Tour de Leelanau

See we were racing! Here's Thomas in action.

Tour de Leelanau

We were lucky enough to be invited to the Tour de Leelanau, a UCI 1.2 race in michigan. We knew it would be ridiculously hard with pro teams like BMC, Priority Health, Rite Aid etc. I wish I could say we did a team time trial off the front from the start and won by 10 minutes, but it was a hard as we thought it would be. Jonny Peanut finished with the main chase group and Justin got into a break (Chapeau!) and limped it home with Thomas. Mike, burdened with a new job and a mortgage found the pace a little hot on the hills. As for myself I got a taste of beautiful michigan pavement. I lost a lot of skin, but mainly landed on my left ear. On impact in broke like a fortune cookie and I needed 6 stitches to close the inside on my ear. There's a first for everything. This picture is post-cleaning and pre-stitching. Thanks to the first aid staff, Mike and Seb for helping me get patched up. Anyway, the organization and crowds at the race were amazing! The roads were quiet, hilly and with good pavement, and aside for a brief bit of rain, the weather was great too. We can't wait 'til next year.

Bristol race weekend

This past weekend four of us headed down to Bristol mountain in the US. It was really good prep for future races. We all suffered up some pretty decent climbs. The different course this year offered better, technical descents.

After Bristol, some of us did the ZM Islander crit on Toronto Island. The cold temp., crazy winds, and a last minute ferry ride was not enough to discourage. An earlier than expected race start meant that i missed the start. The OCA officials were kind enough to let me jump in with no number. My heartrate went from nothing to almost max in seconds because i had no warm-up.

Justin & I took home a total of 3 primes.

The guys who didn't race the crit had good reason not to; Mother's day!

The weekend turned out to be great training for the future.

Jon