MS150 report

I had a great time but had no awesome adventure, which is probably a good thing! It did rain and we did have a really bad headwind. The really cool thing is this is the third year that I've completed the ride. Each of the three years, I have managed to find and ride with the same group of people. How cool is that? We come from all over the southeast with a very large Charlotte contingent and I only ever see them for the MS150 and yet, for those two days, they are my peeps :-)

The riding itself went well. I had no physical problems although I did succumb to a Hillary Duff movie on Saturday afternoon. On Saturday morning I found my ride friends with no difficulty. It was spitting rain when we left. Maybe three miles into the ride, it rained kind of hard for about five minutes and then it more or less stopped -- until about 10 miles into the ride and then we had a deluge complete with face-stinging rain. Fortunately, that was over by mile 30 or so. By the time we finished, the sun was out! We averaged 18.8 mph for the 75 miles on Saturday -- nearly 20 mph after lunch (slower in the rain, go figure). We were all set to fly on Sunday...

Then Sunday came along with a lot of wind and we were wondering if rain wasn't better than the headwind. We averaged 18.3 on Sunday which is really good, considering the conditions. This is the first year of the new routes and I am hoping that they revisit the Sunday route. Even with no wind, it would not have been the best. I completely understand that after a major change like having a new venue, it will take a few years to get it back to totally awesome. No worries though, I'll be back next year. Thanks to all of you for all of your support! I was able to meet my fundraising goal. The moral support has been greatly appreciated as well!

Cheese holder for dog training

(imported from FB, used original posting date)

Friday, Sep 7

Instructions on creating a home made cheese holder for dog training. This helps to keep string cheese from becoming a gooey mess in your pocket.

• Go to a home center and get a small length of clear, flexible PVC tubing in a string cheese like diameter
• Cut off string cheese length piece at home, using scissors
• Cut tubing lengthwise to form slit the entire length of the tube
• Insert unwrapped string cheese into tubing, with small piece extending beyond end of tubing
• Break off small bits of cheese as needed.

Voila! Cheese holder created!

Of backs and bikes

I know that this probably sounds odd but... I've had back problems all summer. Odd because I've been doing a ton of riding. The thing is, it's more or less a pinched nerve and the riding position opens up the part of my back that pinches so the problem has been with walking not

biking. Totally weird. The physical therapy folks surmise that I had the hysterectomy last October which not only tore up more core muscles but also caused (indirectly) some GI problems. The GI problems caused me to hold myself differently and without the core muscles 100% up to speed, that lead to an aggravation of lower back issues.

Last Thursday morning I had an injection so I may not be Tour de France legal, and I was very afraid that it wouldn't help as I was very uncomfortable on Thursday and Friday and feeling pretty tentative about the situation on Saturday. I'm happy to report that the injection did seem to calm down those nerves. There is still some pinching but I am much more comfortable.

In other news, I spent a lot of pennies on Monday and I got a new road bike. I was planning to wait until October but the words "sale" and "Madone" used in the same sentence made me check the bank balance. I ended up with a 52 cm Madone 5.0.