Earlier in the week, the Jenum clan organized a day at the Como Zoo for Wednesday. Wanting to enjoy a nice, relaxing day with the kids, I took the day off, packed up The Kid™ and heading off to St.Paul.
A nice picture of me and my daughter in the Conservatory at Como Zoo
After a quick trip home for supper and assorted tasks, I packed up the kid again and returned to St. Paul for the Wednesday evening pro race in downtown – part of the Nature Valley Grand Prix series. The race usually brings in the top US professional cyclists (both men’s and women’s teams) to participate in various time trials, criteriums, and distance races throughout southeast Minnesota. As my brother lives in St. Paul, I like to meet up with him for the St. Paul criterium (usually on a Wednesday night) and travel to the race in Stillwater on Sunday. The Stillwater race is crazy fun to watch and I will likely be bringing a camera along to capture the event – maybe followed by a post on this blog.
We picked a great corner to watch most of the race with exciting strategy and lots of crashes
Although the mid-point of the race got to be a little boring, we were able to see some excited events within the race. We spent much of the race sitting on the last major turn before the main straight-away. It was a nasty turn that was greater than 90 degrees and featured bricked roads (with lots of bumps) that transitioned into nice, smooth concrete. The racers were taking the turn at near 30 mph speeds and would pass by us in a blur. Watching cycling live is an awesome experience because you can feel the riders pass you by and nearly become part of the action as a spectator.
I packed up the bike for a ride that would start in the AMS parking lot on Friday afternoon
The corner was treacherous and generated at least 4 rolled/flatted tubulars while we were watching. Two of them resulted in crashes that either took out a single rider or held up a large portion of the field. On the last lap, two of the top five riders were racing to the corner, hooked each other’s wheel, and caused one rider to hit the ground and slide right into the barriers behind which we were standing. My brother was next to me and jumped back five feet – as the rider had a direct line to crash right into him. I stayed close, but had the barriers knocked into me. Fortunately the fallen rider was only shaken up and was able to remount – although he missed out on the win due to being over-aggressive in that final corner. My daughter was pretty excited to have something so dramatic happen right in front of her.
Brent plotted out a nice 28 mile loop that took us into downtown Minneapolis
Later in the week, on Friday, I had coordinated a ride with a small group of cyclists at the company I work – AMS. A true cyclist coworker – Brent – has been helping several other staff members with bike selection as they have gotten into cycling. We had targeted a ride with four people total – Brent, myself, Brigham, and John – hoping to get a gentle ride as part of an afterwork loop. Unfortunately. one of the guys (John) wasn’t able to join us and we set out with the three of us.
Original plans were to head west, but we changed our mind and decided to head into downtown Minneapolis – making a loop along the river and returning back along the Midtown Greenway. This was a great route and showed how biker-friendly the Twin Cities has become. Within two miles of the company parking lot, we were riding along dedicated bike trails that were fairly uninterrupted by cars and intersections. The paths brought us directly into downtown Minneapolis and we joined the regular streets right next to the new Twins Stadium. From there it was a couple of blocks through the downtown area (riding shoulder-to-bumper with the cars) before we were gliding along the Mississippi River heading south for a few miles. From that point, we caught the eastern edge of the Greenway and worked our way back to Hopkins and returned to AMS.
Minneapolis provides some truly awesome pathways for cyclists of all abilities
Here are the stats for what turned into a nearly 28 mile ride:
It's always a good day for a ride, especially when enjoyed with friends
The weather was quite warm (hovering around 90 degrees) and we had a stiff 15-20mph wind coming from the west. This made the first half of the ride an easy jaunt as the wind at our backs propelled us toward the city. But turning back into the wind on the way home yielded some challenges. We did our best to work together and protect each other with a draft – but even that couldn’t completely avoid some of the gusts. Since the ride was more of a leisure pace than a hardcore suffer-fest, we weren’t too concerned with slowing down to deal with the wind.
I had a great time on the ride and enjoyed the company of Brent and Brigham. With some luck, we’ll coordinate a few more rides throughout the summer – as it is always fun to share the biking experience with others who are also passionate about bikes.
