The weekend

It was a good weekend for riding... for the most part.

Eric, the Refuse pastor at The Refuse (the church plant that Ang and I have been working on as part of Scum of the Earth in Denver) and his wife had people over to their house on Saturday night for a spaghetti dinner. I viewed it as an excuse to get a long ride in. So far this season I've been ramping up. two weeks ago I got in a 16 mile ride (up Gold Camp) climbed Gold Camp again last weekend for a 26 mile ride, rode down to church on Tuesday night (14 miles) and Saturday I rode 42.

The ride on Saturday started out well enough. I wasn't sure of the exact mileage because none of the web mapping sites I've found can trace a route that's not freeway and tell you the distance. But I had a general idea and figured if I ended up being late, I ended up being late.

My first mistake was taking the first slow climb out of the apartment complex we live in. You can take a frontage road/path up to Monument or you can take a road that goes in a big arc. I didn't realize how much extra mileage the arc added, but when I looked down at my odometer when I finally got to Hwy 105 and realized I'd already put in 10 miles, I was a little annoyed. Anyway, once you get to 105 you begin a steady climb from 6500 ft up to 7300 in Palmer Lake before getting onto a country road called Perry Park. Perry Park was ABSOLUTELY gorgeous, and for the most part it was flat to mostly downhill, but in parts the roadway was in such bad shape that I was continually watching for divots and wishing I had front suspension on my road bike. At one point, the vibration caused the pin in my right aerobar pad to vibrate out and fly off into space. I found the pin and the pad, but the spring that springloads the pad and pushes it back up and out of the way when you're not using it disappeared. This isn't the biggest issue in the world, but my pad proceeded to add another layer of noise to the vibration and is it danced around on my handlebar letting me know it's displeasure.

The problem with the ride began when I headed north enough to be parallel with Castle Rock. Pain, thy name is Wolfensberger. I knew on the map that I needed to take Wolfensberger Road for several miles into Castle Rock. What I did not know was that the first four miles of Wolfensberger are a climb out of a trough. I'm feeling better on the bike now that I've been back on it for a few weeks, but my lactate threshold is lower than I'd wish for it to be. I had inadvertently taken myself on a 'punish the fat man ride'. I struggled up the climb, but it wasn't anything to be proud of. When I reached the crest, I looked down upon Castle Rock and thought... phew, I'm almost done! If that could only have been the truth.

The truth was that I had only completed half of the remaining climbing. When I descended I descended back into a valley that was directly on the other side of the hills I climbed on Wolfensberger. There's a whole other section of hills on the East side of Castle Rock on the way to a little town called Franktown and what I didn't realize was how close to Franktown my friends EJ and Jen lived. EJ and Jen almost live in Franktown proper so I had another few miles of climbing. When I finally reached their house I changed and almost immediately sat down and realized my quads were burning.

Now, the thing to realize about this burning is that both times I climbed Gold Camp I didn't achieve this burning sensation. I was tired, but I hadn't fried my legs that much. This time I did... which must mean, I'm thinking, that the climbing was worse (or maybe just longer). In any case, I was glad I didn't have to bike home.

Today I was supposed to climb the incline but when I got home yesterday night, I called my friend Russell (who was supposed to BE on the ride to Castle Rock and let him know how completely wasted I was. I don't mind the idea of running the Incline, but when I do, I don't necessarily want to be with a bunch of skinny gazelle like runner types. I'd like to do it on my own. I'd also not like to go on a day where I don't exactly know where the park they meet in is and how early I need to leave to get there thus leaving WAY too early for a Sunday morning.

Instead, I went off and rode with the Colorado Springs Bike Club for the ride I was intending to go on in the first place.

I'm always amused by the Social Ride because of who shows up. There are always a few racer types, a few parents with kids in Burleys, and a couple senior citizens that make you want to aspire to still be riding at their age. But there are always a couple of oddballs and those are the ones that catch my eye and make me laugh.

Today was a lady I've seen before. I don't know how long she's been riding, but she's almost always riding a completely trashed mountain bike with a cigarette hanging from her mouth. Today was no exception. There she was with a rattle that she couldn't identify not realizing that the rear rack on her bike was only attached at one place so that every time she hit a bump there were those of us on the ride who were afraid it was going to smack into her spokes. Someone mentioned this to her and she remarked that it would be fine. At one point on the ride everything stopped because she had broken her chain. As they fixed her chain (she's not the mechanic type) she stood around chain smoking cigarettes. Cycling and Smoking are two things that I've never really seen go together. You need too much performance out of your lungs to be sucking up everything in a cigarette. But I've definitely not seen cycling and smoking together at the same time... at least with someone that's not out riding by themselves in order to get somewhere. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary with regards to it for this lady though. In watching her a little bit at the bar we went to after the ride, it didn't seem like she was all there, but that's not for me to judge. I just got a nervous laugh out of seeing someone riding down the street on a club ride taking a drag on a cig. There's a first time for everything I guess.

Anyway, off to bed.