June 17, 2010 is now marked as one of the coolest days of my life. Today was the Illini 4000's 24th ride day of the summer and our destination was Lacrosse, WI. It has been a long time since we've rode over 70 miles, today was around 86. The day was awesome the whole time, and the sun shined bright. It was a little hot but nothing unbearable. For some reason the 86 miles flew by. Partly because of the game Szymon taught us to pass the time and we had a pretty good tail wind most of the day. There were a few hills that were challenging. My legs were sore today in ways they've never been sore and I felt muscles in my legs I didnt even know I've had. The first ride group I was in kept a very steady pace, a lot of the times around 23 miles an hour without even trying because of the tail wind and downhill. By far the best part of the day was when we rode with the horses. We were riding parallel to a grassy field and there were a couple horses standing there. So as we rode by, we started yelling at them to get them running "yaaaaaah yaaaaah". One of the horses started a slow jog along side us, and then started bolting next to us. A couple seconds later about 15 to 20 horses came around and all started running in a group a long side us for a good 20 seconds. It was simply amazing and something I will never forget. The sun was shining behind the horses and it was very majestic. I was a little upset because I had my camera in my jersey today ready to capture stuff and I missed it but I realized that was the beauty of it. The art of retelling such an event is what makes it special and the fact that I saw it with my own eyes for what it was.