Another Fitness Goal Accomplished

Over Labor Day weekend I was biking with my family. My husband, three of his brothers, my dad and my youngest brother all set out to complete the DALMAC bike tour. The DALMAC is a forty-two year old bike ride that aims to show that bicycles and other vehicles can safely share the road.

We left early Thursday morning for Lansing, the state capital of Michigan. We would ride from there to the Mackinac City over four days, staying at different schools along the way. I was planning on riding the 4 Day West route with my dad, brother and youngest brother-in-law (youngest one that was biking anyways) with one or two days of riding with Ben and his brothers on a longer, optional route. I had an eventual fitness goal of being able to complete the entire optional route of four hundred miles, one hundred miles each day. I didn’t think I would be able to do it this year since I missed so many weeks of training while waiting for my elbow to heal.

The boys would be joining us each night at the schools we stayed at. My in-laws borrowed a motor home from one of the neighbors and would travel along with us. The boys had lots of fun with their youngest uncles who are seven and five. They all loved to play on a new playground each night and thought sleeping in the motor home was pretty awesome. 🙂

The plan was for me to ride with the fast guys days one and three and then ride with the slightly slower guys the other two days, this would give me time to rest and recover in between one hundred mile days.

Day one went well, until we got off course for the second time that day. We ended up riding an extra 18 miles that day. The one hard thing about this ride is that it isn’t marked very well… We also had a flat tire that day.

Day two I decided that I would go with Ben in the morning, I felt pretty good and the day’s route wasn’t supposed to be too difficult. It wasn’t that hard but it did end up raining, thankfully we got most of our miles in before the rain started and it wasn’t an extremely long or hard rain. It was dry when we got into camp so we were able to sent up our tents and get things under cover.

On day three I was sure that I was going to do this quad century thing, I already had two days under my belt there wasn’t any way that Ben was going to be able to talk me out of it now! 🙂 It rained again, this time right in the morning, one mile out of camp. We decided it was because I put sunscreen on, I had somehow cursed the day. {Side note: if you want to get to know someone, go one a four-day bike trip with them and see how they react to twenty extra miles because of bad road reading, or a flat tire after they had already changed a flat tire 20 miles before, or rain just after pulling out of camp…. you’ll see them in every possible situation and you’ll know whether or not you every want to see them again. Also, sitting on ones bike for 5-7 hours a day can make one go a little loopy…} At mile 92 on this day we came to the biggest challenge of the whole ride, something I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to beat. The WALL of East Jordan. I can’t find any stats on it right now, but it is a 2 mile uphill climb. Most of it isn’t bad, just the end 200 feet or so, when you come around the corner it looks like it is going straight up. I have pictures but they all ruin the scariness.  My biggest fear on the wall would be that I tip over and break my elbow again. As I went up I wasn’t sure I could do it, then I heard Seth-boy say “good job momma!”  my in-laws and the rest of the group were waiting at the top cheering me on and that gave me what I needed to be able to finish it. 🙂

The last day, day four I decided not to bring the rain and I skipped the sunscreen. It worked. 🙂 No rain, just overcast skies. This last day was HARD. The first forty miles was one hill after another, normally I love hills, but on this route you go up a big hill, down just a little and up another hill. I’m so thankful that everyone was feeling the previous three days of riding and I wasn’t slowing them up too much. If you ever have a chance to ride through Michigan you have to go through the Tunnel of Trees, it is beautiful! I would love to go ride it in the fall sometime. Everyone I was riding with was counting down the last forty miles. There was lots of silliness and laughter going on, but we were definitely ready to be done. And then we were pulling into the school. We did it! Another awesome DALMAC and my first quad century! I didn’t think I was going to be able this goal off my list for another couple of years, so I was pretty excited. And tired.

I have more pictures of our trip on Instagram. You can follow me there to see more of us and our normal life. 🙂

 

What did you do over your long Labor Day Weekend? Are you back into your fall schedule yet?