Knox County Bicycle Ride

First of all, I would like to give a big congrats and job well done to all of the Ironman Wisconsin Finishers last weekend.  In particular, I am happy to say that Laura, Jeremy, Natalie, and Mario all finished!  It sounded like it was a rough day for all.  Temps were close to 86 degrees mid-day, the bike course was hilly, and some had trouble because they drank too much lake water, but all were able to finish despite obstacles thrown their way!  Although not everyone met their goal, I am just happy that they all finished and none ended up in the med tent or worse before they finished the race! 

Since the majority of Team FIT participated in their big race last week, it has left just Aimee and me to continue on with our training towards our perspective races.  So, we decided to try out an established bike tour and ventured to Gambier, OH.  The route started at Kenyon College, traveled through Knox, Coshocton, and Holmes Counties.  The weather was perfect and the ride was beautiful but very hilly.  I think the hills started at about mile 1 and continued on until mile 100! 

Unfortunately the ride started off slowly, as Aimee's bike chain broke at mile 19.   Many riders passed us and one gave us a chain link to help connect the chain, but no one had a chain tool.  I had visions of this happening to us:

Finally, the sag guy, Mike, finally showed up and had a whole van full of plumbing tools, but no bike tools!  He also fully admitted he was a great plumber but didn't really know too much about bikes.   Hmm, how did he end up as our sag guy?  Fortunately he was able to pop the broken link off using some of his tools and I was able to figure out how to pop the new link back on without using a tool!! 

So, 105 miles later;  after a little delay to fix a bike, 3 stops to eat and listen to some local (blue grass) music, and re-routing after missing a turn (twice), we finally made it back to Gambier in one piece.  There was only one car left in the lot when we got back and as we were packing up our bikes, the lone rider finally appeared.  Turns out he is 80 years old and was the first "senior finisher" of TOSRV last year.  He then went on to tell us that he didn't do the full 100 on the Knox Tour this year, since he is getting a little older he decided to only do 65 instead!  I really hope that when I am 80, I am still able to ride that far - can you imagine? 

Stats for the week:

Monday: hour bike

Tuesday: 3000 swim, easy hour run

Wed: 30 mile bike, 15 minute transition run

Thurs: 3000 swim, hour run

Friday: rest

Saturday: 105 very hilly bike

Sunday: 1:45 run, 1 mile open water swim