After the ride today I just can not imagine doing 35 miles. I will have to omit from doing this race since the kidney accident I just can not ride like I use to. So its time to understand what and what not my body can do and it just will not survive the 6 hour Plus riding. I can only imagine how many days I will be peeing blood. Since it sometimes still freaks me out to see blood in my urine i will opt out of riding.
As my motto says “Always next year”
Well it seems that when I lost my kidney last year and not being able to ride for 3 months I have lost my skills. I can ride only half what I did last year. Now I have to decide to ride or not. Riding out tomorrow to test the my skills.
Since in the past 2 weeks I have gotten more flats then in the 4 years of riding I decided to take a chance and head out for a ride. It was cold and kinda of wet on the trails this morning. I was reading in one of my mountain bike mags that you should ride between 30 to 90 mins. Also not to do much climbing because you might get over heated. It said if you ride hard your body trys to cool you down by sweat which for the article is bad. So I did a ride up a very steep hill since have never be able to ride up it yet. I know bad, but it really was not bad it was great. And to top it all off I did not get a flat. YAH!!!
Its my day off today, lucky I get every other Friday off. Decided to let it get warmer before riding in the cold. I have to say the a cold morning ride is one of my best rides. I love the cold air, the packed dirt and the omission of riders who think they can start at full speed and burn themselves out quickly. My plan was to ride up Knapps/old tin mine the whole way out of the saddle to build up my climbing skills, but that did not happen. I got up to my first stopping point and once again I had a tire leak again just like last weekend. But I was ready this time I had CO2 that i got for the bicycle company however they were sitting in my work backpack back at home. So the past 2 rides I ended up exercising by hiking instead of biking. NO MORE I am going to get my tire checked out.
I had great intention of riding today, and I kind-of did started out in 20 degree morning. I rode great until I was knee deep in mountain and then it started to snow. After hitting my rest area ( where I reach my goal) where I stop when I reach a point in my ride that I either went further without stopping (mostly a major climb) or I have gone past where I have rode before. This time it was not stopping. I noticed my rear tire was hissing and going down. Being the prepared rider that I am, i went to my pack and pulled out one of 3 CO2 canisters and found out that since I store my pack in my car the CO2 were frozen or did not produced air to fill my tire. So I went through the remaining canisters and all they all just could not fill my tire, and to top things off or make it more of a challenge it let the remaining air out of the tire.
That forced me into walking down the great Franklin Mountains while it was snowing and yes I did pack a jacket that protected me in just this type of weather. I packed my bike on my back and away I went. Two hours later I made it to my car and went home. When I got home I looked at my tire by that time it had sealed itself. So I just did not pay any mind to getting it fixed after putting air in and watching it for a few days. The tire held it psi so did not follow through with getting it looked at.
Like I said in the title “When things are the same all the time day after day”, I mean I ride the same and do the same day in and day out. However the month of October has been one month of Travel. I went east to the Eastcoast then two weeks ago I went to the extreme west coast (hawaii) both I just did not have time to ride. When I get back from all my travels I was sore (my back) that I need to loosen up and ride slowly. One of the rides I was doing was practice for the 12 hour of old El Paso race which happened on Oct 22 2011.
One of the things I have to do before a race is to check in with the doctor and when I talked to her she STRONGLY suggested I not race which I did. So I am back off to training for the next races next year. In the process of training I found an new trail out in the Northeast area. In the next couple of post I will be trying to add video of the new trails.
RIDE SAFE
Which I am trying to live by.
Well the long rest period (3 months) is over and I have been riding the past 2 weeks basically 2 to 3 times a week. It has been moving slow it seems that when crap happens it takes me a lot longer to get back to where I was before the wreck. I meet up with John who informed me there are new trails created during the recovery period. I can not wait to tell and show the new stuff. I just registered for the 12 hour race hoping I will be back where I was BLK (before the lose of kidney)I will see.
It has been one month of a no ride promise I gave to my family, I am still sore but that is normal my Doc’s tell me. I have been training on my trainer the past month and I am getting back to where I was before the crash. Well look into getting back on my bike sooner but I will have to be at lease 98 % before that time.
Yesterday was the race, however I could not attend the race either racing nor watching. I decided to take it easy and sleep till I woke up. In other words I sleep through the race and missed it all. Since I planned a while back to race I paid my money but when I damaged my kidney they wanted to refund my entry fee, which was very nice but I decided to keep supporting the mountain bike seen. I believe we need to have more races sponsored by bike shops or other sponsores it keeps the bike scene active. There is next year if nothing happens in the mean time.
This is like my crash nothing special not a major fall on some but it just did not work out well for me.