Long Dark Mountain Ride!

Just got back from a nice five hour stroll through the woods. About 46 miles and around 6500' of climbing. Much fun! Today reminded me of why I like mountain biking so much. If you've been perusing my blog the past couple months, you might notice a trend towards more road, less mountain riding. I'd kind of been in a slump where I was getting tired of all the trails close to home, so I'd just been out on the road more. I just needed to hit the OVT and dark mountain to reinstate my desire for singletrack.
I was witness to all kinds of wildlife today. Deer, Turkeys, an indecisive squirrel that nearly became the victim of my wheel, Crows, Ravens, a five-lined skink, and a Hawk that flew down the trail in front of me for about 50 yards.
The trails were in great shape, with only a few muddy spots to speak of. Overall, a great ride, I'm spent and it's time for some spaghetti and meatballs!

First Ride for Justin

Well, it seems that the bug that I have been infected with is spreading lately. H1N1 can be rough that way... I met Justing today up in Mt. Airy for a short ride around Westwood. It seems that each time I ride there, things get rockier and rootier. I was very impressed with his riding, as this is not necessarily the easiest place to learn to ride singletrack. The rewards with riding or fishing with Justin are always twofold. Not only do I get to hang out with him, and do something outdoors, but there inevitably is ain invitation over to his house for some food. His wife, Emily, can cook a mean supper! The course for tonight; chicken pie! Woohoo! Anyways, the camera batteries died, so the only photos I got were from before Justin arrived.

Gnarly mushroom


Rocky/Rooty goodness, what I was missing in Colorado!

First Ride for Chris!

My buddy Chris came into the shop the other night. He had been contemplating buying a bike for a couple of months now, and made the decision to go with a Cannondale CAAD9. I got him set up with some slipless pedals, a helmet, some shoes, and some clothes. He got out on the greenway for a few miles last night to get oriented with the pedals. So, today was his first true road ride. We did about 12 miles in about 45 minutes or so. There were a couple pretty decent climbs on the route; one on River Ridge, and then both ways on Seward Road. I must say I was impressed with his first ride, he's just such a strong dude that he's able to pull off muscling up the climbs.

My new kicks I wrote about the other day


July Totals:
Mileage: 319.9
Elevation Gain: 30606

Wednesday Night Ride/ City Loop

Last night I made it out for the Wednesday night ride at Paceline. The third lap was, I think, the fastest yet! Curtis and I haven't done a night ride in a while, so we decided after the normal ride, we would go out and add on a city loop afterwards. We got back to the shop, strapped on the lights, and headed out. As we left, we took note of the rather ominous looking clouds approaching from the west. We made the call when we got onto Reynolda road, that we'd cut the loop short, and skip the West End (my favorite part), and head back to the shop. It was a wise decision, because on my way home, I started to see quite a bit of lightning. I'm in the process of uploading my GPS stats from the ride. Motionbased is no longer accepting Garmin GPS files, so I have to start using the GarminConnect site. The new site is non-intuitive and does not allow linking to Google Earth...lame!

While I was out in Colorado, a package for me showed up at the shop. I had ordered some Pearl Izumi clothing, along with some new road shoes. The jersey I ordered was entirely too big for me, I usually wear larges, but this one was enormous!

July Totals
Mileage: 308.8
Elevation Gain: 29606'

Colorado...the remainder

Now that I am back in NC, I'm thrilled. I missed the east coast riding, and can't wait to get out later today to do some of it. I missed the roots, rocks, GREEN TREES, moss, ferns, stream crossings...all of it!

July Totals
Mileage: 265.13
Elevation Gain: 26935'

Colorado Day 6

Got out into Arapaho National Forest again today up around Fraser and Winter Park. I rode for a little over three hours and got in somewhere close to 28 miles, with maybe, 3500' of gain. I'll have to upload all of the Garmin stats when I get back to my desktop to see what I have done. I got mildly lost at one point, realizing that the map that I have is desperately inaccurate. There were all kinds of trails and gravel roads that aren't listed on the map. I'd love to have more time to just explore to see where they all go. Speaking of exploring, I am constantly amazed at how unbelievable the views are. This is a strong catalyst for doing more riding anywhere in the mountains, be it here in Colorado, or back home in North Carolina!



Making me wish I had brought my flyfishing stuff


Wildflowers everywhere...


Descending on the WTB trail....I have no idea what it stands for

Colorado Day 5

The Freshcort in all it's glory

Colorado Days 3&4

Alex and I got in a decent little ride yesterday, riding just in front of storms the whole way. By the time we got on some gravel roads back to the resort, the wind had picked up a ton, it was a struggle just riding into it!
Alex and I on a nice section of trail through a grove of Aspens.



Today, I took the freshcort to Winter Park to explore some trails down that way. I looped together a pretty hefty ride. The GPS battery died somewhere along the way, but I'm estimating about 32 miles with over 4k feet of climbing.

Evidence, a large pile of hairy pooh...yo bear!


Descending a section of Pine Creek Trail


A nice overlook towards the bottom of Creekside Trail

Colorado Trip Days 1&2

25 hours or so of driving got us to Colorado. THe entries are going to be short while I am here because I'm a little baffled by using a mac. We were able to check out the course last night when we got here. Its about a 4.5 mile loop with tons of climbing, close to 1000'. On the backside of the resort near the top there are some incredible views, I'll get some photos later of that. I think today we are going to head out and do some exploration of the area, hit some new trails not at the resort and just kind of chill.

St. Louis Arch


Kansas...450 miles of this....amazing *yawn*


Headed up the pass from Denver, over 11000 feet, the freshcort was struggling

Wagons West!

Well, long story short, I'm headed to Colorado on Saturday. I'll be there hanging out with Alex and Travis watching them race in the National race. We will have about 9 days there of riding/racing, should be most excellent. So, since the plans were set up a couple days ago, I've been trying to figure out some rides. We'll definitely be preriding the course and all that, but I still want to go out and do some long, brutal rides as long as we are there. I posted up on mtbr in the front range forum and got quite a few responses. If there isn't anything else going on next saturday that I don't know about I have a guide lined up that recently moved there from the Asheville area. I was looking for a route about 40 or so miles with lots of climbing, and amazing views. He said he has a route planned near Argentine Pass that is up near/above treeline...nice!

As I was poking around looking at other blogs, I came across this photo that one of the guys took at a trailhead in the area...nice kitty


Hopefully, I'll be seeing plenty of views such as this...

Paceline Recovery Ride

Yet another installment of the traditional Paceline Recovery Race tonight. Everyone was looking strong tonight getting geared up for the Omnium this coming weekend. Doc Pain, Scotty Doo, Mitchy Poo, Curtis, Chancy, E-Rich, Serena, myself and a couple others ramped up the pace on the third lap tonight. Usually this ride doesn't end up with nearly 18mph average. This ride is billed as a "recovery ride" so the vast majority of it is a really chill pace. Sometime I am going to remember to click the lap timer on my Edge to see what we average the last 10 or so miles. To pull the average up that much it must be a pretty asinine speed (at least for me). Fun ride, Mitch and Erich pulled off a victory on the sprint after Curtis was left alone off the front...poor Curtis!

No photos tonight, I was having too much fun!

Moving Time (h:m:s) 1:36:06
Distance (mi ) 28.43
Moving Speed (mph) 17.8 avg. 39.8 max.
Elevation Gain (ft) +2,014

July Totals
Mileage: 165.23
Elevation Gain: 12441'

Rain Ride

Curtis and I were able to get out to Dark Mountain and the OVT for a few hours today. We had planned on doing Dark Mountain, OVT, then add on Warrior's Creek. By the time we had done the first two, made it to the end of the OVT the skies opened up on us, and started dumping rain. The ride went from being unbeleiveably fun to subpar in about a millisecond. We stopped at the end grabbed some food and noticed that the rear tire on Curtis' bike was running low, filled it up with a CO2. Out of CO2, front tire sitting at about 10psi...not good. Nope, didn't have my mini pump as a backup...very not good. We decide to take it easy back to the car, just limp it back. We got started on the OVT, and it rained harder. I couldn't see much with my glasses being soaked, and Curtis was having issues on every corner with such low pressure. At the first intersection, we hopped off of the OVT and rode back on 268. By this point we were absolutely soaked and covered in basically wet dust (it wasn't really mud, just the consistency of wet sandpaper). We got back to the Visitor's Center and got cleaned up. Mexican was the cuisine choice of the day, nice post ride meal!





21 miles, 3000' of climbing

July Totals
Total Mileage: 136.8
Elevation Gain: 10,427'

Good Road Ride

The plan was a 50 miler from the shop this morning. A ton of people showed up since it was the 4th; we probably had somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 people. Doug (one of the other Paceline employees) does this ride, but then mysteriously vanishes somewhere along route. He then shows back up at the shop later in the day with a taciturn statement something to the effect of, "65 miles," or, "75 miles." So....last week I asked him if I could tag along on one of the rides. At about the 35 mile mark this week, he came up alongside and said, "It's time, go straight." So we took off...sneaky! We headed out and did another loop since the remainder of the group was turning back towards the shop. Doug decided that I am a dog magnet, we had three give chase in an area where he said he's never been chased. We had one that ran out from the opposite side of the road as a truck was passing us. The young man driving, thankfully, did not swerve (he would have hit us), but nearly hit the dog. That could have been a bad situation for everyone had it gone only slightly differently! Altogether, we ended up with almost 70 miles (full stats are below). Much fun, thanks Doug!

Big ride being planned for monday, check back!


View Larger Map

Moving Time (h:m:s) 3:58:08
Distance (mi ) 68.88
Moving Speed (mph) 17.4 avg. 40.8 max.
Elevation Gain (ft) +4,012


July Totals
Mileage: 115.18
Elevation Gain: 7427'

Coffee Ride!

Steve and I met up for a city loop/coffee ride this morning. We headed downtown to chill at Brewnerds and shoot the breeze a little bit. We had some good conversation talking about houses, the education system and government, communes, and caffeine. We were all over the place. My Americano and cinnamon roll kicked in just as we were leaving the coffee shop and I started acting more bizarre than normal (as was Steve) as evidenced by the pictures below...

Barry eat Steve attempt #1



Barry eat Steve attempt #2


Steve hit bump and bite tongue off



July Totals
Mileage: 46.3
Elevation Gain: 3415'

Paceline Wednseday Night Ride

Just back and showered from another installment of the Paceline Wednesday Night Ride. Another good group showed up again tonight, minus a few familiar faces (Erich and Mitch, we missed you!). I knew I wasn't going to be able to hang for the entire last lap having climbed Pilot monday and doing some hillwork last night on the mountain bike, but still put forth some effort. Bert apparently won tonight, having sprinted so hard past everyone that he was uncatchable before the sprint line...nice work! Doc Rob said it took him a while before he realized that it wasn't an Audi that passed him.

When we rolled back into the parking lot, there was this dude on a motorcycle towing a casket as his trailer, I had to snap a photo.



And a photo update of newly named Lorien


Moving Time (h:m:s) 1:38:39
Distance (mi ) 28.47
Moving Speed (mph) 17.3 avg. 38.8 max.
Elevation Gain (ft) +2,149

I've decided that at the bottom of my posts I am going to keep monthly running totals of my mileage and elevation gain

July to date
Mileage: 28.47
Elevation Gain: 2149