Happy birthday quads and hams!

A few months ago I got a mail piece about bike rides in Minnesota. It listed a bunch of rides throughout the state that aren't races, just fun rides where the cities close the streets and provide food and music at multiple rest stops. I asked Chris "hey, do you want to do a 30-mile ride in St. Paul for my birthday?" Early on in the summer we had planned on doing a few long rides to prepare, but the most we did was 15 miles. We knew it would be tough to go from 15 to 30, but with all the rest stops and 6 hours to complete it we decided to go ahead and do it. Thankfully my friend Jenny said yes to watching Penelope so we didn't have to pull the burley. That would have been hard!

I convinced Chris that we should drive up on Saturday, stay in a hotel, drop Penny off at 7:30 and then head over to the race. I thought driving up and back on the same day that we did the ride would be a little too much.  Ironically, the start of the ride was only 2 miles from our Minneapolis house. I never knew about it when we lived there.

We had a beautiful day. I knew there'd be a lot of riders, but I was shocked by how many. There must have been thousands. There wasn't an official start like a race. We just needed to show up at any time between 7:15-9:30 to get on the course. We had to be at mile 11 by 9:45 to continue for the 30-mile ride, but that was the only time requirement.

We got to see so many areas of St. Paul we had never explored. The first 5 miles were easy peasy, winding through neighborhoods along the river. Here we are on the outlook at the first rest stop.

See what I mean about a ton of people? The ride had 3 routes: 15 mile, 30 mile, 41 mile. This was the only rest stop on the route for all 3 groups. The 15-mile group included a lot of families with kids riding bikes or sitting in trailers.

Then came the next 5 miles. I knew from the description of the course that there would be a few challenging hills and then "a relatively flat course." If that was relatively flat, I'd hate to try relatively hilly! All determined by someone's level of riding and bike I guess. I have a commuter bike with 3 speeds. Commuter bikes have a lot of positives, especially for someone who mainly rides 5-10 miles a day and doesn't want a bike with a ton of upkeep, but I could have used a few more gears for this.

Here I am after the hill up Warner Road. At one point people walking their bikes were going faster than me, but I made it up without getting off.

Other riders heading up the hill:

We were very thankful for the next rest stop at Indian Mounds Park. It was at the bottom of a great hill. Volunteers stood at the top yelling at everyone approaching to use their brakes. Now you know it's going to be a fun hill to ride down when they have to say that! We took a good 15-minute rest enjoying the sunny day, the band playing Cuban music and fruit and snacks galore.

Amy--the photo is blurry, but I couldn't help taking a picture of the KU jersey of the guy sitting next to us. I didn't see any purple ones. :)

Great views of downtown St. Paul at this rest stop:

The next rest stop wasn't for 11 miles. It was a pretty easy ride there so we were surprised when we got there so quickly. We rode through all sorts of neighborhoods in St. Paul passing by Lake Phalen and Lake Como. St Paul has neighborhoods of great bungalows and then huge homes overlooking the lakes just like Minneapolis neighborhoods.

Here's the Lake Como rest stop. A bluegrass band was playing in the pavilion.

 Bikes waiting for riders. This was just one small area. Every inch of grass was filled with bikes.

The falls at Como.

We then headed into the last 4 miles. It took me as long as the 11 miles between the last 2 stops. I don't know if it was really that hard or if my hams and quads were shouting "yeah, we get it. Your last weekend being 30 and riding 30 miles...great blog post idea, but we're dying! You don't believe us? Fine. We'll start shaking on this next hill. Hmmm? What do you think of that?" I think part of it was mental. I've ridden the hills on the river road and the U of M so I knew what was coming and sort of had a mental freak-out. Chris was way ahead of me. His knee was bothering him and going slow was making it worse. But we made it back to St. Thomas University! We finished right over 3 hours. And I said immediately "this deserves a meal at the Birchwood!"

After Birchwood we went back to Jenny's house. Penny had a great time with her daughters and Jenny's sister and told us all about what she did. Thank you so much, Jenny!

Despite those last few miles it was a great morning and a great way to celebrate my birthday. I think I'm going to sign up for the Mankato ride next month. The 26-mile ride is called the "26-mile Pie Run." After riders have biked through the woods and over the river the 2nd rest stop has an array of award-winning pies. Now that sounds worth 26 miles!