Rides and a Chilling Experience...

So far this week the base miles have been right on schedule. A couple of solo road rides and fun mountain bike ride at Downingtown. This is my last big week of base and I have to tell you I am looking forward to the workouts. I know that sounds strange, actually looking forward to a lot of pain, but I have some big goals this year and they won't happen without a lot of hard work.

Today I me up with fatmarc, Kurtee, Single speed Dan, and Fort James for a little tour of White Clay and Middle Run. The trails were fast and frozen early on, but it didn't take long for the sun to start thawing things out a bit. After a couple of laps around White Clay Dan and I decided to hit some of Middle Run. We were having a good ride, yeah we hit a few sloppy sections but for the most part the trails were good. I wanted to ride the tricky rock section on the Dragons back trail, this turned out to be a bad idea. I thought thins were going well, then all of the sudden I was falling towards the water. I thought for sure would be able to stop myself, but I was wrong. I tumbled into the icy water of the stream. The initial shock took my breath away, I have never been in water that cold before. The worst part was I had a pretty long ride back to my truck. I have seen this happen to a couple of my friends before ( Matt, and Bill doh) and once I knew they were alright I thought it was pretty funny. At first I wasn't laughing today. Hell, I was to fucking cold to laugh. Once I got out of my wet gear and into a warm truck, I realized it was pretty funny, but at least I didn't do it in front of a big group.

Trying to warm up,
Buddy

Slow Week, But A Big Weekend...

The combination of leftover snow and my pure hatred of the trainer, put me behind for my hours this week. Luckily I was able to make up a lot this weekend. I would have loved to spend all weekend on the mountain bike but the temps Saturday were a bit too warm for the trails to stay frozen. So, I hooked up with L Webb's road ride. We had a nice big group show up, Which was good because the wind was relentless yesterday. Marc, James and Matt got an early start and ended up with a really nice ride. I was pushing to extend the ride for us late starters and was able to convince Rick, L Webb, single speed Dan and Lisa to join me. It turned out to be a good ride. I did come away from the ride with a few observations.

1 - Slick Rick is always fast.
2 - Matt run Forrest is riding as strong as ever.
3 - fatmarc is coming on strong as well.
4 - I am finally starting to feel good on the bike again.
5 - There is nothing like being the last man standing amongst the only two women on the ride.

Today was one of the best rides of the year for me so far. I was expecting to feel worked over after a little over 4 hours yesterday, instead I felt pretty damn good. Marc led us around a great loop. The lucky bastard is less that a mile from one of the sweetest sections of single track in the park. We were joined by Matt run Forrest, Andrew the Great, Fort James, once a week Paul, Ted Logic, and Billdoh. The pace was nice and steady the whole time. As always there were plenty of jokes and jabs, all part of riding with friends. The strange part for me today was, I felt better 2 hours into the ride, and still felt good at the end. I have to say everybody was riding very well today. I hope this is a sign of things to come.