Mixed Progress

A lot of mountain bikers from the club met at Pontiac Lake to ride last night. My plan was to get there early and ride one lap alone, and then ride two with the group. As I mentioned in my last post, I also wanted to (gently) push against my boundaries a little.

I felt like I ended up doing a pretty decent job of staying relaxed and letting the bike roll through some of the faster parts. There are still a few sections / corners where I have mental hang-ups, but, in general, I rode better and still felt in control. I need to keep practicing my Gene drills though; the corners go so much better when you use the correct technique!

We split the group in two and I rode with the faster group. The pace was a little faster than I expected, but I was doing OK. It was interesting to follow. It seemed like any trouble I had keeping up was due to fitness. No offense to these guys, but they are not necessarily super-strong riders (of course, I'm not either), so I was a little surprised that they were pulling away on the flats. Of course, with my knee injury this Spring, my fitness is nowhere near where it should be. Last year, which also wasn't a particularly good year, I'd been riding for 17 weeks before the PLRA XC race; this year, it will only be 9 weeks!

One of the downsides to riding the technical parts faster is that you have to be a little bit more careful about what you ride over (or how you do it), since you tend to hit things harder. I was riding through a big dip when I felt (and heard) my rear wheel bottom out hard on a sharp rock on the way back up. Not good. A minute or so later, I could feel that the tire had gone soft. My first flat in 2.5 years with my Stan's setup. I put my spare tube in and tried to pump that up... but the tube was bad too. By this time, the "slow" group had caught me, and John let me borrow his tube. That one worked, but it ended up being a super slow tire change.

Everyone else was only riding one lap, and without an extra tube, I decided it probably wasn't the best idea to go out for a third lap. So, I'll have to re-seal my tire before the race on Sunday. I may decide to run with a little extra pressure; I was only at 28 psi or so. I'm sure I could bump it up a little without changing the handling too much.