This weekend was a busy one, spent most of the weekend at the gym for building bootcamp for cheer.

He said

This weekend was the next chapter in my gravel race season—the second in the Substance Projects Gravel Series: Screaming Squirrel 30k. With it being on a Sunday and two hours out of town, it meant that we wouldn’t be getting up to the trailer for the first weekend after three straight overnight trips there. But next weekend we will have to be up there because I will be participating in Face the Storm Bicycle Adventure with some of my teammates from Team Cowbell for MS Ride on the Saturday. It’s a 36km, fun bike ride on the G2G to raise funds for a scholarship in the name of one of our teammates daughter who  unfortunately passed away to cancer. It will be good to be back at the trailer and to support a good cause to boot.

So, anyway, as soon as I was done work yesterday, Danielle & I were off to Shelburne Ontario to spend the night in the cheapest motel we could find near the race to save ourselves having to get up, out the door and on the road by 5:25am Sunday morning. While it was nice to give us the extra sleeping time the hotel was pretty sketchy and probably set a new all-time low for hotel experience for us. But, it was actually so sketchy that it actually became quite hilarious to us. Thankfully we didn’t get murdered and in the end it served it’s purpose to us which was a bed to sleep in.

The race today went very well, and the weather was beyond our expectations. The weekend initially called for rain pretty much the entire weekend. Then, as the weekend approached, it started to clear up and then eventually by Saturday afternoon the weekend forecast was clear and sunny the rest of the way. Perfect temperatures to start the day, and helped me have a very good result. I ended up getting almost exactly the same time I did a year ago, and finished strongly at 7th in my age & category, 35th in male and 38th overall. We got to see a lot our bike friends and have a lot of fun to boot. And, it felt good to have such good results.

We’re home now and catching up on Emelia’s Boot Camp weekend with Valiant and having a movie night with her which is the perfect way to wrap up the weekend. Thanks to Danielle for always being up for these crazy adventures and helping out by volunteering for the race. If nothing else it gave us very funny stories to tell Emelia!

She said

Yet again another really busy week and weekend. Emelia is back in the thick of training. She had her first practice for cheer this week and spent much of this weekend with her team doing the team building boot camp. She trained hard over the two days putting in over 8 hours of hard training and is feeling all of that tonight. Her team has grown this season and they are pushing the girls hard already. They were so proud of what they put out there especially considering where they came from but this year with a full season under their belt with much of the team returning there is a lot of pressure to really build and put a elite routine out there and place well at competition. I know that the girls will work hard and put it all out there.

With Emelia busy back in London with cheer, John and I were up in eastern Ontario for another bike race. This is another in the substance series which means that I was back to volunteering and cheer John at his race. Like last time John and I opted to stay down close to the race start vs waking up at 5:00 in morning to drive up day of. This trip, John found a motel really close by. To say this place was sketchy would be the understatement of the century. Needless to say we will be finding a different place to stay next year.

We were up early this morning and made it to the race location in time so I could help with registration, let John could catch up with her cycling friends and he could get ready for the race. The day started out windy and chilly but turned around to be an amazing day for racing. John did amazing coming in with a great time.
We came home tonight happy and a bit sunburnt but I am grateful for a chance to see both John and Emelia in their element. It is weekends like this that make me so grateful for the little life we have created.