4th of July weekend come and gone and now great weather although if you listen to the TV and radio we’re all running scared of the forver pending “thunderstorm”….never seen so many folks scared of the weather! Heck, as kids, we used to play in the streets during the most awesome storms. Oh well, media’s job to keep us forever scared so we “stay tuned” for more “late breaking news”…..seems every story now is “late breaking”.
Took on a few clients last couple days at the club and enjoyed seeing some personal bests w/regard to the rope drills I’ve been using lately. Spent many afternoon’s this past week knocking down some good runs at springbrook. Just enough breeze to keep from getting to hot. The runs have been good lately and a nice offset to the time I spend on the bike spinning. Time on the bike now focuses on steady 15+ miles each hour and only about 1-3 hours at a time.
I’m prepping for a 36 hour ride that starts in a few hours down at Fuel. Here is the link for the stream if you dont have it already: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/hoods-36-hour-ride I plan to start the ride around 6pm and finish around 7am on Saturday, July 10th. Two overnights and a good finish on Saturday will yield plenty of time to rest before starting a new week. I will be publishing a training schedule on my website for the remaining long rides. Crew support continues to find its way into Fuel and I appreciate those committing their time on my behalf. Anyone who would like to volunteer and come crew or simply ride thru the night, please let me know…we have about 5 new spin bikes at Fuel for those that want to come in and ride. They are belt driven and ride quite smooth and a certain step up from the bikes at many of the clubs.
Also ventured into Naperville to take in Ribfest. Was informed that the band Kool Kat Daddy was playing and the drummer for the band happens to be my good friend Gary aka “Boomer”, who was a great supporter of my last ride. His business is known around the area as “Boomer-T’s” and Gary is the one who printed all our shirts and materials for the last ride. He, along w/his wife and daughter Ashley, would often come to the venue night after night and offer to help and they so often did just that. The band was a blues band and in the heat of the afternoon, it was nice to reconnect w/Gary at Ribfest and see his band play. I managed to have a chicken sandwich and a lemonade and then it was back home.
The volume of people at Ribfest and the traffic is certainly amazing. No parking places to be found, not even in the empty lot at the high school. The church across the street was asking for a compulsory donation of $13 to park in their lot. Found space in a neighborhood about a mile from the entrance and walked it. All water has to be purchased from the machines and one must wait about 30 minutes in a line to get any food. It is a unique experience indeed.
So just what is up w/the toilet paper holders at Springbrook? One sheet at a time and a real pain in the butt (no pun intended). By the time one gets sufficient squares, the toilet has already flushed half a dozen times! So, we conserve paper at the expense of the water, hmmmm. To say the least, I now bring my own roll in a plastic bag as do some others and seemingly feel much better about any conservation effort. And how about when you go to wash your hands and standing forever in front of the sink waiting for the thing to spit out a few drops of water! Its all driven by the little red thing that is supposed to detect movement and thus produce water, hmmmm. Cant tell you how many dances I’ve done in front of the sink and hand waves across the red sensor just to get some water to simply wash! Plenty to think about on this ride and my experiences at the prairie, with the media that plays into our homes and the harbored fear of the weather just makes for good conversation, which quite frankly would be great at about 3am as Leroy and Lu and I often tabled many topics on some of my more longer rides. Miss those……
Well, is off now to the venue, all is packed and ready to go….as my mental conditioning mentor Chris told me, lets not attack these things (the rides) so hard, take a soft approach, dont psyche myself out over something I know can be done….enjoy the ride, embrace the night, the lonely moments and seek power from within and those that cross my sight path and simply…….very quite simply……JUST DO. Look for blog updates during the ride as I’ll try to post some thru the night…..best! G
