April Recap

May 01, 2014

April Recap

The whole month of April has flown right past. Despite the chilly and wet weather, it’s been a great month and I’m getting incredibly stoked for the rest of the Spring / Summer. I really can’t believe it’s May already! This month was a training month for me, as I am planning on racing 6 hours at Stoney Creek on May 10th. It’s my first endurance mountain bike race, and I’m really excited for it because it’s close to where my parents live. I can’t wait to see them and to make them do water bottle hand ups to me! I grew up riding the bike paths at Stoney Creek and cannot wait to be back in my old stomping ground!

So here’s my April:

I’ve lived in Grand Rapids since 2005 and have always been a fan of baseball. I don’t know why I never went to a Whitecaps game—when I lived on the other side of Michigan I went to Detroit Tigers games a lot. Anyways, I got a group of about 30 friends to get group seating at the Whitecaps home game opener. Half of us rode bikes there. It was awesome! Group outings to local sports games are always a blast, but getting to them via bicycle makes them 5,000 times more fun!

Taking over the bike rack at the Whitecaps Stadium

Thanks for printing out my face, Jenny Scott!

This April is also my first time being 27! This is just a silly first. I’ll only be 27 once. The Whitecaps season opener happened to fall on the same day as my birthday. I was really blown away by how many friends came out to get drunk and to party on a Tuesday! My friend Emily wore a hot dog costume the whole time and got on the news. My friends are pretty great, and that’s the best birthday gift ever.

Emily and Clemo

Lots of riding! Like I mentioned, the whole month of April was geared towards getting on the bike and just spending time being there. I have always had pretty good endurance and I'm excited to see how I do spending 6 hours on single track. Working full time at the shop doesn't leave me with a whole lot of time to get long rides in, but I think I've done an okay job at riding when I can. Merrell and Luton are both in really great shape thanks to a work day at which nearly 60 people showed up to! Grand Rapids Bicycle Company bought all of the volunteers pizza and everyone was super enthusiastic to help.

This segment of Merrell trail maintained by GRBC!

Everyone appreciates a good pizza party!

The Hellkaat Hundie/Fidie was on April 19th and it was my first gravel race this year not on my fat bike. I really should have signed up for the 100 mile race, which would have been great training, but it sounded like a lot of friends were riding the 50 miler, and I thought it'd be fun to ride as a group! The day after the race was also my boyfriend's birthday and he wanted to head up north, so as a birthday gift I didn't want to be sore and useless for his big day. ;)

Still feelin' great after 25 miles on loose gravel.

The Hellkaat was put on as a fundraiser for JDRF and a ton of people showed up to the race! Part of the fun for the event was that everyone had to send in a postcard for their number plate. I had a postcard hanging around from Tahquamenon Falls from when I rode my bicycle around Lake Superior in 2012 that I deemed perfect for the cause. There were some other pretty spectacular number plates and I couldn't help but laugh at nearly all of them! There was a good turn out of Grand Rapids Bicycle Co. race team and cycle club members and a lot of us stuck together for the ride. Danielle Musto's mom even came out on her Salsa Vaya and helped pull us along on a lot of the dusty, windy gravel roads! I haven't done any riding out near Hudsonville and the 50 mile route was pretty brutal on the freshly-graveled course. One memorable moment (to a lot of racers!) was a 3-legged dog wearing a bandanna that did not like cyclists! He lured you in with his cuteness and his handicap and then tried to bite off your legs! That one terrifying moment did not ruin the race, though. Big thanks to the people who organized it!

Sarah Jaromin, myself, Mary Musto, Danielle Musto

T6 Metal Martindale & Metal Musto

I grabbed a growler from White Flame brewery in Hudsonville and left shortly after finishing the 50 miles. I wish I could have stuck around to see the Hundie finishers to cheer on my teammates Jason Schippert and John Despres, but getting home and having the rest of my Saturday off was pretty great. I hopped back on my Salsa Fargo and spent the rest of the day riding around town, stopping in at Vertigo for National Record Store Day and catching Breathe Owl Breathe at the Pyramid Scheme.

Katy Batdorff and Brad Smit at Record Store Day.

The next day B and I packed our bikes on his truck and headed up to Ludington State Park! We dropped Ninja off at B's mom's house for the day in Grand Haven and headed up for some exploring. We hiked a pretty cool trail along the water and found a few hidden crevices with snow piled inside of them -- snowball fights! Running and laughing towards a snow pile, B realized that the snow pile was actually a giant chunk of Styrofoam. One of the reasons why I think he's just the greatest is because he's the type of person to pick up trash that he finds while out and about. So he picked up this giant piece of garbage, stuffed it in his sweater (so it wouldn't crumble all over the trail), and carried it with him for the remainder of the hike. We were actually out for a few hours carrying "Brick", talking to him, calling him a wet blanket, and lugging him around.

Ready for adventure!

The rest of April was spent swapping through my single speed El Mariachi and on my Fargo riding dirt and fooling around town. One of the best parts of the spring is that all of my friends are excited to get out to ride, too. GRBC also has a women's dirt ride on Wednesdays that started up mid-April, and it's been great to have people to ride with!

Pit stop on the way to a Grand Raggidy Roller Girl's bout.

Jenny Scott strikes again with the face cut-outs.

One thing I discovered in April was that I really like cyclocross races! The Spring Fury Cyclocross series is a training series designed with the beginner in mind. I attempted a cross race on my fat bike back at the end of the Kiss Cross series, but had a mechanical and didn't finish the race. I rode my single speed El Mariachi with a group of friends out to Perrin Brewery for race #2 of the Spring Fury series and was blown away by how much fun racing for 25 minutes could be! What a rush! I have a lot of work to do to get better at hopping over the barriers and getting on and off my bike quickly.. but I'm looking forward to the challenge!

Having a blast at my first cyclocross race!

So the biggest decision to be made this weekend is... do I race at Perrin Brewery at race #3 of the Spring Fury Series OR do I race single track at Fort Custer Stampede?! Whatever decision I make, I know I'll have a lot of fun!