October 27th (Afternoon)

I worked today again ‘till 5pm, but the skies were clear mostly so the extra sunlight/daylight was enough that I didn’t have to use the light at all as compared to yesterday’s ride home. I didn’t feel bad today, but I sure wasn’t 100%. I made the root out of Peterson’s Creek, but only with a quick dab of the foot… However, I did make the climb out and over the east bank again, and I made the climb up the bypass trail to the stopping point 1/2 way. Oh, and I cleared the rock “wall” again, phew!

I took the first gulley trail down to the single-track section which was a lot of fun. Very fast, and swoopy (is that even a word?). From there, I followed the single-track to the final gulley trail and followed that down to Frolek’s lower road. I had a much better time through the mini “rock garden” on that trail than I did previously. It’s tough to mentally let the bike go where it wants on that section, as the rocks are trying so hard to grab and stop that front wheel…

Frolek’s road was decent for speed, but not my fastest at all. At the Rose Hill pipeline section, I had some really good speeds through the valleys, but climbing up the final hill I spun out bad enough to have the bike turn sideways on my and completely stop… Meaning I didn’t make it again… Next time!!!

Other than a few hikers with their dogs on the main Juniper trail, it wasn’t too bad. However, catching up to hikers always slows me down as I have to slowly catch them (so I don’t surprise them and give someone a heart attack), and slowly pass them (so their dogs don’t turn in front of me and I run over them). Then, I slowly pull away as most of the time the dogs try to follow and that gives the owners a chance to call them back… Anyways, it’s a process but I feel that as a cyclist, I need to give a positive experience to other trail users because if push came to shove and people got annoyed, cyclists are always the first to be banned from a trail!

Anyways, I took the look out trail again and still sprinted up the beginning climb, but I didn’t feel nearly as good as I normally do here, so it was a bit slower. In the end, I still had a decent time of 45 minutes, but slightly slower than my best of 43.5. Granted, my average speed was higher (19.3km/h), only 0.6km/h slower than my best to date.