Tour de Livingston Ride Recap

As you know, I have a tendency to book my weekends pretty full, so it should come as no surprise that not even 24 hours after racing the Solstice Run where I snagged a sizeable PR, I thought it'd be a great idea to go on my longest ride to date...

You see a few weeks ago I learned that on Sunday morning the Rotary Club of Howell was hosting "Tour de Livingston", a free group ride that started from downtown Howell, headed over to catch the balloon launch at Balloonfest, and from there had a 10 or 25 mile route to ride around the Livingston County area. I convinced my biking buddy from work to join me and together with his girlfriend we opted for the 25 mile route, none of us ever having rode further than about 20 miles before. Brilliant!

We rode over to the designated starting point at the court house about 6:45 am and there were already about 50+ riders gathered on the lawn. There were cyclists of all skill levels; the fasties all tricked out in their race kits, the more casual riding families, and even a few tandem cyclers! We signed in, received a water bottle with the "Tour de Livingston" logo on it and waited for the announcements to begin. They were brief and before we knew it, it was time to ride.  I was very nervous about riding in a pack, but it honestly wasn't that bad at all; since it wasn't a race everyone was really cordial and it helped me gain some confidence.

Bummer, the bottle I scored doesn't fit in my cage. 

When we arrived at Balloonfest we were disappointed to learn that the balloons were not going to be taking off as planned because of the weather. Boo! That was really disappointing, but they did however blast "Bicycle Race" by Queen as we rode through the carnival which was actually pretty awesome.

Setting out with the 25 milers, we biked through the part of town I was familiar with and then we made the turn out to no-man's land and from there it was uncharted territory. My legs were already spent from the previous days race so I wasn't sure how they'd hold up on the ride, but surprisingly they did well. The route was challenging, for me anyway, a few of the hills took me up and out of my seat, giving it my all as I crawled up at a snail's pace. 

Riding a hilly course the day after 
running a hilly race was not my best idea.

Somewhere around mile 18ish I somehow dropped my friends and ended up riding the next few miles alone. When they eventually caught up they were like, "Hey there Lance, you really took off on those hills!" That gave me a smile, mostly because I am terribly slow on the bike.

Soon enough the ride was over as we found ourselves back at the town center. We proceeded on to our cars, and all done and said we biked about 30 miles, 10 miles more than I had ever gone before! I had noodle legs getting off Leela and my lady parts were numb, but I was really proud of myself for completing the ride, and then some. I'm so glad I found out about this ride and I think it was a really great opportunity for a newbie cycler like myself to learn the ropes of group riding. They have another event coming up in October but unfortunately I won't be unable to attend because it is the day after our wedding.

Afterwards, because I am a masochist, I headed to my Grandpa's and did four hours of manual labor around the yard, including helping tear down a fence. Needless to say my legs were shot after all that, and I fell in to an exhausted heap at the end of the day.

To those of you that ride, how did you get in to cycling? Did you attend a group ride like this or did you find a team? 

And because I know some of you will start in on me about doing a Tri, let me end by saying I have no plans on doing a Tri, none. Duathlon? Possibly. Century? Maybe. But NO Tri, capisce?