May 25th (Morning)

May 25th (Morning)

·         Fluids Intake

o   Evening Before: 2 glasses of water, 1 can of Dr. Pepper, 1 glass of milk

o   Morning Of: Nothing

·         Food Intake

o   Evening Before: 2 pieces of multi-grain toast and 1 toasted English Muffin all with margarine and peanut butter

o   Morning Of: Nothing

 

Well, with my cold more than gone (sweet!), I took to the trail coming down out of Juniper again. It was fairly overgrown since the last time I rode it a week ago, but still OK. I was not, however, feeling very confident this morning again and walked the steeps, even had my foot down on the down-and-up switchback. But I made the rest of the trail really well, and the fast double track was pretty good. It did have a few sections where the silt and sand had piled up as well, so I did end up slowing down on a few sections. But all in all, it was still a blast. The new front rotor has much more power on the final descent into Valleyview. I was much more controlled, and realized how much I used to rely on my rear brake coming through this section. I did notice this weekend, much to my surprise, that my rear pads were more worn than the front and I think this is probably why. I never really trusted the front to do what I needed it to do, so I was using the back a lot more. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, really, but I will need to work on balancing this out. Who knew that something as simple as slowing down had so much involved in it?

 

Once I hit Valleyview Road, I was again in the big ring the whole way to Lansdowne. It was fun, with a decent time of 19 minutes (my best to date is 18.5 minutes). I also noticed that my legs weren’t burning as much coming down as they were before, so that’s good.

 

I got off the bus at TRU again, after a week of easy riding to work from Roger’s Way. However, I instead rode over to the Home Depot and entered the Kenna Cartwright park (see section K-12 of the map). I started up the “Reservoir” trail heading north west and rode it up until it intersected with the “Doc Findlay Loop”. I then took this and headed south-east. Shortly after, this trail met up with the “Kinnikinick” trail (I’m not making these names up!) which I rode up a couple grunt climbs ‘till it met up with the “Doc Findlay Loop” again. Around the bottom left corner of section L-11, I took a shortcut and cut directly west until I hooked up with the power line trail (not on the map) that took me to Copperhead Dr, which takes me right up to work.

 

Granted, this route adds a bit of distance (about 2 extra kilometres) and time (about 7 minutes today). I climb more, as I go right over Mt. Dufferin and then back down again. However, I’m off the streets and on trails, which is always more fun. Plus, by doing this, my ride is now probably close to 85 or even 90% trails vs streets, so I can finally set up my tires for trail riding, thus improving my traction. I can lower the tire pressure and flip my rear tire around. Also, as I’m looking for a good rear tire, I don’t have to worry as much about rolling resistance and can simply concentrate on finding something with good all around traction (the terrain in Kamloops is extremely wide and varied and thus caused problems when trying to find a tire that is good in so many different terrain types).

 

I found it interesting this morning as I was looking over the map of the KC park that Dave took me on mostly black diamond trails! Kind of cool, really. I also noticed a couple other options that I will try when riding over the mountain in the mornings as well. The KC park has so many trails to try, I’m tempted to even start taking the 7am bus instead of the 7:15 so I can have an extra 15 minutes of riding through there! Wow, this commute just got awesomer!