Two Wheel Blogs

This weekend blessed me with roughly 5+ hours of riding for me. That's a big weekend for me, as I normally do 1 long-ish ride on one of weekend days, but rarely will I do back to back days of 2+ hours of riding. Not a fear of the saddle time, rather just too much time spent doing other things.

This weekend, I did a Covered Bridge ride with a teammate and a buddy, both of whom had never ridden the route. My teammate, Dennis, is certainly strong enough to ride the route under our normal time of 3 hours, but my buddy isn't used to tapping out the 20mph pace we normally do when we're not climbing. As a result, we agreed to take it easy and just get everyone through their first Jefferson County epic. In the end, we toured the route in right at 3h45m and that included two stops for water and various phone calls. (My buddy is a doctor and had a couple of callbacks.)

Overall, I was pleased with my efforts because I decided to ride the entire route in my large chainring, albeit it was my 50T, because I have a compact crankset on new Giant. (Editor's note: The compact cranks are temporary until the new SRAM Force cranks arrive.) However, as many of you know, climbing Old Lemay towards Four Ridge Road is a beast in any gear. Pushing a 50x26 was stiff to say the least. On the other climbs, I didn't find it too difficult. Definitely not sit and spin, but I did sit for quite a bit of all the climbs and just forced my way to the top.

Sunday, I decided to s/s at Castlewood and put in another 2+ hours. I rode all of the front side of the park and while my legs felt a little tired on the initial climb, they opened up quite a bit in the end I felt really strong on the bike and just enjoyed the flow of the trails. I really can't wait to get the cross bikes put together and start rolling Rollercoaster on them. Nothing like sharpening the handling for cross season. I rode a little while with El Cavano and chatted with Gibson for a few minutes. I also watched Zach Brace rip through the trails like he was sharpening the edge for something big. Looking mighty fast.

Afterwards, it was a relaxing day at the pool and a good meal.