Two Wheel Blogs

The season started with promise, shifted to chaos, transitioned with new meanings, and ended with a sense of contentment. I'm at peace and happy with the events and look forward to riding my bike, living my life, and loving my family and friends. Thanks to all who have tolerated me and encouraged me. God has richly blessed me and I'm extremely thankful.

Let's see, how can I best describe this race???

THE COURSE:
1. Zero flat sections. I'm not kidding either. None, zip, zilch, nada.

2. A LOT of off-camber.

3. Spongy and soft with a fair amount of thick-bladed grass. Can you imagine riding a bike across a water bed? If you can also imagine riding a bike across blankets wadded up on a water bed you really get the idea.

I'm contemplating busting out the singlespeed cx bike for this weekend and racing not only the s/s class race, but the B race immediately afterwards. I figure if I'm looking to build some form in short order, as well as have fun what better way than to get two races in an afternoon.

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.