What ever doesn't kill you...

Rode Big Woods again this evening, but this time with a random group from trianglemtb.com. The pace felt a bit faster than when I ride it with the normal group. I got dropped off the back a few times but it was good to push myself a bit. This is the first time I've ridden the trail at night but it seems the lack of light made it a bit more challenging. I'm certainly going to miss this trail once it closes for the year. It's a great ride, nothing else in the area really has climbing this good.

Weights

No bike ride today. Or maybe I should say no real bike ride. Instead, I decided to head over to our community's gym to lift a few weights. This isn't really a New Year's resolution or anything, I just have felt like my rock climbing isn't really progressing and I figured that since I only climb once a week I should probably do weights once a week as well. I really don't have any clue what I'm doing in a weight room but I guess I muddled through alright. I started on a stair stepper thing for 10 minutes of easy warm up. Then I went ahead and did 2 cycles of the weight machines. On some of them it didn't really feel like I was using the right muscles. For instance on the "ab crunch" machine I felt like I was using my legs more than my abs, but I guess I will know more tommorow when I figure out what parts of me are sore. After the weights, I cooled down with 10 minutes on the recumbant bike. After biking outdoors so much recently it was a real bore pedaling in place. I figure I can work on my cadence though and try to keep it over 100 for the course of the "ride". I also think that next time I should bring some music to listen too. I'm dangerously close to impulsively buying an ipod.

Little River Regional Park

I went for a ride today at Little River Regional Park. This was the second time I have been to these trails as they only opened about a month ago. I followed some directions to the trail which I had gotten online and it took me almost an hour to reach the park. I found a quicker way home though so future trips should not be such a hassle. When I finally arrived at the park I was joined by most of the same people as yesterday clubjuggler, jpportz, thebroomecloset, overclokd, and me_not_you. We did the beginning of the easy loop and when we got to the split between the easy and the hard loop overclokd and me_not_you split off to do laps on the easy loop while the rest of us went off to the hard loop. The first part of the hard loop contains several large logs which necessitated hopping off the bike and carrying over. The second part of the loop has less logs but several steep hills and interesting rock gardens. With the trail still only a month old the ground was still a bit soft. Between the soft ground and having ridden the past two days my legs were feeling a bit tired when we got to this part. Along the way on the second part of the hard loop there were a few side trails with some stunts built and we took a quick detour while thebroomecloset and clubjuggler tried them out. Once we returned to the cars we found overclokd and me_not_you waiting. For the most part they had a good ride, doing several laps on the easier loop. overclokd did a face-plant, while trying to ride one of the skinnies, but she was still in good spirits. Overall it was a good ride and these trails should be even more fun once the ground firms up.

overclokd finishing the entry trail

jpportz at the top of a climb

clubjuggler on a skinny

thebroomecloset riding down the stunt

clubjuggler on the stunt

jpportz at the end of the hard loop

overclokd after her faceplant

New Year's Day

Started the new year off right with a good hard ride at Big Woods with Gordon, clubjuggler, jpportz, thebroomecloset, overclokd, and thebroomecloset's and overclokd's friend me_not_you. We ended up meeting two more people at the trailhead, norcal2carolina and her husband Rob. The trail at Big Woods starts out with some pretty decent climbing and Gordon, norcal2carolina, Rob and myself quickly branched off into a quicker group. We ended up riding a section of the trail today which is just recently completed. The new section was a lot of fun with some technical rock gardens and big logs to really challenge you. I forgot to reset my bike computer at the beginning of the ride, but I'm guessing the trail is now around 6 miles.

Speaking of the bike computer I'm resetting it to zero so I can keep track of the miles for the year. It currently has 1694.5 miles on it since I got my bike 1.5 years ago. Hopefully I can get at least 1500 miles of riding in the coming year.