It finally stopped raining

July is almost over and we have less than 48 hours until the 12 Hours of Stony Creek. This will be the first time everyone on the team will attempt a 12 Hour race so this will be fun for sure. Jeff is still going solo and he is really the only one on the team capable of doing so. Brian and Jerry are in for a 2 man team, Mike and I plan to give it a whirl as a 2 man team and Heather decided to team up with Lillian from Treefort Bikes for a 12 hour 2 person team instead of doing a 6 hour solo. Heather and I could finish a 6 hour solo no problem but the 12 hour 2 person realy sounds like a better way to have fun with the team. I know I am excited about it.

It's been a wet month which is very unusual for Michigan ths time of year. A lot of rolling storms that seem to only come during race times and after work when everyone wants to ride. I just got caught in a storm Tuesday that hit 2 hours earlier than they had forecasted. Nothing gets the legs spinning down the trails like being caught in the middle of a bad thunderstorm when lightening is all around you and there is no shelter areas for miles. I just picked up the pace and kept going figuring I'd be harder to hit as a moving target.

It has been a quite month for the team overall. Heather and Jeff are the only ones who seem to be racing this year and even their adventures have been pretty well around the norm.....it's funny calling top 3 podium finishes the norm. Hopefully Stony will light a fire under the team camp. We'll have 6 of our riders out there but that's still only half the actual mountain bike squad suiting up for the weekend.

I have been piling the miles on more. I have over 1,000 road/trainer miles and over 100 trail miles since I started back on the bikes in April. That's about half my quarterly average but I'll take it. Heck I just had my first trail ride of the year two weeks ago and I just took 5 days off for a short vacation to the cottage so 100 miles on the trail is pretty good considering.

So check back next week to read up on all of this weekend's racing antics. It's been a while since the team has showed in such numbers so there's bound to be some forms of pandemonium and chaos....hell we'll be out there for 12+ hours....anything goes when we are in pit row by Team Sandbag.

Aryn 'Pivotless' Pongratz