April 26th (Afternoon)
Well, after a really fun ride this morning, I had a very “grumpy” ride home... I felt fine, but the winds were howling again, and this time against me. Granted, they were only between 30 and 50 km/h, but still, it was a struggle to get any sort of decent speed going and to keep it going. The only fast section really was Springhill drive, where, for the most part, the hill blocked much of the wind for me so I was still able to get some decent speeds. But coming down Hugh Allan was brutal!
Going through Peterson’s creek was pretty normal. Speeds were the same and stops were the same, both up and down. I did, however, feel like I rode a bit further up on each stretch, so if I can continue pushing each of these sections a little bit each day, I will start seeing progress.
The section through Frolek’s land, usually a really fun and fast section, was also brutal. Not only because of the wind, but the roads have been completely destroyed by a bulldozer. I’m not sure what they’re doing, maybe making it wider for vehicles or just trying to smooth it out a bit. But what is normally about 5 minutes of fast, fun downhill track turned into about 10 minutes of a churned up, sandy mess. I was in 2:1 combo the whole way, pushing through the sand, bouncing down the road. The feeling was akin to riding along railway tracks, but throw in the surprise that every other “track” simply gives way underneath you and causes you to suddenly churn, heave and push through another sand pile. And then, to top it all off, they even went past the boundaries of land unto crown land, and for some reason suddenly dug away a portion of the hill where I take a trail to head towards the gas line hills. This meant that I had to dismount and climb up the 2 foot cliff now where I used to be able to smoothly transition from road to trail (and it was a really fun transition). So, yes, by the time I got to the pipeline hills, I was grumpy.
The hills there were OK, but I didn’t make neither the last hill (as per normal), nor the second to the last hill (which I know I can make). This was partly due to the fact that I was much slower through this section than normal, as this was my first time through here since the derailleur episode.
The final stretch from Rose Hill to Juniper, another really fun section normally, wasn’t as fun as it normally was due to the wind! I really hate headwinds, but honestly, what biker doesn’t? I can normally average speeds in the mid 40’s through here, but I was lucky to even hit 40km/h let alone average there. So, yeah, once I got home I was not in a very good mood.
I tried looking into alternate routes, but nothing is really available that doesn’t add one additional, major climbs as well as lots of time overall. I will continue looking into this (Google Earth really is an indispensible tool for this to show the topography where Google maps simply shows aerial views or far away terrain views). Maybe I’ll try climbing a bit to find some other trails on Friday or some day when I have the time to explore. Although I’ve been told that the upper trails are pretty bad too (due to the logging/bulldozer).
April 27th (Morning)
Again, those trails coming down out of Juniper are so much fun. Tough, tight and technical single-track (pedals are hitting the hill on the left, but the tires are hanging off the edge on the right). There’s one section where I climb to the top of a little hill, turn 90° to the right, and then drop through a very short little ravine (about a 6 foot drop down and back up, nothing huge for sure). At the dip, someone has put two 2x6’s side by side to bridge the gap (about 4 feet long) and for some reason, today, I couldn’t help but watch the edge and, of course, barely made it over the 2x6’s without falling off them (no worries, it would’ve been about a 2’ drop max) and so I hit the trail on the other side way off course and slid off the trail completely. It was drizzly and wet, so the edge of the trail gave way pretty easy. But, I made the rest of the trail. And then there’s that double-track. Man, what a blast! I got onto Valleyview road about the same time I would normally be riding past that section, so the timing was perfect.
The rest of the ride was really good. I was in the big gear (3:8 combo) most of the way, and shaved off 1-1/2 minutes from this route already. Even though it was Tuesday, I felt like I had the energy of a Monday. This could be due to the fact that I had washed and oiled the bike the night before (I had forgotten to finish this on Sunday and paid for it on Monday).
I got off the bus again at TRU, but I didn’t feel nearly as good on this stretch. In fact, I felt very tired. But, I made the whole hill still in 28 minutes (same time as the last two!), and stayed in the middle ring the whole way. It was raining a bit, so I got a little wet, but it wasn’t pouring. They are calling for thunder showers for my way home tonight... Great...
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