I Feel it in the Air. The Summer's Out of Reach

 I promise this post will be one of those "less talk, more rock" dealies. You can thank me later.

Today I am looking back at the dog days of Summer. I consider Summer that time between my oldest daughter's birthday and my youngest daughter's birthday.

Coadster's birthday is May 15th and this year for her birthday, we gave her a graduation present of a weekend in Chicago to see a Cubs game on her birthday weekend. The Cubs were nice enough to win for her, initiating the victory dance documented in the photo above.

June brought me my first triathlon of the year and the first time I did TOMROV, since I got a real bike back in 2011. This time around, TOMROV was soooo much less stressful and way more fun. If I do it again, I will definitely work on hill climbing ahead of time.

 I also did an adventure race with my brother in June. The conditions were about perfect, and even though my legs failed me during the run, I was the first woman who finished.

 We finished the month of June in true nerd style - by riding to Riverside, IA to celebrate Trek Fest. We even got flashed by a Star Fleet officer. The things you see in small Iowa towns...

 I like to call July this year my super month. I can't imagine it being any better. We rode our bikes every day of the long 4th of July weekend and the next weekend we headed to Clear Lake, Iowa (the town where the music died) for a bike race. I wasn't able to do my time trial because of a migraine, but I had a great weekend and transferred my registration over to the road race the next day, which kicked my ass, but was a great ride.

Less then a week after that, we took our epic vacation to South Dakota and rode road bikes and mountain bikes and hiked and ran and swam and climbed rocks and it was the best vacation I've ever had.

We met RAGBRAI for the last two days and had a blast on Sutliff Bridge doing a dance-off with another team. Spectacular!

We did a lot of off-road riding in August. I raced my first gravel time trial and I had almost more fun pre-riding the course than actually doing the race.

I did my first real mountain bike race in August too. It was a lot of fun and I think I might try to do more MTB races in the future...After I get the guts to ride the black trails.

In September, I did my first duathlon. It was supposed to be a triathlon, but the e coli in the resevoir turned it into a duathlon. Without the swim, I had a lot more energy for the runs and the bike.

On September 21st we celebrated John's birthday by each riding three of our bikes and eating and drinking and eating some more.

The next day, September 22nd, we celebrated Stinky's golden birthday, with more really good food. The day after that, Fall started.

Looking back, this has been an incredible Summer full of fun, sun, runs, riding, reading, eating, drinking and playing outside almost every single day. Obviously, every season has its highs and lows, but this Summer tipped way more in the favor of the highs. We'll see what Fall and Winter bring, but I'm heading toward it with a leftover,  happy, warmth.