Potato Mountain - Irish Heaven?

Two random guys climbing Potato Mountain:



I got an email early in the week from my friend Mark about a ride for Friday morning. We usually ride as a group on Saturday mornings, but with the holiday weekend I guess we moved it up to Friday.

To kind of set the stage ... I had been riding for four days in a row already and the trail Mark wanted to do was where the 210 freeway meets the 57. Not close. Even better was that he wanted to start at 7AM! This meant I had to wake up super early and then drive a long way just to get in a ride.

I had wimped out of the last group ride, preferring to sleep in, so I figured I owed them.

I had never been to "Potato Mountain" or "Marshall Canyon", so I thought at least it will be a new trail. Maybe even the best trail ever. It wasn't the best ever. Haha.

One more piece of information before the actual ride ... this ride was done in the context of my first "control" game on GeoLadders. Unfortunately my buddy Troy and I were placed on different teams and since we were both only going to do one lap, that meant that one of us had to get credit for the ride while the other had to let it go.

Good for me I brought my laptop from work with a wireless internet card in it. Needless to say I got the credit. Hahaha. Sorry Troy ...

To the ride! ...

I woke up at 5:15AM and showed up at about 6:20AM at the meeting spot. Too early. Troy was there early too and we talked a bit. I tried sleeping in my car, but it didn't work.

Mark had sent a message to some guy that had done the trail a ton of times and asked him to show us the trail. His GeoLadders name is "gassertrucks" and his real name is Mark. Great guy.

Anyways the four of us (me, Mark, Mark and Troy) started out at about 7AM. Must have been around 45 degrees outside and boy was I cold. It warmed up later, but I have a feeling this winter is going to be very cold as I continue to ride at night and early in the morning. Just something I need to get over I guess.

The first several miles were pretty easy rolling hills. The only problem was that I wasn't having an easy time with them. My legs felt dead and I was struggling to find a comfortable gear to ride in. I remember watching my three friends getting further and further ahead of me as I lagged behind. Four days of riding in a row will do that to you I guess.

Eventually I warmed up and felt pretty good. What really helped was getting on some longer more consistent climbs. It felt good to get into one gear, stick with it and then grind it out.

The only noteworthy thing about the ride to the top of Potato Mountain was the last climb. Mark kept telling us that it was pretty steep and that it was going to be tough to do. I considered that a personal challenge. I've been feeling really confident in my climbing ability lately and I had planned to give it everything I had.

All in all it wasn't an easy climb, but it wasn't nearly as tough as Mark had hyped it to be.

My back brakes were sounding HORRIBLE on the ride back, but they've sinced calmed down.

Highlight of the ride was doing it about 20 minutes under the average time. I'm always excited to beat the average time for a trail.