Today’s ride was dedicated to Marie’s uncle Clay, who celebrated his birthday today! Clay is currently undergoing treatment for esophageal cancer. Marie says that his strength and resilience inspires her every day, and we were honored to get to ride for him today.
The ride today was a cool 71 miles, which was significantly shorter than yesterday’s century! Our legs were a little worn out from yesterday, but all of the teams made great time biking straight west on Route 40 to get to Indianapolis. We were welcomed by the Tabernacle Presbyterian Church who opened up their beautiful building for us to stay in! The YMCA at the Athenaeum in downtown Indianapolis offered for us to take showers in their incredibly nice facility, and we took full advantage of those before dinner.
Dinner was extra special this evening because we were able to eat with some I4K alumni who brought in a delicious dinner of chicken, baked potatoes, fruit salad, veggies (a rarity to find on this ride!) and brownies with ice cream! It was a ton of fun to share our stories with them and hear about their experience with Illini 4000. While we do similar things each year, it was cool to see how every ride is unique and our own.
One of the alumni even had a bike shop opened up after-hours just for us to do various repairs and tweaks to our bike. We feel very fortunate to have such an amazing network of alumni all over the country to help us out in any way that they can.
Rider Shoutout: Anisha is a rider that we are so happy to have on our team! She is a great teammate and does an excellent job stepping up as a leader on whatever team she is put in. Today, her group arrived to the stayover first and Anisha was so quick to come out and help unpack the van and was willing to help out wherever she could.