Mountain biking

Gavin took me mountain biking a few days ago. We drove about an hour from Denver to get into the mountains, then pretty much had the trail to ourselves. We started down an old fire road. About a half mile in, we turned onto some single track. The path went up at a pretty steep angle right as we turned. As I increased my power to pedal up the path, I pulled up on my front wheel, popped the front of the bike off the ground, and tipped myself and the bike over backwards. Oops.

Mountain bike handling is certainly different than road bike handling. After a half hour of riding I began to get the hang of handling skills like leaning forward while ascending, releasing tension in my arms so as not to pull the front wheel around, and trusting that the bike would stay upright instead of trying to make a quick course correction like I would on a road bike.

After climbing for a while, Gavin and I began a pretty long descent. I was feeling good about my handling skills and staying fairly close to Gavin as he flew downhill. Well, apparently I got a bit over-confident. I was taking a section of downhill that had a few twists and turns, nothing that a real mountain biker would consider technical, when I began to lose control. I unclipped and believe I got one foot down, almost enough to stabilize myself. However, that wasn't quite enough. I hit a rut or something with the front wheel and went right over the handle bars, the bike landing on top of me. I probably looked just like the guy pictured above.

Fortunately, neither fall produced more than a few scrapes and cuts. Fun ride though. Out of a 2:20 ride, I probably spend almost an hour at > 160 bpm.

Otherwise, training has been going well here. I can ride to Deer Creek Canyon (i.e., the mountains) in about 1:15, but that means I've got to do a 3+ hour ride to get any significant climbing time. I'll keep experimenting with routes, as Lookout Mountain, among other good destinations, are probably closer. All things considered, riding is good right out my door.

I've found some good running routes including a few predominately on dirt or other soft surfaces that are also right out my door. My HR is noticeably higher while running (perhaps 5-10 bpm). I'll be curious to see whether the bpm come down over time.

Swimming is a bit different. I'm getting used to circle swimming with 5 or 6 people in each lane. After a few more sessions, I'll have most of my swim fitness back and will be able to push it to try to stay with the faster folks, which should help. I don't suck air like up in Vail a few weeks ago, but I think there is some difference from Michigan. I've swam 5 of the past 6 days and will try to continue that trend. Gordo Byrn is organizing a swim challenge (see xtri.com) via Twitter that I may participate in (first time Twitter has ever been put to productive use?). Otherwise, I will join the masters program at DU soon, probably this week.

There's so much to do here that for the next few months I am not going to hesitate too much when an opportunity for cross training arises. For example, instead of running or riding yesterday, Stacey and I went over to Golden Gate State Park for a hike. It was very scenic and moderately challenging.

Finally, unless the weather is spectacular all week I will do a 2 hour trainer ride with the power meter and get some baseline data. I'll repeat the test often, and expect to see a lot of progress as I reacquaint myself with my tri bike. My bike fitness has still gotta be good - I've been riding quite a bit since Louisville.