Bert Flinn - Mountain Bike!!
Raining again today... and in a desperate effort to avoid getting on the Computrainer, based on a suggestion from Ryan Cousineau I (literally) dusted off the mountain bike. Pumped up the tires (Bontrager tubeless, so hoping they wouldn't need to be remounted with fresh sealant..) discovered that someone had borrowed my stem. So off to Capp's to get a stem. Dug up the Polar so I'd at least have a minimal bike computer...
And headed out in the rain about 7:00PM.. Ryan was a no show...
Bert Flinn's bike trails are mostly beginner with a few odd bits of intermediate riding thrown in. The intermediate bits being steepish but short downhill bits complicated with rocks and roots... but with no drops (there are some "stunts" but all are avoidable..)
The uphill bits all felt easy to do compared to a few years ago ... but the downhill bits where all a bit offish... havn't been on that bike for almost two years and what little downhill skills I had then seem really rusty... and I kept feeling twinges and muscle's working in my right shoulder to remind me that it really didn't want me to fall off.. Not that I'd probably break anything at the speeds I was going at (slow walk or slower) but still likely to involve muscles around my collar bone doing things they really don't want to do right now... painful things.... :-(
No power meter... but guestimate for the 1:20 ride is probably about 75TSS points (fait bit of climbing). And a couple of hours later after supper and a glass of wine, I am noticing that the upper body is really noticing the difference between a road bike ride and (easy) mountain bike ride.
Hopefully spring weather will return for the weekend. It's been more like winter here this week. VeloVets 10kTT on Saturday morning (with Michel Pelletier and Bill Riley both promising to show up to beat my time...) And then on Sunday the Atomic RR. Another race for me to show my lack of hill climbing power on... The hills are slightly shorter than Sundays. But not by much.
1 comments:
Named and shamed! Some personal stuff intervened, and I ended up checking out the park the next day.
There's a stunt-laden trail called "Stars" in there. It's well-marked and the construction seems solid, but I don't think the stunts (at least the "easy" bail-outs) have been well thought out. There's places where I figured the stunt's line was not technically hard, but any failure would be highly consequential. We're talking relatively friendly-looking log paths that were several feet above the ground.
It may just be that the bar has been raised in mountain biking, and I don't realize what the basic skill set is anymore. Heaven knows I have never been a technical talent on the trails.
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