I hope everyone had a great weekend! If you’ll remember from my post on Friday, I had struck a bargain with myself: if I studied up like a good student all day on Saturday, I would be allowed to head up to the hills on Sunday to go mountain biking.
Luckily for me, bribery has always worked! I got almost 15 pages written on Saturday so yesterday was go time for the bike!
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| Me, Craig, and Cindy |
The day started out a bit rocky because, unbeknownst to Craig, Cindy and me, we were all waiting at different trailheads. None of us had cell service in the mountains, and it turned out they were sitting at a slightly hidden pull off about 1/4 mile down the road from where I was waiting. Luckily after both parties separately waited and wondered for almost an hour, we found each other!
We chose Lair o’ the Bear, a fairly “beginner” trail just outside of Morrison. I say beginner loosely because, although it is not very technical, it does have some rocky sections and it is not easy! Lair o’ the Bear is a good training trail in the summer because it is a great way to get your climbing legs in shape. The trail is an out-and-back with about 2.5 miles straight uphill (roughly 1200 feet in elevation gain) followed by 2.5 right back down. Usually, I don’t think that climb is incredibly brutal…but…well, I clearly don’t have those previously mentioned cycling legs just yet!
We started up the hill and right off the bat, Cindy and I were sucking wind like it was going out of style! I have come to realize that I am a slow starter when it comes to pretty much anything: I need to start out super slow and once I’m warmed up, I can start cruising. Yesterday was no exception!
Like I mentioned, there were a few areas with some tricky technical sections. If it was two months from now, I would have probably tried out more of them then I did. However, in addition to not having my cycling legs, I also was missing my mountain biking nerve! It definitely takes a little bit of guts to hop over sketchy areas and I could tell that I hadn’t been out there since last summer. That’s what first rides are for, right?
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| Nope, I wasn’t posing or anything! |
After about 45 minutes of pure climbing, we hit the summit, completely out of breath. I immediately dropped my bike and started chugging water, as well as slammed a Gu. Not entirely sure what flavor it was but it tasted amazing at the time 🙂
We spent a half an hour lounging on the rocks in the sunshine until we realized we still had the good part ahead of us: heading back downhill! We dropped out butts off the back of our seats to counter our weight on our bikes and prepared to enjoy the ride!
The downhill is always exhilarating and I love the feel of dodging through rocks and trees. There was one technical section that Cindy and I both walked– the penalty for failure was a potential broken head, so we decided not to risk it. However, Craig was able to do it, and although the pics don’t do it justice, it was pretty sweet!
Another fun fact? I always wear a heart rate monitor when I exercise, and I glanced at it while bombing downhill. I expected my heart rate to still be low since I wasn’t exerting too much energy. Instead, I was sitting on 135-140 bpm’s. I guess the adrenaline does get ya going!
The whole bottom half of the trail had melted in the 80 degree temps so it was really muddy. We were zipping through the sloppy areas and we were all covered in mud by the time we got back to the car!
Even better? I only had once incident involving blood– and it happened after we got back to the parking lot! Like the class act that I am, I tripped over my bike and cogged my shin. Sigh. Too bad the carnage doesn’t come with a better story!
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