Mountain Gears

So I got the second mountain bike ride in for the season. Well, as mountainous as it can get when I start out from home, which ends up being about 8 miles of road, 4-6 miles of dirt and another 8 miles of road. Anyways, its been quite some time since I hopped on the hold hard-tail, so before I attempted to hit some steep trails I took a few weeks to ride an easy bike path between Mountain View and Shoreline Park. The first ride up to one of the peaks at Steven's Creek park was surprisingly easier than I expected, however, I did near black out as I paused at the top for a while. Yeah, I probably pushed myself too hard there. I paced myself a bit better on the second ride and felt pretty good at the summit. Its all coming back to me. I remember how I used to categorize trails - the "up-and-back", and "balloon", a couple basic ones, representing the path for the whole ride. So for example, a balloon ride, is one where you start and end on the same section of trail, but somewhere in the middle, you take a fork which leads you back to it later on. And then there was how I would rate each ride. Mostly on my performance. Which included things like if I had to stop to rest (-1), if I had to put a foot down in a technical section (-1) or even worse, if i pitched it in a technical section (-.5) - that only a minor ding cause as long as I didn't get hurt, there is a story in it at least. Then theres the gearing during uphills, max speed through downhills. So many things to occupy your mind during that slow, agonizing uphill. Ah those were the days.

(2007-04-11 10:12:26.0) // Permalink