Edwards Creek to Shearer Road, Greenville with Matt Longest

Fun ride tonight. Hit some trails in Greenville. Haven't been able to make it over there for a ride yet. Was fun to ride with Matt, he showed me around the trails. Edwards Creek can make you dizzy. It's a ton of technical little jigs and jags around trees, stumps and rocks. Keeps going back against itself. Easy to get turned around in there. Pretty tricky. Too tight for a 'niner I think. It had my whole body in a tensed up mess - my hands were killing just after a few miles of riding. By the end my lower back was burning up.

Fell once, sort of against a tree on a quick uphill, spun out, then couldn't clip out. Man down. Then we rode over to Shearer Road. Shearer is more of a faster MTB trail. I would say more "traditional". More straights, little quicker. It was like a tornado recently went through there though. Lots of fresh down leaves and twigs...chunks of 1-2" dia wood - rollers I will call them. Every object wanted to send you right or left - not straight. We quit early. It was hot and we were getting tired. Good ride, we plan to hit the roads soon, maybe Luton the next chance we get for off-road. Matt is doing Iceman with me, so we have to hit some trails in the coming months. Put Fort Custer on the agenda.

Shearer Rd Trail

Edwards Creek Trail

Cannon Cruise

Fast ride tonight. Averaged 18.9 mph. There were 8 men, 1 woman and a co-ed Tandem.

At one point I looked down and I was doing 22mph and the Tandem took over pulling the group. I was already at the back of the group and wasn't paying attention. In a blink they were gone and I couldn't maintain the pace. I had to give up the pursuit. They were gone. Probably a good half-mile ahead of me. They had to be doing 25-26mph. I guess not hard to go that fast when you're drafting on a two-engined bus.

HRM still not working, even though I replaced the battery. Very erratic. I'll have to check a few things, otherwise I might find myself buying a new one. Not sure what is going on.

Saturday, Aug 27 is a MTB/Cross bike Cannon Cruise. 50-60 miles on dirt and only "some" pavement. Sounds fun. This will be the last Cannon Cruise of the year as the cross season starts. I guess road bikes are dumb to ride when this starts. I'll stay away from cross for now, thanks. I've got MILES to put on!! So guess I'll be riding by myself starting in Sept.

Boring

Rode north on the unpaved portion of the White Pine Trail today on the MTB. Haven't done this yet this year, believe it or not. (It's all I've ridden for the past two years until I got a road bike - not sure how I was able to keep it interesting all this time, because it really sucked.)

It was a boring ride - stats are below. Of course Garmin is messing around with the functionality of their website, so nothing can be embedded or edited right now. So, below are some screen shots instead.

Calories is completely off. You'll see why below.

Couple of things to note:

1) Apparently I died around the 30 minute mark and came back to

life right at the turn around point. (I guess the battery in the HRM is done.)

2) Something is wrong with elevation. It should be an exact mirror of itself,

since I rode the same line out and back. WTF!?

3) Look at how I busted tail at the last 6 or so miles. Pushing into road-bike

speeds on the MTB. On the way back there was a Bissel team rider that I passed

(oncoming). I high-tailed it right then, wanted him to come chase me down, but I

never saw him. He must have turned off. It took me 1:00:16 to ride out.

Had to beat that time on the way back - and I was dragging behind. Finished the second

half at 0:59:30 - 45 seconds quicker. I swear I made up more than 5 minutes I was behind.

This was the only "game" I could come up with in order to keep my attention.

Buddy Ride

Perfect night for a ride. Met up with Remus for a 40 miler. Good times!

Cannon Cruise

Friday I was flat out pissed that I had to work Saturday am to get caught up on things and miss the group ride (which I had missed the previous 3 weekends). Then I found out that they cancelled it due to possiblity of rain. By then I had already planned a special trip to Paris (MI) in honor of the last stage of the Tour de France. When I checked the radar this morning, looked like the Paris trip would get rained out, so I stuck around and rode with the group instead. Good thing I did. It was one of those days where my legs felt heavy, was at the back of the group almost all of the time. I got dropped a few times, which never happens. Oh well, good to get it out of the way. Excited to ride with Remus (and maybe Jack) this Tuesday.

Heat Wave of 2011

Well, this doesn't look like much, but after 15 or so miles, I was dead tired. Had to get in 20 miles just to say I did, so I did. Drank one whole bottle of water during the ride, and used some of the other to spray into my helmet and down my back. I was the only idiot out there today on the rail trial getting exercise.

Not sure who to believe, but the news said temp of 97 with a heat index of 105. Car said 101 on the way home. Garmin says 93. Whatever. It was effin' hot, that's all I know.

This fly decided he'd rather end his life than live through another day of this heat.

Heat-Hawt

Today was a good day for a sweat-through jersey. Garmin says temps were in the high-80's, but Wood TV 8 says max was 90 with a heat index of 95. And today was the cool day for the week. Worst part is the dew point, which was 76...in the "opressive" category. Short ride, but man did it feel good to sweat a little. I'd like to get out two more times this week. If you check out the details of this ride, I'm impressed with the consistency of my cadence and heart rate. Lots of rolling hills - I've been trying to go for consistency over long periods. I rode in the drops for the longest time too - have to keep that up.