Yes, I know, I haven't posted in a long time, and due to work, this will be quick.
First, Liam's little league team has started games and is doing well (3-0) in the first year nightmare of kid pitch.
Second, Jake is playing County team tennis and running track for Swanson middle school. He's pretty good at tennis but lacks practical match experience. He does pretty well, but gets down on himself too easily. He's no track star, but is having fun with the track team thing. He's more of a diesel, and would do well at a middle distance where he could chug along at a steady pace while the other kids burned up, but the longest they do is 600 meters.
Finally, a quick run down on the Leesburg Baker's Dozen 13 hour mountain bike race. Last year, you'll recall, I did it with friend and teammate Ken Woodrow as a 2 man team, and it didn't go too well for me. Ken's wife (also friend and teammate) Jean had been there all day helping us (food, foot massages, etc). This year, we decided, Jean would race. So, we signed up for the 3 person Co-ed class, which was huge, with 31 teams. Indeed, the whole event was huge, with all classes selling out in less than an hour.
Mike Schiavo (friend, teammate, neighbor, etc) was going to be out
there riding with some other guys who all have kids in the same
elementary school (Tuckahoe; Mike's son Charlie is in Liam's class), and he and they were great help, staking out a spot for our
tent on Friday afternoon, putting our tent in a place between them and the C3
"Compound" (C3 literally rented a Wedding tent, that was huge).
It was all smiles and sunshine at 8:45 AM
It was all chaos and madness at 9:02AM
Jean was a trooper. She doesn't even have a mountain bike and was riding a borrowed bike she'd only ridden once for like an hour. There was never any delusion we would compete for the win (there were teams in the 3 person Coed that included Cat 1 cyclocross champs, and full-time expert mountain bike racers), But we had a good time.
Jean wasn't going to
ride at night, so Ken and I worked out that at our pace of laps Jean would
finish her last lap at 7pm, and then Ken and I would go to double laps. Jean
finished right at 7pm, as we had figured, so Ken did the next two, taking us
into dusk and then dark. Then I did laps 18 and 19 in the dark.
I'd never ridden in the dark before, but it was really super cool and not as hard as I had feared. A lot of the solos were off the course so the traffic was low, so I had a lot of alone time. As I crossed the field from one set of woods to the other I was able to look up at the starry sky and sliver of a moon. It was really good for my soul. I came in at 9:45 from lap 19. I could have gone out (I broke a spoke that last lap but had a wheel change) but it wouldn't have changed our standing, we figured, and Ken and Jean had already packed up, so we called it a long day.
Better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
Posted by: air jordans | July 06, 2010 at 10:56 PM