When I'm not riding . . .

This week is kind of great. I don't have to do any 4, 5, 6+ hour rides :-) Don't get me wrong, I LOVE riding my bike. But trying to string together that many hours of riding in a row means that something some things in the schedule suffer. The house falls into disarray. Grocery shopping doesn't happen. The kids end up eating sandwiches and carrot sticks every night for dinner. All that is fine, but what isn't fine is missing time with the kids.

After LJ100 I have no big races scheduled. Nada. Nothing. Not until Peak 2 Peak and Iceman. Which means I am taking the summer off. I plan on spending almost all of the time I'm not riding playing with the kids.

Beginning this week—since I'm tapering and I don't have any long rides to do.

I have two exciting things going on this summer to ensure lots of family time.

1) I'm hosting U8 pick-up soccer at the park. Last night was our first gathering. I wasn't sure what to expect. I arrived at the field with my kids about 15 minutes early. The park was eerily abandoned. I wondered if any other kids would show up.

I am hosting pick-up soccer this summer because Sage asks me ALL the time to play soccer with her. I love kicking the ball around in the yard, but it gets boring for her quickly. We'll invite friends over to play soccer--but they don't want to play. Usually they want to come inside and watch a movie.

Surely there are other kids out there that like kicking the ball around as much as her. So I posted on FB to all the area U8 soccer families I knew and some I only knew of. And no one really responded, but I moved forward with it anyways.

6:00 PM arrived and we were still the only ones in the park. No problem, I was there to play soccer with Sage. If it was just us, so be it. Bear and I took turns playing goalie while Sage dribbled around and kicked the ball at us.

And then it happened. Cars started rolling into the parking lot. Kids hopped out of the car and ran out to the field. One after another until we had enough kids for two teams. It was perfect.

There was zero coaching on my part, other than to assign positions and say "go" or "out of bounds"! The kids already knew a lot about position and rules. They did well passing and working together. I had so much fun playing soccer with them.

It was great. Simply great.

2) Family Mountain Biking Club. We have a couple of families with some great kids that plan on meeting on a weekly basis for family trail rides. We're hoping to develop a community of cyclists for our kids.

We had a planning meeting months and months ago. The families got together and the kids were introduced. Ever since then the kids have been asking "when is our mountain biking club starting?" I'm so happy I can finally say that it starts tonight!

I'm going to pack a picnic dinner for the kids so we can tail-gate pre-ride at the trail head. And then its riding trails to their little hearts content. This is a no-pressure, fun ride.

I've been guilty of pushing Snoose to try sections of trail that made her nervous when we ride together. I know this causes her anxiety. But encouraging her to go outside of her comfort zone has done wonders for her self-confidence when she realizes that she can do so much more than she thought she was capable of.

But Family Mountain Biking Club is not going to be a place where I push her. I want it to be a fun, friendly, and encouraging environment for her and all of the other kids. The objective of this club is FUN family time.

It's going to be an awesome summer.