Saturday Steam Ride

After raining all day Friday Tom and Dennis thought of mixing it up and heading down to Manchester for an early morning Saturday ride. Had been anxious to go there since hearing about it months ago and was eager to go. Got to the trailhead around 7:30 and headed out for campbell Pond. Even though they indicated how much better Manchester drains after the rains I was still surprised at what good condition the trails were and think we only saw an inch of standing water in one spot all morning. Guess I spoke to soon when I mentioned the fall weather was finally here cuz it was a thick one out there today. When we got to the end of Campbells pond Tom made joke about the steam radiating off him. I'm not talking the squint your eyes and look real close either. It wasnt so striking as you would get with setting dry ice out in water but darn if it wasnt obvious everytime we stopped.
The dirt/sand was fine but the roots and logs were definatley on the slick side. Unlike the predictable slide I'd come acustomed to with my tires on the dry roots when they hit these babies it was instantanious slippage if you hit them off camber. Forgot how nice it is to ride unfamiliar trails and whether it was my riding unefficiency on unfamiliar trails or having to stay alert thru the tight tree lines I was having to work and feeling it.
Dennis brought the heat today and on our second lap thru Killer three he kept a fast pace making sure he left everything in the woods this ride. I may have drew into closing range a couple times but didnt think twice on making any moves as I knew I wouldnt of been able to maintain his pace today. Should of known he came to ride after on our first trail he showed he could take a good hit and ready for more when he went to clear a down tree and his front sprocket hooked in and caused him to do an endo face first into the ground :)
Looking forward to the next time we can get out there, thats some nice flowy trails with enough technical to keep you on your toes for sure.

Wednesday Fall Ride

Yes :), fall temps have arived. Left work early to try and make the most of a mid week ride before darkness set in and was able to get a nice 23 mile ride in without being soaked. After the sun started going down actually experienced a chill of the cooler air rushing over my arms. And like Tom noticed the other week I too saw a couple leaves falling this trip.
Hit the trailhead around 4:40 and ran into Mark (Roadie from Blythewood) who had his geared 29'r in leu of his single speed so we set off for a nice brisk duo ride. Was running good all the way to the rock garden but ended up with another discraceful hike a bike thru the technical once again. This rock garden seems to be getting more difficult for me and lately I have been mangling it more than making it. I could of swore I used to be about 50/50 thru there, anymore it seems I can only pull it off 1 out of every 5 or more attempts. This is agrevating and I'm really clueless on how Im fumbling this so much. After spider woman (no inner) we road the outerloop back thru crooked pine and then did the Midlands again once then Mark had to bail and I just road a full firebreak one more time.

Tom - got your other reply and Saturday sounds good to me. I should be able to make whatever time ya'll want to start since Saturday mornings are my typical ride morning.

Stats:
Distance: 23.19
Time : 2:00
Avg : 11.5
Max : 23.5

Saturday - Get some hammer out

Was a good ride today, seeing Monty' hammer slinging reply posting set the mood going in and I got pumped to let some hammer out too. Might of started out a little harder than I should of but with the cool air and the company I havent ridden with in awhile(Tom, Monty and Dennis) was feelin good. Taboot, the fellas let me start the ride in front this time so with all this going on I just couldnt hold back the urge to let some hammer out. Was trying to hold a brisk pace and was feeling good with the effort but didnt take long when my darn pocket water bottle popped out and was playing catch up again. Luckily for me the pack held up at the crossing over to lost creek and I was given another oportunity to hang with the pack. The duration to this point was still to short and the stop I had to make to retreive the bottle had me feeling like more hammer must sling. So after a quick regroup we headed out the connecter over to stewardship where we could let some more hammer loose thru stewardship over to the gravel road. Was rollin good all the way to harder section when the darn bottle came out again. This was when I cussed the darn thing and swore to myself I wont try this 24oz size again. I had tried a 20oz bottle the other week and didnt have any problems, dont know if was the extra height sticking out that cause it to come out to easy or what , but psychological or not I'm sticking with 20oz or smaller bottles for the pockets from now on.
It was a darn brisk pace all the way thru the connectors, into spider woman , thru the inner loop before we all did a check point stop right before the rock garden. To this point we were averaging 11.3 which included inner loop. This must of been a turning point though, we ended up taking a very extended break talking about running, races, you name it and by the time we got moving again to hit the rock garden it was pathetic. We must of looked pretty bad, usually you stumble once, maybe twice, but this was bad. I know I had to stop and restart 4 times and not to take it from anyone else it seemed one of us would have to dimount, let someone around, then that person would dismount, and so on... Kinda like some sort of chinese fire drill to make it thru the rock garden. By the time we cleared the rest of spider woman it dropped our average down to 10.8. Boy, its usually the inner loop that kills your average, but nope, this time we got shut down from the rock garden.
From there continued the outerloop thru stewarship, eagle trail , back over to lost creek. Riding to lost creek I got separated from Monty and Dennis and Tom had to bail but after waiting a few minutes outside Lost Creek realized they must of headed out so ended up riding Lost Creek solo and met back at the lot aftwards.
Overall great ride today and was able to drop a couple hammers too.

Stats
Dist: 23.69
Avg Speed: 10.9
Time: 2:11
Max Speed: 24.7

Saturday Morning Ride Anyone?

Anyone up for a Saturday morning ride at Harbison this weekend? I saw there was another running race posted but figured there might be some bike riders out there somewhere looking for some trail time :)

New Shifters

Since I have had my bike I have been plagued with shifting problems under loads both with the front sprockets not wanting to upshift or skipping right past the middle ring on the way back down. If it wasnt the front causing grief it was the rear skipping past one of the center rings only to slam into the next adjacent gear. Well... I finally hope I have seen the last of these problems for awhile anyway when this last trip to the shop they upgraded my Deore grade shifters and derailers to Sram X.9. I am now running XT Cassett, Sram chain, X9 front and rear derailers and shifters. I have only been able to take it out once on Saturday for a test ride but boy what a difference and I never imagined what a difference to the Deor shifters this would make. It now seems very crisp and spot on shifting compared to what I was used to and I love it. The thumb only shifters took a little getting used to and I still find myself releasing off the brake levers out of habit when I went to shift but figure this will pass in time. Between this and my pedals all this also helped nudge my anchor down a tad and I've now broke the sub 30lb weight barrier coming in at 29.97lbs. I know it aint much but I'll take whatever I can get. The last time I had it weighed it was 31.69 with my old pedals and tires.

Thanks for the heads up on the Monday ride Tom but I wasnt able to make it. I definately want to try and hook up and do some sort of group ride though, its been boring as hell for what seems like the last month I've not been running into anyone out there.

Columbia Kids Triathlon

Saturday we took Christopher out to try his first Triathlon and he had a ball. At first he was a little hesitant on doing anything other than the bike portion as he's at a phase that if he thinks he might have a hard time with something he would rather not do it. After we encouraged him and explained how thats what makes you better and he will feel great once he does it he was psyched and ready. We entered him in the age 6-7 short course which consited of the regular 6-7 bike and run but only one lap of swimming. This was one level up from the mighty mights and being the short swim he wasnt eligible for actual placement but we mainly wanted him to have him enjoy the experience.

His swim went better than expected but he doesnt like to put his eyes in the water without a mask so he just exhausted himself paddling above water for the whole length. When he got out and had to run to his bike I was able to run down with him and help him dry off and get his bike gear on. Gotta say I was one proud dad down there, it was a trip standing with him panting and tired but anxious to get going. He took off great on the bike, like dad he rides an anchor and I felt for him but he moved on out just fine. He had to ride two laps around a neighborhood block and when he pulled in you could tell he was tired. I helped him park his bike and then ran with him back to the same line he just road where he had to take off for one lap of running. Again the proud Dad moment, he took off running all the way till he was a tad away from me then slowed to a fast paced walk for a bit and just kept looking back to see if I could still see him then he would pick it up again. When he was all done I asked him about that and he said thats how he made new energy out there to run again :).

The whole thing was great and we all enjoyed it very much and can only hope he wants to do this again.