What's cooler than being cool?

Last weekend I got in some good training rides. Saturday was nothing special, well except that it was scary how slow I was and how quickly I ran out of gas in my legs. Sunday was... well Sunday was great.

Everything went fine as I climbed up 58. I was actually distracted by the beautiful ice hanging from the rock, and the Stumpy was climbing faster and easier than I had ever gotten up that hill before in my life. I was thinking that this was going to be one of the greatest rides ever.

Then I turned onto FS90

It was wet as I turned onto the gravel, very wet. All of the easy speed I had going for me was suddenly out the window. After trudging along for a while under conditions that felt like I was riding with two flat tires I hit the first big turn. Suddenly the road wasn't wet any more, it was simple covered in a solid sheet of ice. For the rest of the climb every single turn was literally imposable to ride. On more than one occasion I almost went down walking.

At the top of the hill I was totally wiped out, and then I remembered that almost the entire descent was in the shade all the time. I thought the climb was bad, but the descent was hair-raising at best, and impassable at worst.

About half way down I ran into two other people dumb enough to also be coming down the mountain. We took about a 10 minute break for trying to keep out bikes upright, sometimes with success for upwards of 100 feet, and talked about riding, racing, and all the jazz.

When I finally got to the trail head I had a great ride. I was flying along the ridge, feeling my hands rattle on the bars. This was my first ride on that bike up on feathercamp ridge and it was really fast, but in several places I really missed the smoother ride of the Enduro. There was only one spot though where I felt any slower compared with feeling much faster on every single uphill incline.

All in all a good ride, an interesting ride, and a great weekend.

Leesburg

I promised a post about my first race of next season and here it is. My first race is going to be on April 18th, in Leesburg, VA, for the Leesburg Baker's Dozen. I know that it's a little odd for me to be announcing this right now, especially since I can't tell you if I'm going solo, two man, or even three man, but there are several reasons for this.

1) Publicly announcing my intention to do something now forces me to train for it, no just waiting for race day and then showing up... I have to be prepared.

2) This will be the debut for my dream cross country bike that I'm building up right now. I'm planning on heading down to the shop after classes today to start putting together an order so that I can have more than just a frame and a fork sitting in my living room.

3) I'm skipping my cousin's wedding for this race.
It's not that I don't want to be at his wedding, it's just that this was the race that got me addicted to endurance racing, if it weren't for this race there wouldn't even be a dream XC rig. I really do wish Matt and Jess all the best, but they just should have chosen a better weekend to get married, or alternatively hold the ceremony in the pits at the race.

There you go, the first race on the calender for next season.