Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Day four Moncton Community Ride

Megan summed up the Moncton Community ride with this comment, "Mike (LeBlanc) went out made a deal with the devil to create the toughest 200km of road riding and and called a fund raiser."

That being said the Mikes Bike Shop Moncton 200 in support of JDRF is fantastic event, not for the faint of heart (or legs) but a very well organized and supported ride that attracts a around 50 plus riders who have helped raise more than $40,000 for JDRF. When this event comes around next year, and you want to really challenge yourself sign up and give this ride a try.

It was a 6:am wake up call in order to get everyone a little food and loaded into the RV's in order to get to Mikes Bike Shop for a 7:30 am departure. The national relay team joined up with all the riders that had signed up to ride and raise money for JDRF. Mike and his crew at Mike's Bike Shop do a great job of organizing support vehicles and rest stops along the route. They divide the ride into 30-35 km sections, at each rest stop the support vehicles have water, fruit and other snacks in order to refuel everyone for the next section. As well at the mid way point they stop at a restaurant and riders have the option eating there.

Starting out from the bike shop, again the morning was clear, and warm, but with a pretty good head wind blowing for the first 90km till we make the turn toward the half way point. I had a couple of great rides with Megan in the morning and made it into the half way point near the end of the pack.

The next section after lunch is a 30 km ride to a town called Elgin that has a store that sells some of the largest ice cream I have ever seen, which it turns out is just about the perfect food in order to refuel the body and get ready for the next section of hills. By this point I had 140km in for the day and choose to take the next section off. Nothing like a little rest in the RV to get set for the last two sections of the ride.

After taking a little break it was time to get back on road the second to last section was pretty flat with a great tail wind that made it feel like flying. This ride brought use to within 11km of the Bike Shop, all the team riders jumped out (including Megan) to the last "team" ride into the city, a great way to end the day.

We arrived back a the start/Finnish to a surprise visit from my mom and sister and brother who drove over from PEI. It was great to see them and gave us a chance to chat for a few minutes, before they had to head out, and we were off to our hotel for the night. Again Gary made a great supper that sure felt at the end of a very long day of riding.

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