MS 150 Day Two

Hello again friends!

For the second day of the MS 150, I woke up with a bit of pain in a place I hadn't expected. I'm still not sure what I did (it still hurts actually), but I think I slept on my finger wrong throughout the night, and led to some stiffness and soreness. Not a good way to start the day, but it was what it was. We grabbed some breakfast, snagged our bikes from the bike storage room, and made our way back to the road.

The first leg of the journey my team mates showed me some of the finer points of drafting. It was an overcast and dreary day, with a lot of headwinds coming right at us. So ducking behind my friends afforded me the ability to punch the gears, and just go full gas for the first leg of the trip. We did a 15 mile stretch with a close to 20 mph average. I've been riding for a long while now, and nothing was more fun than that.

The second day's terrain was nothing like the first day. There was one hill that seemed a bit monstrous, but even that was pretty quickly conquered. After that last big hill, we got into my favorite kind of riding, long and flat. When I have the ability to set a tempo, and stick to it, there's very little that can stop me. This was that kind of riding, and I enjoyed it immensely.

We stopped at the Ohio state line for the picture you see above. At that point, there were only about 10 miles left. When we came into the town right by the lake, folks had come out to sit on their porches and cheer us on with cowbells and horns and signs. It was delightful. We crossed the finish line with a total time of 9:30:17, which was way faster than I had anticipated finishing. We actually beat Sarah and Jackie to the finish line! We had a celebration meal, complete with ice cream, before we all changed and made our way back home.

I feel like I am a completely different person having finished the MS 150. It was a worthy challenge, and I think I accomplished it swimmingly. More than anything, thanks to your support and contributions, we raised over $1000 to fight MS. That's real money that will go to real people and provide real relief, and so on their behalf, may I again say thank you! This was a total team effort, and all of you are a part of the team.

As I mentioned in the last post, we'll have an exciting announcement today (though I think the blog is already giving it away), so stay tuned!

Godspeed,

Jason