Reach the Beach Century May 15, 2010

Julie's brother Jeremy asked Alex to ride this century with him from Portland, Or to Pacific City on the coast. Another friend, Brian Taylor rode it with them too. With very little training in preparation for this, Julie was a little worried whether they would finish or not. 100 miles is a LONG ways!
They started their race at 7:15am. The first half of the ride was really good! They stopped every 20 miles or so to rest and refuel and update the support cars, of course! :)



Julie and all the kids along with Brian's wife and kids all got up and packed up for a day at the beach. We didn't leave town until 10am. With updates from the guys at their pit-stops, we had some idea where they were on the route and drove close to it with hopes of seeing them along the way. We didn't have the race course map with us, though and weren't really sure where exactly they were. Traffic was horrible and it took us WAY longer than anticipated to get over there. After not seeing any cyclists on the road for a long time, we just figured that we wouldn't be able to find them and just as we had that thought a stream of bikes rode across an overpass right in front of us!! It was so cool to see! Immediately we exited and pulled into the pit stop area that was there! There were so many cyclists! How exciting it was to think that we might see them!It was the 64 mile marker and we waited there for 45 minutes until finally the guys pulled in one by one. They didn't expect to see us at all and it was so fun to talk about their progress. The guys were all very happy to see their families and though they were tempted to jump in our cars, they continued on their way to the beach! We made our way through the traffic and met them there at the finish line! What an accomplishment it was! 104 miles! Great job Alex, Jeremy, and Brian!