Here in C-U, the leases ended on Aug. 12 and the new ones didn't start till Aug. 16 this year. That meant that those of us that were moving but not going home were left homeless for 4 days. For the Paige boys (Park and Stefan) and I, that meant it was time to go somewhere for a little training camp.

We chose the Shawnee National Forest in the deep south of Illinois. It's one of the few areas of the state that was not flattened by glaciers 15,000 years ago. This made it ideal for cycling.

We made the drive down on a Monday afternoon. This is the best of Shawneetown, the gateway to the forest.

This town of 1600 people was our home over our time there. We decided to name those 4 days Le Tour de Shawnee because our main goal was to ride hills and improve our cycling. 

Down in those parts, people are basically hicks. Inspite of that, after seeing our hotel room, I'm sure they figured we were cyclists.

Stage I of the tour was from Shawneetown to the Garden of the Gods and back. A brutal 4hr hilly stage that also received a torential downpour. As we are also triathletes, we had to get out for a run in the evening too. For this we drove down to Cave in Rock. It was raining so hard we almost didn't make it and pulled into a prison driveway waiting for the rain to slow.

The second day was an easy day for the tour leaders. We went by the Saline County Conservation Area. It was mainly flat except one Category 4 climb.

In the evening, we did dryland training while actually visiting the Garden of the Gods. Whoever said Illinois was flat and boring was only 90% correct, because this place is beautiful and totally reminds me of New Brunswick.

We chose a beautiful spot overlooking the forest for our workout (I think you can see Kentucky in the distance), left our mark and were off.

Stage III of the tour would be the deciding stage. It was also hilly and was set to go from Carrier Mills and then circle around the Burden Falls Wilderness area. This stage lasted barely over 3hrs and we were blessed with beautiful weather too.

As usual, in the evening, we headed off for a run. This time we went to Kentucky (5km away). The people of Kentucky are even bigger hicks than in Illinois and they grow almost as much corn as us too. In fact, there's so much corn that we did our run through a corn field and then even got stuck in corn on the way back home.

The final stage of the tour was a short, flat, easy ride around Shawneetown and Old Shawneetown. This stage gave us the opportunity to enjoy a few historic sites and wind down from last 3 days.

All in all, a good vacation and a good training camp. Now it's back to Central Illinois until the big race.