Friday, July 11, 2008

That felt good!

Took the mountain bike on a excursion last night. I found my own "non-technical" mountain bike course. Paved to gravel and back to paved then gravel then bringing it home on the Paved. It had over a mile hill climb on gravel. Interesting? When I would stand on the pedals the back tire would spin without going anywhere. I had to sit down and put weight back to get traction.

I did almost died, as my son would tell me. On the down hill it was bad. Recent rain had gullied out some holes, exposed a pipe that crossed the road, and left tree debris on the road. Of course I didn't notice this until I had cranked hard on the flat at the top of the hill and started down. I was doing good handling the holes and rocks and loose gravel until I went over the pipe which I couldn't tell was there until I hit it, this wouldn't have been as bad if a broken piece of tree branch wasn't right there, which I ran over. I may have caught air. I am not to proud to admit, I was a little scared. Tamara was out for the evening and had made me promise to wear my ID ankle thing if I was doing this ride, I had put it on, but this was the first time I thought I would need it for others to identify the body.

All I knew was to stay upright until the road leveled, which I did. Whey! I wonder how long 38 yr old bones take to heal, I'm glad to not find out. I know you expected me to tell you how I wrecked and did something bad. This is a good story about lessons learned, despite the knot in my stomach during it.

Getting somewhere in one piece is much better than getting there in record time. The good news is the mountain bike sustained some pounding and no flats. That is what felt good!

2 comments:

catmarlson said...

There was a lot of good news in there. Our team can't afford any injuries before the Tango :-)
Glad you survived the hit.

My Mtn. Bike fits me so poorly, I don't intend on taking it to NH. So I will miss out on all the dirt track training rides. I may just have to leave an hour before them and run instead.
Here is the run/bike from the Farm to the AMC Lodge.
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2068036
The one thing about running routes like this up there. People don't tie up their dogs there. Every house I run by I'm going to have that to deal with. I'm not sure how to handle that. Might be enough to make me not run routes like this.

GC said...

The only good thing about loose dogs is that they inspire me to go fast on the bike! It's a proven fact! Although, on the dirt roads to Cardigan, I'm not too sure that can happen. I guess we'll find out.