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!