crits. We had a total of 27 women and girls show up! A few that already mountainbiked but most were pretty much newbies, including a woman who had just bought mountainbike tires for her bike that were switched minutes before the ride. Women and girls split off into two groups of beginner and intermediate. Truth be told, they were pretty much all beginners for mountainbiking but there were also some new to shifting. Julia Daher, from Johnny Sprockets, and Jennifer Mosley, from Half Acre, led the beginner group and I was nominated to lead the intermediate group. I was a little nervous -- would I ride too fast (not something I usually have to deal with), not call something out and cause someone to crash, etc. But, it went well. No major crashes, no one got lost, everyone seemed to have a good time.



We did Out & Back and then took the trails to Cemetery Hill. I had us stop to regroup. For one section of Out & Back, I had us stop, we discussed the area, the women watched a few people go through and then each woman tried it with cheers for everyone. = )



Afterwards, everyone chatted, ate and enjoyed the afternoon. Tom brought Christopher and I watched him while he got a short ride in. As lame as it sounds, it was rewarding to try to make other women as excited about riding as I am. = ) I'll actually be helping to teach the MTB101 class CAMBr is doing next Tuesday if it doesn't get rained out.



On Sunday, I worked Bike the Drive for LIB. Amazing how many people I spoke with that didn't know who ATA was. Umm, the group hosting this event, that actually got Lake Shore Drive closed so you could ride on it. Also, surprising was the amount of rented bikes. Lots of people. I got to check out lots of bikes, talk about biking and get paid. = )



I rushed home so Christopher could go to a classmate's birthday party at her grandparent's mansion in Homer Glen. He had a ball. We then went to where some Bandit CX races have been at Shoe Factory Woods to catch the tail end of my nephew Steven's grad party. We got Christopher to ride his bike a little and he got to go on a hike of part of the CX course. = )