November 4th (Afternoon)

Again, I wouldn’t say that I felt bad this ride, but not great. I’ve had almost an entire week of feeling this same way. It’s hard to really explain it, but I’m feeling not as fast up the climbs as I think I should be, and they seem to hurt more than they should. Not to mention that my muscles have actually felt a bit sore each night and morning, something that I haven’t felt for quite some time now.

Anyways, the ride was pretty good. We had a parent/teacher interview at Taryn’s school at 6:30, so I had to get home as fast as I could to make sure I had time to get ready to go to the meeting. Going down into Peterson’s creek wasn’t too bad, but my brakes were not as tight as I like them to be. I felt like I had to pull pretty far just to get a response, so I’ll have to look into that this weekend for sure and get them set back up correctly.

I didn’t make the root coming up out of the creek, nor the climb over the east bank. Mostly because I was pressured by a couple of joggers that were coming down a short-cut trail behind me! As I got up and over the bank, they were coming up the bottom, so I just let them run past. Yes. I got passed by joggers. I’m not proud of it! Well, they continued on up the hill and going up we were going about the same pace (no surprise there, really). I made it up to the usual stopping section on my bypass trail. At the top, however, I had to wait for them to get ahead as this is where I would catch them. For some reason, though, I didn’t quite clear the rock wall again? Well, I did clear it actually, but I hit my pedal at the bottom on something (I’ve never hit there before) and then put my foot down at the top (even though I was already over). It just didn’t feel right, weird…

After that, due to my tight timeline, I took the first road/trail down right away to the beginning of Frolek’s lower road and then took the road all the way across their land ‘till Rose Hill. It was a decent pace there over all.

As I left Frolek’s gate, two dirt-bikers came over the trail that I ride in the morning, coming down the “cliff” as I rode past. Kind of cool to see them do that, and the good thing is that they didn’t seem to rip up the trail at all, here or behind them as I continued down where they had just come from earlier. So I doubt these were the same two that were in Juniper a bit ago.

I did make the final climb at Rose Hill again, though! So that is now my fourth time beating this crazy hill, AWESOME!

The rest of the way into Juniper I just stuck to the main trail the whole way in to save a bit of time. I met two bikers (at different times) and then another 3 joggers and as I left the trails, another car pulled up with 2 more hikers in it. Crazy, it’s getting dark and cold and yet I meet this many people?