Harp Rider: Almost a Gravel 50

Instead of getting up and going for a long training ride like I normally do on Sunday mornings I decided to ride over to pioneers park and cheer on my Teammates Sean and my super lead out man Rick race in the TNT duatholon. Sean went out and did it solo and Rick raced the bike leg and had a partner do the run. Sean did well and Rick who looked really strong today and his partner won the team category.

After that I came home to chill for a while and then in the afternoon I headed back out with Ryan to grind some gravel since it seems to rain everyday at some time or another and our race was postponed again. We met up a few miles from home and headed out for what ended up being almost 50 miles of the grining backroads of NE. We had a route planned but got off to add some more miles to the ride. The ride was some nice training. It was real nice to be back out on my mountain bike for an extended period of time. And for those that think NE is completely flat we came across plenty of big long hilly climbs where it seemed like right after you got over the top of one you could see the real short downhill and then the next one up. All in all a real good day in the saddle. We only got chased by a few dogs with no bites. I even got called a *&%#head by some prick motorist.

The plan for tomorrow is to take a day off. The ride today took a lot out of me. I felt pretty tired by the end time I got home. I need to relax a bit and not overtrain myself this week cause the next race is coming up on Saturday and I need to start getting some better results in the mountain bike races.

Here's some pics from todays ride: