Saturday Struggle

Tonya had some errands to run this morning so I didnt make it out to the trail until around 11:30 ish and should of known this was the wrong time to start a ride going in. It was hot and humid but figured Id try to get some miles in anyways. Ran into Harry in the lot that was finishing up with this weekends Friends of the Forest group trail maintanance and was about to start riding too so we decided to ride together. He had been out there all morning opening up that new section of trail leading away from the lot. I wasnt feeling any need to get out any hammer myself and really wanted to do a controlled ride over speed anyway. He also said they had been checking out the downhill section of stewadship and seem to be leaning on keeping it open if they can maybe just putting some whoopty do's in to force slow downs rather than cutting a whole new section of trail that is pretty much the same slopes and terrain to work with. We will see though, they still have to present their case to the forestry board which is concious of the safety issues that section presents.
That new section of trail they just opened at the front lot flows pretty good, it was like riding thru baby powder though but once it starts to harden up it oughta be really nice. I think it is a big improvement over what we were riding thru and definately adds some nice flow thru that front section now.
We ended up doing a variety of routes today including the spiderwoman inner loop to finish up with a Lost Creek counter clockwise run. On Lost Creek Harry hit something and tore his rear tire sidewall and started spewing air. We looked but darn if we could ever see what the heck it was (we ruled it hitting some small stick just perfect, there was nothing else around?). After a quick tire patch we were off but really feeling the heat by now and the last half of lost creek was a pure struggle for me. We both ran out of hydration and were set on getting back to the lot for some liquids. Bringing out anything close to an aggressive ride wasnt even a thought that crossed my mind and I just did what I could to keeper rolling. Funny how these things work, some days you can go strong others you just dont have it, this was definately the latter.

I did end up getting a good idea from Harry on fixing the broken visor instead of the tape I had riged up. Hit the parts store and got me some velcro strips and I'm gonna give that a shot. Big improvement over the tacky factor.

Stats:
Distance: 25.02
Time: 2:27
Avg: 10.1
Avg HR: 154