September 30th (Morning)

Another beautiful morning, sunny and clear skies and a brisk 7°. I remembered the toe covers and leather gloves this morning, so my fingers and toes were kept just above being frozen! I left pretty late this morning, and thankfully I still felt pretty good physically so I was able to push pretty hard. I didn’t catch up to Brian this morning (so I really must’ve been late!). However, I did ride down the 8’ “cliff” that Dave rode on Saturday!!! This is the cliff that was made by the logging crews just on this side of Frolek’s gate, where the single-track from the Rose Hill pipe-line section exits. I’ve been thinking about trying it all week, but each morning I’ve been riding with Brian at this section. I don’t know, I guess if I wiped out I didn’t want anyone there to watch so I never attempted it ‘till this morning. It was awesome, and not nearly as bad as I had figured it would be. With the proper weight transfer, the bike pretty much just rolls along and goes where it needs to go! I will be riding this again a few times for sure. Man I’ve come a long way from my first ever ride where I didn’t even ride down the first hill past Rose Hill road!!!

The rest of the ride was pretty good, with decent speeds and a good pace. I didn’t break any time records this morning, but I was faster than my average by a few minutes and just 1 minute longer than my fastest time yet so that was cool. I didn’t make the the 90° corner/dip/rocky section of single-track 100% (I had to stop and dab, but then I did ride the rest). I managed the creek crossing again, very smoothly too so this is great to get so many successful runs together through this portion this week!

I finally took off the jacket sleeves after the creek crossing before climbing up out of the valley. Other than that one morning at 2°, this is the longest I’ve kept my jacket on during my morning rides.

I felt pretty good for the rest of the ride, and as such I did manage a couple of sprinting/cranking efforts on Summit Drive and Howe Road and even at the end down Copperhead drive. Good ride!