STOMP Bike Ride in Summit County

My long time biking "wingman" Cindy and I tackled the STOMP bike ride on Saturday. STOMP is a 65-mile bike ride through the hilly terrain of Summit County and not far from where I live. Cindy and I have biked PEDAL TO THE POINT and have gone on several long rides on the several biking trails in the area.

The weather for the ride was spectacular. The scenery was gorgeous!

Our ride hit a snag when we came across this huge barn fire near Norton. Clearly this was the most excitement the area had seen in quite some time. Several people came out to watch and several emergency vehicles blocked our path.
After the 20-minute "fire break", we continued on and tackled as many of the difficult hills as we could. Because of our late start and my lack of training in July (injury), our ride came to an end at 52 miles. Although I am confident Cindy could have closed out the ride, we decided to call it and get support to take us the rest of the way. We made it 52 of the 65 miles. I am disappointd we did not finish and was surprised by a few of the HUGE hills. PEDAL TO THE POINT is a mostly flat ride. I feel like I should have been much better prepared for this ride. Overall, however, we had a blast. We laughed a lot....especially when the support team showed up......
Who knew they called the ride STOMP because it would "STOMP us....?