Our Fifth Anniversary Weekend

Last weekend Ben, two of his brothers and I completed the One Day Ride Across Michigan. It was 145 miles from the west side of the state to the east side. Around eight hours of pedaling. Wind in our face all day. A big fitness goal crossed off.

The day before we left, Friday, was our fifth wedding anniversary. Five years! o-0 That makes me feel old. Sorta.

It has been a good five years. We have done a lot together. Our first camping trip was cold and rainy. Our first wedding anniversary we were celebrating my brother’s wedding and mourning my grandma’s unexpected death. One month later Seth joined our family. We put an addition on our house and then added an addition, Cameron. We made a couple of bike trips in there as well. I had surgery twice, Ben broke his hand.

These first five years have been busy. 🙂 I’m sure I’ll say that about the next five as well though.

Ben got me the beautiful roses. He very rarely gets flowers, so I was really surprised. 🙂 He also got chocolate, but that wasn’t as surprising. 🙂

To celebrate, the boys went to Grandma’s for the night and we went over to Lake Michigan. We walked along the beach, the water was way to cold to swim thanks to this cool Michigan summer, and got dinner before heading home to prepare for the next day.

I had been looking forward to the ODRAM all year. I had to prove to Ben that I could do it. {We’re just a little competitive. 🙂 } I had learned how to fuel my body for these long rides and now it was time to complete the challenge.

I made quiche for a quick breakfast and we tried to pack as much as possible before our early wake up call.

4:00 AM. I didn’t want to get up. Actually I did. If I could get some coffee. We went to Grandma’s, Ben got the bikes ready and I fed Cameron. I wasn’t about to attempt the next 17 hours without nursing him first, pumping doesn’t work so well anymore…

5:15 we picked up my grandpa who was going to be our sag driver. A sag vehicle is a support vehicle for each team. He wasn’t going to follow us all day, we just needed a drop off and a pick up from each side of the state. We grabbed coffee.

6:15 We arrive in Montague, ready to grab our stuff and go, but there was a ten minute line for the guy’s bathroom. Ben’s brothers were stuck. Oddly enough I was able to walk right into the women’s. That was a first.

6:45 We leave!

By 8:10 we had made it to our first stop, a town we know well actually, Fremont, and had ridden 26 miles. The next 30 miles were on our home turf as well. It was fun being able to ride that much of our training grounds in the actual ride. We made our lunch stop at 75 miles around 11:30ish. At 95 miles we stopped to call Pa (our sag) and let him know he could leave pretty quick. The next 50 miles were slow. By that point every time you get off the bike you don’t want to get back on. But we had to. We just slowed to way down and took more breaks.

We made it into the finish area at Bay City State Park around 5:30ish. I’m not exactly sure on the exact time, I wanted off the bike and I didn’t really pay attention to the time. 🙂 I had a big goal of averaging 16mph, I was super excited to find out that we averaged 16.7! Yay!

We spent the rest of our anniversary weekend recovering. Actually we didn’t feel too bad, I just liked to use that as an excuse to stuff myself full of food. 🙂