Two Wheel Blogs

Let me start by saying I will NEVER again race a race like Syllamo on a fully rigid bike. In fact after the race I vowed never to ride a rigid bike again ever, period. Let me start by saying that for some reason someone told me not long ago that Syllamo wasn't near as hard as Ouachita. That person was a little mistaken. Syllamo's Revenge made Ouachita feel like child's play. Don't get me wrong, Ouachita was a challenge, but this was the hardest race, hardest ride, hardest effort I've ever put out in my entire life... Syllamo's Revenge went down with a bang in 08, and I absolutely can't wait till next year.

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I have been playing around again with tires (it is sort of an ongoing story of my life).

I went out for a short ride yesterday (basically a 45 minute sprint/hammer session on the MTB). I wanted to try to test the limits of my tires, and possibly destroy them.

Some of you will recall that I do this sort of thing EVERY year. I put on some semi-slicks and start playing around with tires and formulate plans for the rest of the year.

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I knocked the dust off my MTB today and took it out for the first MTB ride I can recall in a long time. The excessive rain this year (and ice storms last year) has had me riding road quite a bit, and I have not even thought of riding the trails until today. I was surprised at how good the trails were (only a few mud holes that always are present this time of year).

It was a great ride, made slightly better learning a few lessons in the process.

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I feel if that is the only thing I've had my mind on... More and more of it. Seems like you get a day or two, trails look like they might dry, and them bam! Rain, and more of it. Our race got cancelled today. Last night as of 8:30 it was looking like fast dry trails. Nine hit and the rain began, covering the Perry Lake trails.

I woke at 8:00 to find out it had been cancelled and did what I do every morning I find out a race has been cancelled... I went back to bed. I woke up at 11ish and started looking for somewhere that wasn't getting hit with the giant storm moving through. Blue River looked like the best bet so around 1 I hit the road to Lee's Summit.

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Well the weekend turned out nice for once. I got in a good hammerfest yesterday on the TT bike when the clouds finally broke around 5pm.

Today I went out and did a early gravel road ride. The weather today was perfect, the wind was only blowing like 10mph which is light for around here. I grabbed lunch and went back out on my KM and hit some trails...

Somewhere around in there I managed to ride down this. Sketchy, that's one way of describing it. I've had bad dreams about this log ride but getting onto the log has always been rough. Someone built it back up with dirt so getting on it now is super easy. Riding it's a bit different. I took it off to the right the first few times to get a feel of how to dismount when you don't go straight.

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It's hard to believe that all the anticipation, excitement, and nervousness of my first "big" race of the year is now over. Another race under the belt, one that will find it's way onto my calendar for many years to come. I trained, well, I wanted to train... Usually I was left to the road due to wet trails, but that's just been the way its been. The 2008 Ouachita Challenge Sunday was the longest mountain bike ride I've done this year. It was all good though, I was fresh, and thank god because if I had a repeat performance of last weeks 6 hour race, I would be in for a long day.

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