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Tag Archives: Mountain Biking

Untamed New England, Leg 2: A Semi-Charmed Kind of Day

15 Comments Posted by on July 4, 2012

We came off the packraft debacle in 31st place and maintained that back-of-the-middle-of-the-pack status through the canoe and the whitewater paddle.  We began to make up some ground on the short foot section at the end of Leg 1, and coming into TA, we were eager to capitalize on that momentum on the first bike leg.

Friendly volunteers (who happen to be friends who are volunteering) are always a welcomed sight

Up next?  Roughly 20 miles of trails to the ropes course, and then an additional 10-ish miles to leg 3, the biggest foot section of the course.

Trying to fix my odometer.  For a few brief moments, my bike was sparkling clean…

Following a quick transition – a bit too quick, as we would soon come to find out – we took off down the road to checkpoint 7.  Buoyed by the new discipline, we merged into a paceline and flew down the early descent.

For about 2 kilometers.

Until Brent realized that he’d left his PFD – mandatory gear for the ropes course – back in transition.

So much for a fresh start.

We turned tail and raced back to the TA.  Luckily, our bins were in the back of the U-Haul still parked at transition – and not on the U-Haul that had passed us on our return ride.

JP ran into the truck and rifled through our gear, and before long we were back on track, riding down the road alongside some familiar faces from the East Coast adventure racing circuit – Team Halfwaythere.com.

Our initial plan had been to ride the roads to checkpoint 7, and then evaluate the trails to find the best route to CP 8.  That is, until Michelle from Halfway There turned to us.  ”You guys heard CP 7 was canceled, right?”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, they told us at the TA.  The point was misplotted so they’re directing all teams to continue on without it.”

Well, this was news.

Should we rely on the word of another team?  Should we continue onto 7 to hear this for ourselves?  What if they’d misunderstood?  What if it was bad information?

After ten minutes of back-and-forth, we ultimately decided to continue on to CP 8.  We later learned that we were the last team to leave transition before the race staff got word of the error.  Had we not returned to get Brent’s PFD, we would have continued onto 7 and likely spent far too long looking for the flag.  Teams did receive time credits for their delays at the next transition, but still, our mis-start turned out to be fortuitous.

Not long after, we turned off of the road and onto a rough trail that would lead us most of the way to the ropes.  The elevation was relatively modest, but the muddy, rooted, rocky terrain – coupled with the 90 degree temperatures – made for slow going as we found ourselves in and out of the saddle for the next several  miles.

We would ride, push, and lug our bikes from stream crossing to stream crossing, pausing at each opportunity to dunk our heads in the water and ward off overheating.  A few hours into the ride, I realized that I hadn’t eaten anything since the whitewater rafting.  Though I remained low for the next half hour, our pace was barely slowed by the near-bonk – a testament to how battered the trail was.

Still, aside from Team DART-Nuun, who pushed through early mechanical issues to earn a second-place finish in the race – we weren’t being passed by other teams.  It seemed that everyone around us was laboring just as slowly through this first bike section of the race.  And because the scale of the maps was so big, Brent had no real sense of whether the terrain would change.  We just gritted our teeth and continued on, trying to find a rhythm in the constant stop-and-start.

And then, suddenly, we were flying.  Brent had spotted a small connector on the map that dumped us out onto a dirt road.  For the next 10+ kilometers, we were speeding along, marveling at the relatively smooth terrain and the lack of tire tracks lining our paths.  Apparently we were one of only a handful of teams to veer off the main trail.

And when we pulled into the ropes course not long after, we found ourselves in 14th or 15th place.  Thus began Brent’s navigational charm that would take us through the next three days of racing.

At the ropes, we learned that there was an unanticipated backlog.

In previous versions of Untamed, the ropes sections had been reserved for the top teams who were able to complete the full course.  Wanting to offer all racers the opportunity to ascend and rappel, this year race director Grant Killian situated the ropes just half a day into the event.  The course included a 40-foot descent, followed by a packraft across a river, then an ascent up the other side, and finally a Tyrolean traverse back across from above.  To deal with the unavoidable delays, all teams went “off the clock” from the moment they checked in until the time they clipped in for the descent.

Upon learning that we had a two-hour wait at the ropes

We spent the next 124 minutes hanging out on the banks of the Dead River, swatting at mosquitos, chatting with other teams, and trying to relax as we slowly made our way to the front of the line.

When we were finally called, we headed over to the rappel site, clipped in, and slid down the rock face – only to find another backlog at the ascent.

Ultimately, the ropes course ended up feeling more like something to get through than something to really experience.  When all of us made our way across the Tyrollean an hour after we began, we were itching to get back on our bikes and continue on our way.

The next several miles had us back on the main trail, riding and hike-a-biking along the river.

“Take note of this,” Brent said when we finally turned away from the water and onto another dirt road.  ”We’ll be back here on foot during the final leg of the race.”

“Fantastic,” I said.  ”But at least we won’t be on our bikes.”

A few kilometers later, just after 1:00 AM, we pulled into the next TA, eager to be on our feet in earnest for the first time all race.

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A Tire-d Tale

10 Comments Posted by on May 8, 2012

I know I’ve got a lot of catching up to do on here – we’ve raced a total of six times since March 1 this year, spent a week traveling through North Carolina and Tennessee, scaled two high points, and planned a 24-hour race (not to mention chaperoned a high school camping trip) – so I thought I’d start with the most recent and work backward.

This past weekend saw the 2012 running of the American Adventure Sports Yough Extreme, a 10-hour adventure race in southwestern Pennsylvania’s Ohiopyle State Park.  This was my fourth time participating in the Yough, and each year I’m reminded that this is a race of strength and speed.  It’s a linear course with relatively little in the way of navigation and strategy; to do well, you need to pound your way up and down Sugarloaf Mountain once, twice, sometimes three times throughout the day.

This year, Brent and I teamed up with Brian Komoroski, a veteran of GOALS sprint and 12-hour races who recently moved to Pittsburgh.

At 2 PM Friday afternoon, our friend Bill, who was racing in the solo division, pulled up in front of our house with his mom’s SUV.  Bill had recently installed a new roof rack on the car, and the plan was to load all three bikes up top, pile in all our gear, and swing by Brent’s school en route to the PA turnpike.

We made it through the 7 miles of suburban roads unscathed, all the while joking about the new and untested bike rack.  We picked up Brent and swung toward the highway.  And then, not 10 miles later, a panicked Bill pulled over onto the shoulder.

“A tire just flew off the roof!”

“Sure it did,” Brent and I responded.

“No really, there’s a tire on the turnpike.”

Brent turned around to peer through the back window.

“Um, there really is a tire on the turnpike.”

We all jumped out of the car and looked up.

“Whose is it?” I asked, before noticing that the claw that had been holding my front tire was now conspicuously empty.

Brent took off down the shoulder.  I sprinted after him.

Somehow, the wheel had rolled off the top of the car and, when it hit the ground, continued rolling across all three lanes, coming to an upright stop when it hit the median.

I ran the 100 meters back to where the tire had come to rest, and when a brief lull in traffic presented itself, I sprinted across.  I grabbed the tire and, holding it close to my chest, leaned back as cars whizzed by not 18 inches from my nose.

Within a minute, the pre-rush hour traffic broke again, and I took off for the safety of the shoulder.

Brent, who had paused briefly to tie his sneakers, looked on incredulously.

“I didn’t even see you run across until you were on the other side!  What were you thinking, doing that in those shoes?”

I looked down at my feet, and sure enough, I found them covered in bright orange crocs.

We laughed and walked back to Bill, still standing by the SUV in disbelief.

Miraculously, the wheel seemed unscathed.

After loading my front wheel and Brent’s securely in the trunk (Bill’s was still attached to his bike), we got back in the car and headed west.

Little did we know that our highway adventure was a preview of what was to come.

Four hours later, we pulled into the parking lot of Ohiopyle’s Wilderness Voyageurs and unceremoniously registered and received our maps.  As in previous years, the 2012 course promised lung-burning sprints and quad-groaning climbs as we traveled up, down, and around Sugarloaf.  Starting at 8 AM the following morning, we would have ten hours to collect eight checkpoints between start and finish.

Brent, Brian, Bill, and I headed out then for a quick dinner and a full night’s sleep in our own private tented cabin in the park’s campground.  Kudos to Bill for that find!

The next morning, following a brief pre-race meeting, all participants congregated on the pedestrian bridge across the Yough River and got ready to run.

Lots of photos taken on the course, but so far only the pre-race and start shots are posted.

In keeping with custom, the race began with a 4-5 mile sprint for the first CP.

We’re tucked in behind the girl in zebra tights

Following the early surge, I settled in a few meters behind Brent and focused on finding a controlled, manageable pace.  I generally hate these early sprint separators, that necessarily bring with them the bursts of adrenaline that threaten to give way to breathing issues, but this one went reasonably smoothly.  A short time later, we returned to the TA, punched our second flag, jumped on our bikes, and began our first ascent up Sugarloaf.

I will say again that if you like tests of speed and strength, the Yough is a great race for you.  For me, however, it proved to be a mental battle in the early hours of the race to commit to the day.  It was our sixth (and shortest) race in 9 weeks, and my energy lagged as we climbed up and up the steep, technical trail.

Brent had said that it would be a 5-kilometer ascent, so when my odometer read 5k and there was no end in sight, I fought hard to ward off grumpiness.  At 6k, I was getting desperate.  At 6.5, I remembered that Brent had measured the 5k from the trailhead, rather than from the TA.  At 7k, I finally caught a glimpse of the open field and the Sugarloaf warming hut, the site of CP 3.

We dropped our bikes, and as we took off on foot for the next section of the climb, Brent noted that his rear wheel was soft.

“We’ll need to change that when we get back,” he said.

But that was still a few hours away.  Neither Brian nor I thought much of it.

The next CP sat near the summit of the mountain, and after a few kilometers on roads and trails, we hit it cleanly.  From there, we had a decision to make.  We could follow the rolling trails around to the boat put-in, or we could cut down the side of the mountain to a flat canal path, and run the remaining handful of kilometers to the next TA.

Bill was traveling with us at that point, and the four of us headed for the adjacent powerline and began the slow bush-whack down to the water.  The descent was relatively moderate at first, but the further we went, the steeper it became.  At times, we were sliding down the rock- and log-strewn cut at what seemed like a near 90-degree angle.

We grabbed hold of what we could and skidded our way along the mountainside, calling out for falling rocks and debris that had been dislodged in our travels.

Eventually, we reached the flat path and shook out our quads on the gentle run toward the boats.  We reached the water at 11:30 AM and set off in our rubber duckies for a nine-mile paddle on the Middle Youghiogheny River.

The water was low, with the dry spring we’ve had, but the rapids were still moving and Brian navigated well through the class-II swells.  Though the three of us had never paddled together before, we reached the take-out smoothly, hitting land at an hour and forty minutes, our fastest run to date in the Yough Extreme.

We made quick time back up the mountain, running the lion’s share of the climb and trekking when it got too steep.  We were in third place at that point, second in the premiere division behind Team SOG, and we felt good about our prospects for a strong finish.

As they say, famous last words…

When we reached the TA, we discovered that in addition to Brent’s back wheel going soft, my front was completely flat.  We changed Brent’s without incident, but when we went to swap out mine, the new tube wouldn’t inflate.  We pumped it up and it went flat.  We pumped it up again, and it again went flat.  Brent shot it with a CO2 cartridge and it promptly deflated.

When Brent took it out of the tire and inspected it, he found a series of small punctures along the seam of the tube.

Defective.

By this point, the storm that had been threatening was right on top of us.  Rain poured down and thunder rolled as more and more teams began making their way to the TA.

Brent pulled out our final spare and handed it to Brian.  I turned to Team SOG’s Dan and Kristen, racing as a coed-2 that day, to see if they had extra CO2.

That’s when Brian realized that the tube had a Schrader valve, incompatible with my Presta tires and our Presta pump.

We were sure our race was over.  But somehow, no coed-3 teams were coming into the clearing.

Our friends of Team Gung Ho had reached the TA minutes earlier, and they generously offered us both a tube and more CO2.  This time, we successfully changed the tire and ran our bikes across the field to join the crowd pushing up the steep ascent toward checkpoint 8, on the other side of the mountain.

We alternated riding and pushing for the next few kilometers along the saturated trails.  When we reached the top, we hopped on and began pulling away from the teams around us – until my back tire skidded out on a wet branch, and I went flying off the bike, hitting my helmeted-head hard on the trail.

I was disoriented at first, but recovered soon enough and climbed back on my bike, taking stock of the bruises that were quickly popping up along the right side of my body.

We continued on and Brent deftly read the trails, leading us directly to the flag in the center of a park scout camp.  We made our final turn and began a steep descent to the checkpoint, when I rode over a small log.  As my front tire popped up, I heard an abrupt hiss, and I was thrown over my handlebars and chest-first into the right bank of the trail.

Brian, who’d heard the hiss from 15 meters away, ran back just as I was getting to my feet.  Together, we discovered the fourth flat tire of the day.

I questioned whether the wheel’s flight on the turnpike had, in fact, caused damage to the tire.  Brent was sure it was just bad luck.

With the flag only meters away, I walked my bike to the bottom of the trail, and we paused to consider our options.

“We could try patching the tire with duct tape,” Brent said.

“I think this one’s pretty much shot,” I said, rubbing my chest.

Brent leaned down to inspect it more closely.  ”Well, here’s your problem,” he said, holding the tube by its valve.

Brian and I looked over to see that the valve had been completely sheared off.

This is what a Presta valve normally looks like:

This is my tube:

Our best guess is that the tire nicked the log.

Duct tape was not an option.

I opened my pack to pull out one of the already-punctured tubes, when several teams converged on the flag.

Bill didn’t have any spare tubes.  Team Gung Ho was out, too.  Solo racer John Miller had one left.  Brian, who had raced with John the previous summer, pleaded for the tube.

“If you get a flat,” he said, “we’ll be coming up right behind you, and we’ll give it back to you.”

John generously pulled out his lone spare and Gung Ho gave us another canister of CO2.

We made a quick switch, all the while waiting for one of our coed-3 competitors to fly by.  When we were set, we took off for the final climb up Sugarloaf, this time on roads.  It was a quick and uneventful ascent, and when we reached the top, we elected to forego the more direct Baughman Trail in favor of the gentler, less thorn-riddle, Sugarloaf Trail.

It was a wet and messy ride down, and after two hard falls, I struggled to trust myself – and my bike – on the technical terrain.  I started off slowly and cautiously, gradually gaining confidence as we continued to drop.  We passed one team on the trail and were building momentum, when Brent came to an abrupt stop, less than a mile from the bridge where we’d begun that morning.

“Another flat!” he screamed.  I wondered if the race staff could hear him cursing from the finish line.

Once again, we were stalled.  Before long, though, the team we’d ridden by moments earlier approached, and miraculously, they had both CO2 and a 29-inch tube to spare.

Five minutes later, we were dropping our bikes in the TA and sprinting the final 100 meters into the finish, 8 hours and 40 minutes after we’d started.

Team SOG had finished nearly two hours earlier, but somehow, we’d managed to secure second place in the premiere division.  It seemed that almost all of the coed-3 teams experienced problems of one kind or another that day.

As usual, the Yough Extreme was a race of strength and speed – but this year’s was also a race of mental fortitude and perseverance, and it was a profound affirmation of the generosity of the adventure racing community.

One of my favorite parts of adventure racing is the team dynamic; to race well, you need solid individuals and an even more solid group.  But last Saturday reminded all of us that when someone is struggling, that group expands exponentially, and we all find ourselves on the same team.

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A Knee-Jerk Reaction

13 Comments Posted by on January 8, 2012

This morning marked our first outdoor ride of 2012 – and with it, my first injury of the season!

We decided to start out relatively easy – Brent’s been riding a bit, but I haven’t been on the bike more than a couple times since Nationals in October, so we laid out a course that would carry us over  30-40 miles on relatively flat terrain to allow us to shake out our legs and rebuild a base.

We started off down into the Wissahickon park to take the gravel towpath toward the 8.5-mile Art Museum loop that circles that Schuylkill River.  Just before we hit Forbidden Drive, though, Brent suggested we check out a newly-opened stretch of trail.

The three miles of rolling single-track had recently been regraded and smoothed out, so instead of negotiating the sharp craggy ascents and descents, we flew through the first few kilometers, gliding along the gentle slopes.  Brent missed the more technical terrain, but I was loving it.

Eventually, we turned off onto an older trail and bumped along the rocks and roots, dodging the hikers, runners, bikers, and dogs who were enjoying the warm January weekend.

And then…

I was trying to navigate around a sharp gnarled turn, when my front tire caught on a rock.  My handlebars jerked to the left as my body continued moving forward, and my knee jammed into my stem.

The hit was so hard that I doubled over, unable to breathe.  So hard that my kneecap instantly turned black and blue.  So hard that my odometer – located on the other side of the handlebars – spontaneously restarted itself.

Awesome.

I caught my breath and gradually continued on.  I walked a little more than I ordinarily would have on those trails, and I took each pedal stroke a bit more gingerly.  But we made it down to the towpath without incident, and as we picked up speed it gradually loosened up.

We continued to revise our route as we went, and by the time we returned home a couple hours later, we’d covered 32 miles, a mix of technical trails, wind-burning flats, and quad-groaning ascents (there were probably a couple descents, too, but they were less memorable).

Brent and I both agreed that the ride felt far longer and harder than either of us expected.  When we set out, I was contemplating a trip to the gym later this afternoon for some speed work, but by the time I crested the final hill, it was all I could do to spin the file few blocks home and drag my bike into the basement.

A couple hours, a hot shower, and a Wawa veggie hoagie later, I was lying in front of the TV, icing my knee.

Because really, what’s a little swelling if not the perfect excuse for an afternoon of snoozing on the couch?

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Bike-whack

5 Comments Posted by on May 6, 2011

Last night, I met up with my friend Sue for an easy mountain bike ride through Belmont Plateau, a circuitous network of trails in Philly’s Fairmount Park.

“I’m going to rely on you to get us around,” I texted Sue beforehand, “since I’ve only ever ridden Belmont twice.”

“No problem!” she responded, assuredly (exclamation point and all).

An hour later, we found ourselves hiking through this:

Our fearless navigator

…and this…

Hiking? More like clawing...

Good training, at least, right?

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2 Legit 2 Quit

12 Comments Posted by on April 10, 2011

It was three years in the making, but I finally did it.

I biked The Loop.

I first wrote about my plans to bike the Wissahickon loop on December 30, 2009.

That day, Brent and I traversed the 17-mile trail circuit on foot for the first time.

He had been riding it with the GOALS crew for more than a year with some degree of regularity, but I had been too intimidated.

The trails are hilly.  And rocky.  And twisty-turny.

I’ve biked individual segments of the park dozens of times, but the prospect of putting them all together?

It just seemed like too much.

Much safer to make the rounds on foot, where the risk of the technical terrain coming up to bite you in the butt can be minimized, if not completely avoided.

I never even attempted it.

But this past January, GOALS captain Bruce threw down the gauntlet.

In his first team planning email of 2011, he wrote a list of questions and predictions for the upcoming season.

Among them?

“Will Abby clear the Wissy Bike Loop?”

Oh no, he didn’t.

Oh yes, he did.

And with that, I knew what I had to do.

Of course, then came months of snow and ice, followed by weeks of feeling crummy.

Finally, this morning, with six days before the first race of the season, it was time.

I met Bruce in the middle of the park at 9:00 AM.  There was supposed to be a group of us, but Brent’s been sick and Bill had family obligations, so in the end, it was just me and El Capitan.

And you know what?

It really wasn’t so bad.

Sure, there was the rough fall I took two miles in when my tire snagged going uphill and my right foot wouldn’t come out of the pedal.  I slid backward, my knee cranking on a rock, and my bike landing on top of me.  I got up and jumped back on, but afterward felt a bit more timid on the technical terrain than I’ve felt in recent months.

And, unlike my last two long runs (last weekend’s trip around the loop on foot and yesterday’s two hours out on the trail with Laurie) where my spirits remained high throughout, I definitely had a couple down moments today.  While physically I generally felt strong, the endless stretches of rock gardens and ledges were mentally exhausting.  There were points where I hauled my bike over an obstacle and, knowing that I’d be getting off again 50 feet down the trail anyway, I elected to push rather than trying to jump back on and pedal through.

When we reached one of the access roads on the east side of the park that led back up to my neighborhood, I even contemplated bailing on the final third of the circuit for a few seconds.

But I was so close.  And this needed to end.  So I pulled off my fleece, downed some gummy something-or-others, and clipped back in.

Two and a half hours after we began, with less than a quarter mile to go, we reached an impasse.  Construction arrows directed us down a trail to the parking lot, away from the official end of the loop.  We had no choice but to follow.

“Well,” joked Bruce as we clamored down the rocky descent, “looks like you won’t get to do the loop today after all.”

“This trail is far more technical than that final stretch,” I told him.  ”I think it should count.”

“But you didn’t officially finish it,” he countered.

“Okay, then,” I said.  ”Let’s go back up Wise’s Mill [the long paved hill where we began].  That should make up for it.”

I thought he’d tell me it wasn’t necessary, that I’d done enough to call it The Loop, but no such luck.

We spun back up the access road, and when we reached the top, we decided to turn back onto the trails to try to find a backdoor entrance to the rest of the circuit.  We rode for another 10 minutes, along a fun stretch of smooth, rolling single-track, until we found ourselves back at the construction entrance.

We turned left, headed back down the trail, and coasted into the parking lot.

“Nice job,” Bruce said in classic Bruce nonchalant enthusiasm, and held up his hand for a high five.

We chatted for a few minutes about the upcoming race, and then parted ways as Bruce went off in search of the water bottle cap he’d lost on the trails, and I biked back up out of the park.

I smiled to myself the whole two-mile ride home.

Ten minutes later, I walked in the front door, racked my bike, and headed into the kitchen to find Brent grading papers.

“How did it go?” he asked

“We biked the loop,” I shrugged, grabbing a challah roll and filling a bag with ice for my knee.  ”No big deal.”

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Holy Hills (Alternately titled Of Racing and Relationships, Part V)

7 Comments Posted by on March 5, 2011

A confession: Biking with Brent makes me anxious.

We had enough minor snafus early on in our experience racing together that I still get a bit gun shy when it comes to training together.  I’ve gotten past it, for the most part, with running, but the prospect of riding – especially on trails – still brings with it bouts of uncertainty and sends my confidence into the gutter.

Which is why, after a fair bit of back-and-forth about plans for this morning, I decided to join Brent for a tough hill ride in and around the Wissahickon Gorge…

…and also why I spent last night tossing and turning as I worried about what the ride would hold.

We left the house just before 10 AM (an extra dog for the week and some small house repairs delaying our start a bit) and headed straight for the trails.  In the heart of Wissahickon runs a 5.33-mile gravel path, appropriately called Forbidden Drive as cars aren’t allowed to pass through it, and jutting up on either side of that path are steep, sometimes technical, hills into the neighborhoods above.

I hadn’t ridden outside since November, hadn’t ridden on trails since September, and hadn’t done a serious hill workout since August.

I was shaking in my bike shoes.

We rode down to the half-mile point of Forbidden Drive and started our first climb, the hardest of the day – a steep, long, technical ascent with tight corners and protruding pipes and rocks.  The park was muddy from snow melt and my tires slipped and slided as I pushed my way up the hill.  I was struggling to find my balance as I navigated the twists of the trail, and I unclipped three times before making it to the top.

Brent reached the top before me, but he, too, came off a couple times during the ride up.

“That’s the hardest one,” he said.  ”And you did great.”

I’m all about positive reinforcement when I mountain bike.

We headed back down the way we came, and I surprised myself with my ability to go easy on the brakes and ease my way over the rocks.  I got a bit tripped up on a particularly tight turn, but otherwise I made it back down unscathed, and we headed down the path to the next hill.

That’s when I remembered one of Bruce’s nuggets of advice that I’ve been collecting over the past couple years: when riding on trails, always keep your tires soft.

We paused to let some air out of my tires and then took to the next hill, not nearly as steep but far more technical a climb.  ”If you come off here,” Brent had told me, “it’s going to be really hard to get back on.”

Bruce’s suggestion worked wonders, and my tires glided over the craggy rocks and gnarled branches.  I came off once, briefly, but jumped right back on, and made it to the top with relative ease.

“I did great!” I exclaimed when I popped up at the top right behind Brent.

I’m also all about self-congratulations when I mountain bike.

“Seriously!” Brent replied.  ”I’ve never seen you ride this well!”

We continued on the trails until we’d backtracked to the first hill, and then rode back down that one to the path.

“This time, try not to let so much distance get between us on the way down,” Brent coached before we began the descent.

I focused everything I had on my fingertips, willing them not to squeeze the brakes, and sure enough, when we hit the bottom, I wasn’t far off of Brent’s back tire.

Progress!

The third and the fourth went similarly smoothly.  I was keeping up with Brent on the ascents and descents, and feeling strong on the rocky terrain.

“It’s official,” Brent joked after we flew down the fifth hill. “By summer I’ll be the weakest rider on our team.”

“It’s the tire pressure,” I told him.  ”All about the tire pressure.”

I’d never felt so comfortable on my bike.

We tackled a total of 14 hills this morning over 3 hours and almost 25 miles: 10 horizontal miles and nearly 15 vertical (map and elevation chart here, since I can’t seem to paste them into this post).

By the end, my quads were yelling, my throat was dry, and my shoulders were tight.  But I was still pushing the pace, and still climbing strong and steady right beside my husband.

As we were heading down the last stretch of Forbidden Drive to our final climb, Brent said, “So do you feel better?”

“I do.”

“Do you feel more confident?”

“I do.”

“Do you feel more ready to race this year?”

“I do.”

“Do you feel less anxious about riding with me?”

“I do… at least for today.”

Baby steps.

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