October 20th (Morning)

0° this morning, coldest yet that I’ve ridden in! To be honest, though, I couldn’t really tell a difference between this morning and the last two 3° mornings… The new skull cap is AWESOME, as are the pants. My fingers and toes were pretty frozen again, I think I might try some heat pack things in my shoes next week? See if that makes a difference. And probably some good, winter gloves would do the trick for any minus degree weather.

I felt a bit more “out of gas” today than the last couple of mornings. Seems like Wednesdays I feel this way more often than not. Thankfully, it is usually just one or two rides and the rest are pretty good. I didn’t feel bad, just like I didn’t quite have the extra “oomph” that I usually do. I took it slower through Juniper again, mainly just to keep warmer. I met up with a couple and their two dogs just past the Frolek’s gate. With the dim lighting, I have no idea what kind of dogs they had, hah!

The climb up to my single-track wasn’t bad, although I considered getting off and running to try and keep my feet warm. They weren’t too cold yet, so I didn’t do it, but later was thinking I maybe should have? I did have to dab at the dip/corner on the single-track again. Not enough speed, too much speed, whatever. I have no idea what I do differently here when I make it as compared to what I do when I don’t!!! Frustrating…

Near the beginning of the Billy Minor trail that takes me down into Peterson’s Creek (right near the boundary between Frolek’s land and the park), I wiped out rather awkwardly (have you ever noticed that even the word “awkward” is awkward???). There’s a large tree across the trail, and so a little path has been made to go around it. However, the path is a couple of tight corners, a steep little hill, mixed in with two trees. All this combined makes a bit of a tough little technical section. At first, I struggled to make this, but once I figured out how to do it, I’ve done it 100% ever since. The biggest key, as I learned today, is slow and easy. I typically take it very slow. Like, to the point that I’m pretty much stopped at the bottom of the bend before cornering and climbing back up to the trail. Well, this morning I decided to take it faster. Not crazy fast, just faster than normal. BIG mistake. As I got around the tree and back up onto the trail, I was going too fast to make the 90° turn to point myself back down the direction of the trail. As such, I ended up climbing up the bank on the left side of the trail. Not wanting to have to count this as a “stop”, being a section I know I can make, I mistakenly tried to power through it. As such, the front end of my bike was a foot or so higher than the back, and I was trying a rather slow turn at the same time. Gravity then took over, and I started going over. Unfortunately, I was falling towards the downslope side of the trail, meaning that I couldn’t reach the ground with my foot and I wiped out into the fallen tree. It wasn’t a big deal, I don’t think, (in fact, my first worry was that I had maybe ripped my new pants!) but somehow I managed to smack the inside of my left knee pretty hard on something (my handlebar I think). It was an instant charlie horse, and it hurt to bend it. Ouch… From then on, every climb hurt like crazy forcing me to rely on pulling the pedals and not pushing them. And from this point on the trail, it’s pretty much uphill the entire rest of the way for the next 30 minutes of riding!!!

The red line is the trail where I have to dip down and around a fallen tree. The blue arrow is where I came up and tried to turn back onto the trail.

Now sitting on the computer at a desk is making it even worse. I tried stretching it out when I got to the office, but couldn’t do much. Hopefully it won’t get too stiff today and will be loose enough for the ride home. It’s crazy how the slow speed wrecks can sometimes be just as nasty as a higher speed one!

At the top of the Tom Moore trail, I met up with the lady and her black Lab, Rosco. She said the last couple of mornings she has been walking the trail in the same direction as me and has been just a few minutes in front of me. Both mornings, she has seen a bear near the 2nd sand pocket! A brown bear on Monday, and yesterday she saw a large black bear. Crazy, I haven’t seen anything! I’m so blind I guess… Apparently, yesterday the black bear was walking up towards the trail, so either he turned back around or continued up the hill by the time I came by… Hah!