Sunday, February 04, 2007
"You're Not A Good Biker If You Don't Bleed"
I went and tackled Rocky Hill Ranch again yesterday. Rocky Hill was the scene of my demise (last August) when I tried to do the Texas Chainring Massacre and utterly bonked within minutes of starting. I returned to run the course again this time with a February chill in the air.
It occurred to me that there is a hard and an easy route to enter the course. The hard one involves a long climbing slope which is the one that killed me last time. I took this route again and found myself struggling to get to the top. It's apparent that I do ok on small hills where all I need to do is a quick burst of hard pedaling. But, I don't fair too well on long inclines. Perhaps this is an area of biking I need to focus on.
I had spent and hour and a half or so biking a little over ten miles through the trails and came to a spot to rest. A group of mountain bikers (two men and two women) came up the trail and stopped where I was resting.
We made some small talk and soon they were heading down the trail to finish the course. I decided to join them since I was heading in the same direction. I consider myself a fairly fast mountain biker but these guys were fast. I took all my effort to keep up with them.
Then we came to...The Wall.
The Wall is an extremely steep slope both going down and up on the other side hence the name. The first guy made it down and up (not sure if he walked his bike up). The second guy attempted to bike up but quickly wiped out falling backwards down the slope.
The two women and I opted to take a more reasonable path off to the left. It was a wooden bridge type structure convered in a canvas of what can best be described as being very similar to sandpaper. I went first and promptly wiped out on a bump on the bridge. My left knee and shin too the brunt of the hit. I quickly recovered and made it across.
When we met up with the two men, the guy that had wiped out had a gash on his face. One of the women said, "Oh that's gonna need a butterfly" Poor fella. As we continued on the woman said, "You're not a good biker if you don't bleed!" I thought "Here here". I guess that would make me and excellent biker. Ha! ha!
Here are my Rocky Hill Ranch war wounds to prove it.
It occurred to me that there is a hard and an easy route to enter the course. The hard one involves a long climbing slope which is the one that killed me last time. I took this route again and found myself struggling to get to the top. It's apparent that I do ok on small hills where all I need to do is a quick burst of hard pedaling. But, I don't fair too well on long inclines. Perhaps this is an area of biking I need to focus on.
I had spent and hour and a half or so biking a little over ten miles through the trails and came to a spot to rest. A group of mountain bikers (two men and two women) came up the trail and stopped where I was resting.
We made some small talk and soon they were heading down the trail to finish the course. I decided to join them since I was heading in the same direction. I consider myself a fairly fast mountain biker but these guys were fast. I took all my effort to keep up with them.
Then we came to...The Wall.
The Wall is an extremely steep slope both going down and up on the other side hence the name. The first guy made it down and up (not sure if he walked his bike up). The second guy attempted to bike up but quickly wiped out falling backwards down the slope.
The two women and I opted to take a more reasonable path off to the left. It was a wooden bridge type structure convered in a canvas of what can best be described as being very similar to sandpaper. I went first and promptly wiped out on a bump on the bridge. My left knee and shin too the brunt of the hit. I quickly recovered and made it across.
When we met up with the two men, the guy that had wiped out had a gash on his face. One of the women said, "Oh that's gonna need a butterfly" Poor fella. As we continued on the woman said, "You're not a good biker if you don't bleed!" I thought "Here here". I guess that would make me and excellent biker. Ha! ha!
Here are my Rocky Hill Ranch war wounds to prove it.
# posted by Robert : 9:36 AM
