Anniversery

My first year has finally come to an end today and its been quite adventurous along the way getting into this awesome new pastime. I can only hope for the years to come I keep the same enthusiasm and enjoyment that made it a great year.

It was this time 1 year ago my wife and I decided to pick up a couple Schwinn mountain bikes from Target to give what at the time we thought to be mountain bike riding a try. A couple of $200 mountain bikes in hand we gave Saluda Schols a try and was like wow, cool and all that stuff. Then after hearing from a co-worker that Harbison had some good trails took my son out there for a ride to check things out and was blown away thinking alright now this is the deal. Remember heading out on the weekends for long grueling rides just to complete a 4 mile firebreak ride or parking in the back so I could do stewardship not able to do anything longer. The Schwinn took a beating and didn’t last 3 weeks before heading up firebreak climb across the river/road area the rear derailer launched into the spokes and broke the derailer and 2 spokes. It had been 3 weeks and I was hooked and luckily for me Targets return policy of up to 30days let me return the bike for a refund and I was able to persuade Tonya on letting me get a real bike. Sure I know the Trance isnt no high end rig but coming from a Target store wanna be mountain bike I couldn’t of been happier.

Pedaled around for a few months thinking I was doing something, then for Christmas got me some clippless pedals, shoes and other riding gear and thought I was finally bumping things up a notch, but still just a strolling to get 14 or so miles in on a weekend . Didn’t have a cycle computer then so don’t know the real speeds or times but it had to be snails pace. Pretty much continued at this pace and intervals throughout the winter but by the end at least I was able to make it thru spider woman only worrying about crashing on the rocks, still no inner loop though.

By far the biggest eye-opener of the year came when I heard of the Harells Wednesday group ride starting up and decided that would be awesome to try. I had heard it was a brisk ride and intentionally packed plenty of hydration thinking it could be rough and I may need this. That first ride was the dang toughest ride I had ever done by a mile. I remember grasping for air, cramping and literally laughing at my predicament where I couldn’t even drink my dang water because I couldn’t stop breathing so darn hard or afford to stop cranking and returned home with the pack still almost full. It wasn’t a matter of trying to keep up, but rather trying to keep everyone in sound distance so I could find them, it was really pathetic but even with all the suffering endured I loved being forced to push it so hard. I was just blown away in all aspects on how these guys were able to do that.

From that turning point entered into 3 sport class races to get my feet wet and establish some baseline rookie year numbers. My race results aren’t pretty but atleast now I have new goals to work towards improving on and the events have been some of this years greatest experiences.

For next year a few of my goals will be
- Increasing my general riding avg speed from 10.4 to 11
- Ride Lost Creek clockwise in 30 minutes or less
- Be able to clear Spider Woman rock garden the majority of the time
- Improve my race times by 2+ minutes
- Be able to hang to within “sight” distance of the group rides
- Ride 50+ miles in one outing