CenturyRide.2011

Mike completed his 2nd century ride this past Sunday. This time he did it with 2 other friends, Chris and Joe (Joe is a UNC grad if you can't tell from his jersey!). It was a beautiful and hot day and it was a pretty smooth ride with no mishaps. always a good thing!

Chris's wife, Sarah, the kiddos and I left directly from church to cheer them on at the finish line.

considering Mike hadn't even gotten on his bike once since being back home, he looks pretty good after 100 miles, yes?

the boys with Diamond Head behind 'em
one more sans helmets

and the kiddos first bike ride...

the kids were wonderful the whole ride downtown, searching for parking and then sitting in a hot stroller waiting on daddy. to blow off some energy afterwards, they pushed their own stroller all the way back to the car. and loved it! ;)

Honolulu Century Ride

So, finally got a few of the the pictures from Mike's ride so we could post-- It's been almost a month now.

If you didn't know this about Mike, when we first met he was an avid rider. He even participated in the Cycle North Carolina--a ride that takes about a week and is over 450 miles from Boone to Wilmington. He sold his bike right before his 1st deployment in '02 and then--you know the story, he's been gone so much since he just never picked it up again. When he got back from this last deployment we agreed to get a starter bike so he could start back up riding.



The Honolulu Century Ride (HCR) is a 100 mile race along the windward portion of the island, there is a map below showing the route. The red line is 50 miles--and then they turned around and rode the 50 back to the starting point. About 3800 riders participated.




Mike and some of his friends/coworkers formed a team and they rode the race together. Because it was a team effort, the HCR wasn't so much of a "race" as it was just to get everyone to the finish. There were 6 guys on the team, all at different riding levels. This is a pic of the team in their 25th Infantry Division jerseys before they started the race. It took them about 6.5 hours to finish--which is a bit slow, but everyone did finish together and Mike was very proud of them all. --that's Mike in the middle if you can't tell!



Here is Mike after the race...still looking good. He actually came home and we went out to run errands and doing things to the house. You wouldn't really have even known he had rode at all that day the way he was acting!

Because they guys were representing the ARMY, they got a bit more coverage. This is a pic of an article about the guys and their ride in the base paper. Mike is on the far right in this pic. I have been watching the newspaper website for them to post the article online...but the website runs about 2 months behind, so this pic will have to do.

Next on Mike's agenda is a team triathlon in a couple of weeks. There were a couple of guys who needed a strong biker, so they asked Mike. It's only a 12 mile bike course, not even half of what he rides most days but this one is for time so we'll see how he does!