Two Wheel Blogs

Last night's training called for 90 minutes of flat to rolling terrain and nothing too taxing on the cardio side. Since the main road from my house is undergoing construction, I haven't been too apt to take off on the road bikes.

Boy oh boy, the trails over at The Wood (aka Castlewood) are just about as good as they've ever been. Smoking fast to be exact and combined with the cool weather they have made for some uber-fun outings the past week. Friday, I rolled with Matt Grothoff and we rock and rolled the trails until a brief, but heavy rain drove us back to our cars, but not before we tackled the decent on Cardiac Hill. Man, it's been 15 years since I laid a tread on that stretch and the reasons why were brought back vividly. It's steep, it's very technical, and it's boulder strewn.

I wish I had something really cool to report. This weekend was a bear for me in terms of trying to fit in riding. I did manage to roll a fat tire on Sunday though.

G-wiz called and threw down the gauntlet, so I had to take the offer. We rolled out at about 11:00 and stopped around 1:30. About 2.5 hours of rigid single speed hammering. The worst part of it is, G would probably call it a leisure ride.

Honestly, it was not a "race pace" for me, but there were many times that I could not have held much higher pace (I am sure G could have though). I think this body is just not used to the pounding it takes on the trails (or the frequency range necessary to run one gear).

Not much to report here in this brief weekend re-cap. The bottom fell out of the weather like I feared it would.

You may recall my anxiety last week. It seems I could feel that opportunities rides in sleeveless jerseys were about gone. Those feelings were spot on! The temperature dropped to freezing the next night, and wind-chills have been freezing since.

Now I know that some have it much worse and ride temps in the mid 30s are nothing to cry about. However, when you literally are riding comfortably in a sleeveless jersey and enjoying mid 70s weather one day, and putting on layers for freezing wind chills the next day...it makes me a little whiny.

I met up with a huge group for the local Tuesday Night MTB thrash fest and was not let down. Apparently a bunch of the local riders have changed their focus to include some serious training.

The guys were riding fast, and not stopping except to make sure no one was left behind/hurt at each trail head. Once the last rider emerged, the chase was on again.

For once, I was feeling very good last night. I was really enjoying riding hard like this. I started pushing myself well into the red and ended up paying for it.

I took advantage of a nice day, and left work early for a MTB ride. The trails were a bit wet, but most surprising was all the fallen lumber on the trails.

I guess one of the many many rain storms that has rolled through here the past few weeks had enough force to uproot or break off a lot of trees. I must have seen 5 trees larger diameter than my wheels laying down that were not down only a few weeks ago. Most of them were near the trail, but this one was blocking the trail.

Trail report? Downright muddy in spots, but 95% of the trail was great riding, but rough from all the rain. Yes, the rain seems to have roughened the trail, by washing away soil and leaving more roots and stones exposed. Also, the trail is pitted in many spots from serious overland flow scours.