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| Daunting trail signage for the Bow 80 |
After a couple weeks of travel, it's back to biking. Yay! Before embarking on the cruise ship I fit in a Seattle run with some hills and ocean front. Nice. Not that I enjoy running ... but in a pinch it worked. I also managed to take a few spin classes on the ship as well as get in a couple workouts on the elliptical trainer. None of that is like mountain biking though; not in terms of the energy output, the concentration, or the thrill. Friday I got back to it, but without Sante. My trail dog and bestie had a rough weekend before I came home and is off the trail for a bit while her feet heal from some cuts and an infection. She is missed on the trail already!
Friday, Gloria and I headed out to West Bragg after I dropped the guys at the airport. It was a gorgeous sunny day. Our first loop was new to me: Braggin Rights to Reconnect to Long Distance and back to the parking lot. Then, after a pit stop for a snack and some water we hit Ranger
Summit to Strange Brew and back to the parking lot. All in we did 20kms, 2.5hrs, 2200ft of
elevation. As my first ride in a couple weeks, I suffered sufficiently but it was fun!
Saturday, after I watched the women's Olympic mountain biking race on TV with Kate, Suz and I set out to try and do the back half of the Bow 80 race course. I'm not back to my pre-vacation riding form so I wasn't sure how I'd feel. We had an adventurous kind of day. We set out on Powderface and discovered the climb is beyond our rookie skill level. We did a lot of hike-a-biking ... we learned afterwards that we were doing it in the opposite direction as we'll do it on race day. This makes me feel a little better but I'm not too excited about riding
down some of those sections either. At any rate we eventually found our way to Powderface Trail Road and ticked off some kms with some speed down to Prairie Creek Trail which was mostly descent. Along the way I heard some hissing coming from my front tire. Sure enough there was some Stan's bubbling out of the sidewall. I put the bike on its side and coaxed some Stan's into the hole and it slowed the leak down. Pumped it up and continued down successfully. My tires are done though ... on top of that issue the sidewalls on the back tire had some Stan's seepage showing on both sides. Wednesday's project (when I'm back from my quick business trip interrupting my "summer of fun!") will be to switch out the tire set. We ran into Sarah and Sean on the trail and again in the parking lot. They invited us to do a little extra with them so we tacked on an extra 5km with Elbow Valley Trail. All in all we did 27 kms and climbed 2900 feet over 3 hours of riding.
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| Solo spin on the cross bike. |
Today I got in a 2 hour E2 city ride on the cross bike. It was nice to be back on the Scott! I saw 6 food trucks at the East Village but resisted the urge to stop and headed home for a healthier lunch. :)
Get outside! Summer's burning ...
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| Having some play time with Sequoia. |
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| Friday's Ride |
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| Saturday's Ride |
Saturday, after I watched the women's Olympic mountain biking race on TV with Kate, Suz and I set out to try and do the back half of the Bow 80 race course. I'm not back to my pre-vacation riding form so I wasn't sure how I'd feel. We had an adventurous kind of day. We set out on Powderface and discovered the climb is beyond our rookie skill level. We did a lot of hike-a-biking ... we learned afterwards that we were doing it in the opposite direction as we'll do it on race day. This makes me feel a little better but I'm not too excited about riding down some of those sections either. At any rate we eventually found our way to Powderface Trail Road and ticked off some kms with some speed down to Prairie Creek Trail which was mostly descent. Along the way I heard some hissing coming from my front tire. Sure enough there was some Stan's bubbling out of the sidewall. I put the bike on its side and coaxed some Stan's into the hole and it slowed the leak down. Pumped it up and continued down successfully. My tires are done though ... on top of that issue the sidewalls on the back tire had some Stan's seepage showing on both sides. Wednesday's project (when I'm back from my quick business trip interrupting my "summer of fun!") will be to switch out the tire set. We ran into Sarah and Sean on the trail and again in the parking lot. They invited us to do a little extra with them so we tacked on an extra 5km with Elbow Valley Trail. All in all we did 27 kms and climbed 2900 feet over 3 hours of riding.
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