You gotta RIDE to learn to ride.

A very frustrating day at work Thursday so I needed to blow off some steam. The Sourdough Trail on my Mountain Bike seemed like the perfect solution. Drove up to the trailhead off Rainbow Lakes Rd and hit the trail around 5pm. A little cooler but not too bad. The trail was rockier than I'm used too but I kept moving all right. It climbed for the first mile and then got rockier and steeper for another half mile or so. My bike computer wasn't aligned right so I'm guessing at mileage. My deraileur was skipping too and pissing me off. That doesn't help blow off steam so I stopped and messed with it a bit and got it working pretty well.

I do all right on the rocks but I'm not fast and I did have to walk up in several places. I finally topped out on the first major climb and was able to make a little better time. The trail was good in places so you could cruise and in others you were still bouncing over roots and rocks.

At one point I realized I was being a real puss over the rougher parts of the trail. I said to myself "self, you ain't gonna learn to ride this stuff unless you RIDE it". So I let it rip. About 20 yards farther, I hit a rock with my back tire that threw my weight high and forward and then my front tire hit a rock and stopped head. Endo. Ripped up my left leg and my left elbow. The picture is the next day after I cleaned things up. I haven't shaved my legs since the Boulder 5430 Long Course about 4 weeks ago. I guess if I'm going to keep riding I should keep that up too.

The rest of the ride was fun but pretty uneventful. I still tried to ride harder than a puss. No more crashes at least. Once back on pavement, the ride down from the Brainerd Lakes/Red Rocks trailhead is a fst fun downhill bomb. Most of the ride back along the Peak hwy is down so I made good time back to the truck. Nothing like a high heart rate to calm you down to sleep good.

The Labor Day Recovery Ride

A beautiful day for a recovery ride. For this particular ride we chose the bike with a 750cc Honda motor. The ride up Hwy 7 to the Peak-to-Peak was a hell of a lot faster than Sunday's ride.

We took a nice cruise into Allenspark and had lunch at the little restaurant built into the hill. Love that place but still don't know its name. After that we headed back south to Nederland. As nice as it is not to have to pedal for propulsion, the seats on these things still aren't that comfy. The butts were getting pretty sore and the legs stiff from being in one position too long. We walked around Ned for a bit the stretch things out before moving on down. Golden was our next stop to wander a bit and have some ice cream. Then Boulder to check out the Festival on the Creek. Fifteen miles between stops was about our limit by now. That's about what we had left to get home and sit on a nice soft couch for afew hours.

A wonderful day it was.

Lyons to Estes Park Ride

So to recover from our nice little hike up Bear Peak, we joined some friends for a ride to Estes Park on Sunday. Dave & Wendy McMillian, Alex C, Meghan Rabbit, Artie Sandman, and Jean&I met in Lyons to ride up Hwy 7 to the Peak to Peak and back down along the Big Thompson to Carter Lake and back to Lyons.

Jean was very nervous as she had never done anything like this before. The looooong ride up started great with everyone keeping a nice easy steady pace. But its one long-ass uphill ride. As we were entering hour 3 of climbing, Jean had to back off and spin in her granny gear which dropped out of the pack. I went back to ride with her. She was feeling really bad which triggered some anxiety which in turn triggered some breathing issues. After she calmed down and we got riding it was okay, we just took it slower than the rest.

When we finally made it to Lily Lake, the 6-7 mile downhill began. Thank God! Jean loves speed and downhill riding a lot more than several others so she was way back up into the pack by then. Wendy, Alex and I were the downhill wimps bringing up the rear.

Once in Estes we were treated to Wendy and Dave's favorite smoothy place. Of course that wasn't enough for some and Dave and Meghan had to go to McD's for some to go burgers. Now that everyone had recovered, we could be on our way down the hill.

20 miles of coasting along the Big Thompson does a lot for your morale. We did actually have to start pedaling again around Carter Lake. Finally rolled into Lyons about 4pm. 6+ hours and 80 miles of riding.

All in all, a good tough ride. Made Jean more confident about being able to complete the Buffalo Century this weekend. Dave and Alex both tok some pix for the memories. (That's one of the new one's of me on my yellow bike).

I think we'll take it easy on Monday

Bear Peak

A little review of this past weekend's adventures.
We decided to tackle Bear Peak on Saturday. We slept in, had a nice breakfast and drove down to NCAR to start our little journey. We really haven't done much hiking around Boulder in the year that we've lived here and figured we had better get started. We were thinking about doing Longs Peak next week so we should get the legs into the groove.

Its a nice easy hike for the first 3+ miles when you do the loop in a counterclockwise direction. We headed out to the Mesa Trail and then up to the Bear Peak West Ridge trail. At about the 3.5 mile mark, we topped out on a nice little area and thought "cool - we made it!" Took a few pictures on top of a little rock that seemed to be the highest place other than climbing a tree and then had our snacks. After a little rest we kept going on the trail only to find it still going up!

About a half mile farther, it REALLY started going up. Class 2 nearing Class 3 in a few spots. Exposure really wasn't that bad but hard going. We rested alot on the way up and finally topped out. By that time, Jean was spent so we didn't do the final scramble to the true summit. The veiws were still spectacular. I wish we didn't have all the smoke from the western fires or it would have been even better.

Heading down ended up being nearly as bad if not worse than going up. A lot shorter but steep! You drop over 2000 feet in less than a mile and a half. By the time you are back to flatter terrain, your quads are jelly. Once you get a chance to walk a while you feel a little better, and the slight uphills actually feel pretty good.

We finished off the day with a motorcycle ride to Border's Books and a drink at the Niwot Tavern.

A nice hike and highly recommended as one of your first "strenuous" rated hikes in the Boulder area.

Back in action

So it's been a while since I posted. Here's the news - the knee is good, "just" an IT band strain. I think the rolling and deep tissue massage just before the race wa not a good idea. Stretching regular, rolling regular, and the occasional massage should keep it at bay.

I sat around for about 2 weeks after the race and finally went back at it. A short mtn bike ride the first week, a couple easy runs the second week. I finally got back in the pool too. Now work is getting crazy and I've missed several more workouts with Wolfgang. At least he still remembers my name for now.