Day 14: Zanesville, OH to Columbus, OH

Today we dedicated our ride to Marie’s Aunt Kathi. She is a breast cancer survivor and today was her birthday!

Our ride today was relatively short: just 56 miles into Columbus! It’s good that it was a short ride, because tomorrow we have our first century (100 miles) and it rained pretty hard in Columbus after our ride was done for the day. Everyone did a great job today, and our resident Flat Stanley (Zane, who has had at least 6 flat tires since we began) got some new tires, so we are not expecting as many flats in the future (although he is an expert at changing them now)!

Our stayover tonight is in downtown Columbus at the Trinity Episcopal Church where we are thankful to be in from the rain! We also got some delicious pizza from Milestone 229, and showers from the Schiller Community Recreation Center. We have honestly been so lucky so far to find so many food and shower donations. Maybe we will be the cleanest team in Illini 4000 history? Stay tuned.

Rider Shoutout: Brad crushed it out there on the Ohio roads today! He is an extremely supportive teammate who is always happy to help out everyone on the team in any situation. He is also one of our team mechanics and is always checking up on bikes to make sure that everyone is safe.