Tahoe 2008!

Americas most beautiful bike ride really lived up to its name this year. We had a wonderful trip. We had a good practice ride, where we made our way towards the Death Ride passes and stretched out our legs, then had a good pasta dinner.

We were up bright and early with a 5am breakfast, ready to ride at 6am in the parking lot. I had my camelbak all prepared with jim's photo and was all ready on time.





We made our way up the treacherous Emerald Bay switchbacks and were rewarded by a beautiful view and lots of cheering













Here are the cheerful Paul, Fern and Christine

We then made our way down a very fast hill and along to the road to Truckee. The river was more beautiful than ever, so we stopped to admire the view and take a few pictures.

The sag stop at truckee is pretty ugly, but it was nice to see our co-ordinator, heather cheering us on and giving us pretzels!









We also passed by the legendary squaw valley, site of the olympics about a million years ago


















Just as we started to get a little tired and hungry, we realised we'd made it to the beautiful kings beach. We grabbed our sandwiches and rested on some rocks to eat them. Here is the legendary coach phil enjoying his lunch with Dianna.

Paul entertained Christine, Lisa and Fern while they ate!







We also saw a really cute dog all dressed up in a TNT tee shirt, bless.








We continued our journey around the lake and came across a really picturesque spot and stopped to admire the view again, and then took our pictures and tried not to fall down the hill!! Looking over the lake at the other side it was amazing to think that we'd come from there!







When we neared the finish line, we all lined up to wait for the rest of the team and Coach DJ did his best to try and entertain us and keep our mind of beers at the finish line by doing an impromptu cheerleading session and a cartwheel! When the rest of the team arrived all smiles, we made our way in a very impressive double paceline. This is the first year I've done a century where everyone has finished. Not just finished, mind you, finished smiling, then gone to the party after and closed down the dance floor! Tahoe 2008 was really one to remember. It was also wonderful to know that the people that rode that day rasied $8.5 million to fight blood cancers.

My Tahoe ride is dedicated to Jim Garland

I had some very sad news last week, my friend James' dad died of a very rare form of Lymphoma that was in his brain. He fought against it for 8 months, but he lost the battle last week with his family all around him.

The least I can do is dedicate my ride to him and to know that hopefully some of the money that I raised will go towards advances so that things like this will be less common and there will be more treatment options and recoveries.

More training!

I didn't really take any photos on our Saturday ride, it was pretty short and sweet! We did 42 miles and then ate pizza and cakes and talked about our event next weekend.
We're all very excited to be going up to tahoe!

Since we missed out on a climbing ride, I met up with Lisa and DJ and we rode up Palomar together. It started off a little chilly, and then was positively arctic when we got to the top. Thankfully mothers kitchen was there with a truly outstanding piece of apple pie for me and hot chocolate all round!

We then rode up to the observatory and back down the mountain. I'm so glad we did this as it warmed us up a bit for the descent. We enjoyed a beautiful descent down the east grade, then immediately regretted coming down that way as we had to contend with crazy traffic on the road back to the south grade. Oh well, something not to try again!!

No solamar yet!

Well, thankfully our coach realised that Solamar might be a bit over the top for such a hot day!! We started off at kit carson park and then up Palomar. Things didnt go too well, paul broke his seat post, Nancy was suffering from a cold and then Joannie very suddenly discovered that V8 juice didnt agree with her!


I had a good day, although I had to try to persuade everyone to 'think cool thoughts'. Unfortunately lisa also lost her car keys so she had to get a lockmith out.

Not our best day, but we all tried really hard and everyone is really improving. Christine was so fast she was a blur, and Dianne is really getting faster both on the uphills and the downhills.

Thankfully the wildflowers were still there to cheer us on, the Lupins are looking particularly spectacular this week.

May 10th ride- Tour of Poway, Ramona and Julian

Wow, what a ride! We really pushed ourselves this week and got some real miles in! It was a perfect day, great weather, everyone smiling, brilliant pacelines, and we all cheered each other on to finish. Most of us needed a bit of encouragement along the way, but we had a great day and were very proud of our 97 miles and 7000 ft of climbing!

The first pictures are of beautiful bandy canyon, which looks like it got a big hit with the fires, and the other pictures were at the bottom of mussey grade. What a lovely view!

Thanks so much to Kim for helping us out at SAG. The out and backs seemed so much easier knowing there was a PB and J at the end of the road!

Having said that, I think Old Julian Highway was my lowest point, I realised that I was just riding up the road to ride straight back down again! I was really close to turning round, but I made it to the end and past the camel farm and some twitchy looking turkey vultures!

Update on last few weeks

Well there's good news and bad news. I didnt take any pictures on the 3rd may as my car was broken into on the Friday night, so it was all I could to just to rush and catch up with the team and try and do as much of the ride as I could!

The previous week was fun though, Tom Heatly brought the warm weather back with him for our Palomar ride. We did 71 miles and 8,500 ft of climbing, which we were all very proud of! The ride was a beautiful one, with the wildflowers at their peak. We stopped off at the lovely Lake Wolford in both directions for a break.

After the ride we all had cupcakes and celebrated Phil and Christines birthdays with Pizza and Beer, which was a wonderful way to celebrate, and finish off a great day!

Our first time up Palomar!

And it couldn't have been a better day, it was a little chilly and sometimes the breeze was a little strong, but it was lovely and cool. We started off at Kit Carson Park, wound our way through escondido, then past Lake Wolford and the casinos, then started the long climb up the mountain. Everyone did brilliantly, it was hard for those of us who hadnt done quite as long a sustained climb before but everyone made it all the way up the mountain and 14 miles of continuous climb.

There was a sneaky little extra of a climb up to the observatory, where we started to notice the rarified air a little more (all good training!!) but its a really fun downhill and got us ready for the long descent.

For anyone on the edge of their chair, we did a total of 8619 ft of climbing and 71.24 miles.

Thanks so much to Kevin for helping us with SAG and cheering us on. He even helped other cyclists along the way, giving one guy a lift back to Lake Wolford.