I Finally Get It

I now understand what they mean. I used to think it was all nonsense and that people were making something out of nothing, but I was wrong. There is definitely strategy to bicycle racing. How fast should I go? How close do I get to the guy in front of me? Do I pass him now or later? What do I do after I pass?

Now keep in mind I'm not racing. I just pick guys on trails that are ahead of me and then race them to a certain point. What's worse is that I don't tell them we are racing and I don't tell them where the finish line is. This helps me win 90% of my races. Haha.

Yesterday I did a Whiting-Luge run with Corby, Matt and Andrew and had an interesting time trying to catch a guy on STT (Santiago Truck Trail).

I'll name the guy EL SPANDEXO so I can keep talking about him by name. About halfway up Modjeska Grade Road I heard shifting right behind me and figured it was Andrew. Negative. It was EL SPANDEXO. I was surprised some guy out of nowhere had caught up to us, but I figured he was just that good.

Anyways he passed the three of us at the gate to STT proper and off he went. He had really good form on the bike when he went to stand and pedal and of course he had spandex all over. This told me he was a serious rider and that it was best to just let him go.

After a few minutes at the gate I told Matt as a joke that he should go catch EL SPANDEXO. Matt chuckled and declined. Then a minute or two later when Corby caught up, Matt changed his mind.

EL SPANDEXO had maybe a 2-3 minute head start on all of us and Matt was going hard to catch him. I figured EL SPANDEXO was definitely out of my reach.

Long story short, Andrew and I caught EL SPANDEXO, but it was really hard work. I learned a lot about how to catch a guy that doesn't want to be caught. It was fascinating because there were times where I swore we were right behind EL SPANDEXO and then he'd inexplicably pick up the pace and put some distance between us.

Eventually I think Andrew and I (mostly Andrew since he was closer) wore him down. I think he got tired of fighting off Andrew's attacks and let us both pass before the downhill to the top of the Luge.

I went very hard to catch EL SPANDEXO and had a great feeling of accomplishment when I finally passed him. I even turned it up a notch after catching him to make sure he knew not to try and pass me again.

The total time for the ride was 7 minutes under my personal best (1:35 down to 1:28). I was happy about that, but it did take a lot out of me.

I have to admit I've become fascinated by the art of catching a rider on trails. It's not always as simple as just riding faster. Interesting ...

SS Notes

I am now officially caught up on the posts/work on my blog. Whew.

A few quick notes about the recent SS experience. This past Sunday I went out on a ride with Melissa and Corby up to Beeks. I hadn't been up to Beeks in a while and I figured it would be a good beginner ride for Melissa (she just bought a bike).

Since I knew the pace would be a bit slower, I figured it would be a good time to bring the SS back out. I hadn't been on the SS for a while, so I was a little nervous as to how I'd do on it.

The ride was actually very enjoyable. About one third of the way up to Beeks I was passed by another guy on a SS while I was waiting for Corby and Melissa. I ended up catching him later and it felt _really_ good. He was running 32-18 and of course I'm running 34-20, so neither of us knew which ratio was harder. Probably his. =/

The second SS ride was yesterday at El Moro. I had done the "Phat Tire" loop once before and figured it would be a really SS friendly ride.

I was very pleased with the ride as a whole. The trip up "I think I can" was rough because I was running out of gas by standing. I learned some tricks to sitting and pushing a really high gear out of desperation.

The rest of the ride wasn't too bad. We passed quite a few people going up to Missing Link, which always feels good. The SS affords more "ego points" than the geared bike because I _have_ to hammer up hills otherwise I risk not making them at all. This means that I don't just pass people, I demolish them. A great feeling even if the guys I'm passing are really slow. =(

On an unrelated note I keep finding random bruises on my arms and legs. The other day I had a bruise on the back of my right calf that covered the entire region. In other words, it was HUGE. My neighbor even commented on it. Funny thing though ... I have no idea where it came from. *shrug*

Chiquito - Viejo Tie

This last Saturday I went on the Chiquito/Viejo Tie trail for the first time with Matt, Troy, Mark, Eric and Jim. Mark Whaley and Troy had ridden this trail while I was out of town and Mark said it was one of his new favorite trails. For some reason I thought that if Mark liked the trail, it must have been pretty easy (not technical). Boy, was I wrong.

I won't go into details concerning the ride because it takes too long and it's boring to read. Instead I'll try and hit a few highlights ...

- My new pedals are still giving me a hard time. I keep ending up with bruises and scrapes from falling due to the inability to unclip. My legs are torn up right now.

- It takes me a while to warm up with technical _anything_

- I'm a wimp when it comes to technical downhill. I rode down some stuff that I didn't want to, but overall I was pretty weak

- Troy, this message is for you ... "Don't endo within 2 minutes of the start of a 3 hour ride." Haha.

- No one rides this trail. We saw no other riders except some guys at the top of San Juan.

- There are several jumps on the trail that are simply insane. I can't imagine anyone really hitting these jumps with speed because there is NOWHERE to go.

- Walk when you're not sure.


Some pictures of the trail when we were getting rain in socal:





This has definitely been a summer of hike-a-bike hell rides. Thank God this was not nearly as tough as Los Pinos or Bell Ridge though.

Mammoth - Day Three

This will be the final post about my recent Mammoth weekend.

DISCLAIMER: THIS WILL BE A VERY LONG POST!

Probably best to get something to eat for this bad boy ...

The prior two posts described the first two days at Mammoth, which were for the most part, the "climbing" days. Day three was booked as a shuttle day. The plan was to go up and down the gondolas and chair lifts all day.

We ended up making five runs down the mountain before deciding to call it a day. Five may not sound like a lot, but it was. It took roughly 6 hours to finish the runs including breaks and stops. By the end of the five runs I was totally done physically.

I'll break up all runs into sections to make it easier to read.


At the top:



RUN 1 (Off the Top - Beach Cruiser):

I had done this exact route last year from the top of the mountain and it was amazing. This year was no different. The trip from the bottom (8,000 elevation) to the top (11,000 elevation) is pretty quick.

I will say though that I hate, hate, HATE gondolas in general. The one at Mammoth was no exception. I just can't stand to think that I'm in a several ton box being slowly lifted on a thin cable over huge gaps and ravines. Not cool.

The trail itself was 100% singletrack from what I remember. No fire roads at all. The top sucked a bit because of the strong wind, but after reaching the tree line, the pace really picked up. I was trying to keep pace with Matt and Andrew and I was helped a ton by the endless parade of beginning riders coming down the mountain.

The nice thing about singletrack in Mammoth is that it's singletrack and it's fun. The bad thing is that lots of people are riding with you and passing becomes problematic.

About 20% of the way down the three of us came up on a guy that was obviously a beginner. He was not moving on the singletrack and we rode behind him for a bit. Eventually he tipped over on a sandy switchback and we were able to get by him.

This would be a theme for the day. We would come up to people, they wouldn't move and eventually they'd crash (nothing bad) or tip over on a switchback. It was frustrating because several people were deliberately stubborn and would not let us pass even though we were clearly faster. Oh well.

The last thing to mention about the first run was that we had actually wanted to hit some black diamond trails, but missed the turns for them. I really wanted to do the most technical rides first to save my strength.

RUN 2 (Break Through - Seven Bridges):

This was probably my second favorite run of the day. We ended up at the bottom of "Chair 2" at the end of the first run which meant we could take a chair lift halfway up the mountain instead of going all the way to the top in the gondola.

I was excited for two reasons. Firstly I didn't have to ride in the scary gondola and secondly I could explore new trails. I had never been on "Break Through" or "Seven Bridges". Both trails were rated below black diamond, so I figured they'd be easy.

The run was short (only 3.3 miles), but it was a blast. Break Through was nothing to write home about. It had some tough technical climbing sections at the start that no one could clear, but after that flowed pretty well.

Seven Bridges:


Seven Bridges was the meat of this run. Once we connected to it, it started to get mildly technical. Then more technical and then all of a sudden a ramp appeared on the trail leading down to a creek.

After going down the ramp we rode over a series of bridges that criss-crossed the creek. There were various small technical challenges before and after some bridges that spiced it up a bit.

Over all this ride was great and I'd love to do it again. It would have been fun to do it 2-3 times really fast in a row so that with each run we could get more familiar with it (which means going faster and faster each time).

RUN 3 (Trail Home - Richter):

This ride was one of the shortest we had done on the entire trip. We simply took the gondola halfway up the mountain and then dropped down Trail Home. At one point however Trail Home diverges and you get an optional route called Richter. Richter was listed as a black diamond so we decided to explore it.

The top part of Richter was very loose and the trail was barely defined. There were a few little steep sections, but nothing too bad. Not a lot of flow on the first section.

After the first quarter of a mile, the trail got really fun. It spit us out into an "X-Zone" (which is supposed to have jumps and stunts), which was a blast. There are little jumps that flow together very well. You don't have to ride fast or pull up on your bike to hit the jumps. It all just happens very naturally and it's very fun.

The bottom part of Richter was were I had some trouble. I came up behind Andrew to a very steep and sandy descent and stopped. Andrew looked at it before going down and that made me pause as well. After 2-3 false starts I finally rode down. It definitely got my adrenaline going, but I survived. It helps to do more and more steep stuff because it seems that I come across this kind of stuff more and more.

RUN 4 (Gravy Train - Bearing Straits - Shortcut - Beach Cruiser):

This post has taken forever to write, so this last section (I'm writing this last) is going to be short.

This ride had a lot of climbing in it that I was not expecting. I was in the wrong gear quite often and had my rear shock unlocked more than I should have. The other noteable feature of this ride was the wind. It was very windy on Bearing Straits and it made it hard to get going without worrying about tipping over due to the wind. Quite the experience.

Starting down Bearing Straits:


The second half of this run was nothing new.


RUN 5 (Skidmarks - Bridge the Gap - Trail Home - Richter - Downtown):

Ok this was the best ride of the day. I actually wrote out sections for all five runs and when I sat to type everything up, I skipped ahead because I was so excited.

We took the gondola up to the top for this last run because we wanted something epic. I guess you could call 12 miles of downhill to end a three day weekend riding adventure epic. It wasn't so much the trail itself as it was the experience of riding it that made this last run so good.

Last year at Mammoth I had really wanted to test myself. I wanted to ride some black diamond trails and see how I stacked up against them. I managed to ride only one last year and it scared me considerably.

I really wanted to start a run down with Skidmarks and thankfully Andrew and Matt agreed. Actually the real story is that both guys had to convince me to start with Skidmarks. Haha. I was pretty tired at this point and I didn't want to eat it bad on a technical section because of fatigue.

Skidmarks turned out to be not bad at all. The first part of it was singletrack down the side of a volcano. That's what it felt like. Nothing but rocks all around the trail. The other noteworthy aspect of the top was the wind. I have never in my life been in such heavy winds. We all had to get off our bikes and stop to wait for the gusts to die down at one of the switchbacks at the top.

The sign at the bottom said the winds were 20-30mph if I remember correctly. It ended up almost knocking me over even when I was standing with the bike. It was unreal.

The meat of Skidmarks was a technical singletrack that reminded me of The Luge except more technical. Large loose rocks on the trail and a few small drops just for fun. The rest of Skidmarks was a fast fire road with a lot of loose dirt. Apparently there is a trail called Kamikazee that is a black diamond trail, but it's just a steep fire road. Whatever.

I'll skip ahead to the more memorable parts of the last run ...

Matt, Andrew and I got stuck behind a young girl before hitting the fork in the road to do Richter. Unfortunately she veered off the side of the trail and awkwardly fell over trying to let us pass. Sorry!

I was not too happy to get suckered into doing Richter. I was very tired by this point in the weekend and I wanted to do a new trail. Andrew gave me a speech that went something like this:

Andrew: We've decided to do Richter. You can do Trail Home if you want and we'll meet at the bottom.
Ryan: ...

What was really said was this:

Andrew: We've decided we are awesome. Trail Home is too easy. Only wimps and girls do that trail. If you want to be a girl, then go ahead, we won't stop you. Loser.

Anyways, I did Richter and it was fine. I took the last part fairly fast it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

The final stretch home was fascinating. The three of us passed probably around 30 people on Downtown. Most everyone got out of our way as we were flying down, but some people were stubborn and insisted on staying in front of us. Very frustrating.

My favorite part was when a girl crashed in front of us on an easy switchback. We had been right behind her and her guy friend for a while and she finally caved under the pressure. It was not a serious crash at all. More like a tip over into sand, so she was just shaken up a bit. That's what she gets for not letting us pass, right? Haha. I'm being sarcastic in case anyone can't tell.

This was a great last run to end a great trip.

This is the life:

Mammoth - Day Two

It's time for the ride report for day two at Mammoth ...

I explained in the last post the problems I was having with my shoes and pedals, which is important because it came into play over and over throughout the weekend. It definitely made an impact on the second ride of day two.

The plan for day two was to buy a "pedal pass" to cruise around the mountain and then to do ... well we didn't have a plan for after that.

The overall plan was to save the downhill runs for the last day just in case we got hurt. That way we would have broken bones at the end of the trip so we wouldn't miss out on that much. Day two was going to be a climbing and exploration day.


Ride One:

After we picked up our passes we decided to go up Uptown and then over to Beach Cruiser to a small lake. Then we would go around the lake and come back down Beach Cruiser and then go across the mountain back to the condo. That was the plan.

The trip up Uptown was pretty fast. I think we finished the climb in about 40 minutes. I watched my Garmin on the way up and it seemed like we were averaging around a 7 MPH pace. That's not bad considering the elevation.

The effort expended for the first half of the climb was pretty minimal actually. I kept it in my middle ring for the most part, but had to gear down in a few sections. I'm starting to learn to push hard in a high gear for a while and then spin down to recover. Rinse and repeat this for a long climb and enjoy success. The trick is to increase the duration of the "pushing" and to decrease the resting over time. I guess the official name for this approach is "intervals".

The trip up Beach Cruiser was pretty uneventful minus one biff on a switchback. I actually hit the dirt pretty hard and it bugged me for a while. My left hand suffered a lot on this trip because I was constantly falling on it with all my body weight.

We got to the lake and checked it out before continuing on to "the cliffs". Last year my friends and I took a bunch of pictures near these cliffs with our bikes and they turned out really well. So we did the same thing this year. The pictures make us look more hardcore than we really are. Haha.

Me on the cliff:



I don't remember much about going across the mountain on the way back to the condo for lunch. The pace was starting to get faster on the downhill though as everyone became more confident with the terrain.

Corby ended up endo'ing on Paper Route on the way back to the condo. I do believe that is his first "over the bars" experience. Good for him. It's good to get a few good falls in because they help you to realize it's not all that bad. You become more willing to take risks when you realize the penalty isn't as bad as you thought it would be.

We ended up back at the condo where we ate lunch and took naps. In that order. Poor Andrew had his rear de-railleur cable get severed, so instead of napping he had to replace his cable.

We also played around a bit in the stunt park at the bottom of Beach Cruiser. I only attempted "The Dragon", but Matt rode over a bunch of stuff. I didn't quite make the full dragon. I got halfway up the second ramp and fell over. Ha.

Matt on teeter-totter:



Me on the dragon:





Ride Two:

The second ride of the day was Lower Rock Creek. I had seen a bunch of people post the ride on Geoladders while I was doing research for Mammoth and figured it would be a good trail to try. It had a reputation for being pure awesomeness, so everyone was excited to see how good it really was.

I called a local bike shop and got directions and info about how long and tough it was. The information wasn't great, but I figured it was good enough.

The guy at the shop on the phone told me it was less than 10 miles for the climb and then the same 10 miles back. He also said it should take less than 3 hours and that it was "moderately" technical. Oh, he also told us where to turn off the freeway as well.

TUrns out the guy was wrong on every point. It was shorter than 10 miles, it is very hard to do in 3 hours and it was more than moderately technical in many sections. Also he was wrong about where to turn and park. Thanks guy.

We finally got to the bottom of the trail and started riding at about 5PM. We got lost and spent almost an hour trying to find the trail, so that hurt our chances of being able to finish the entire ride. However we did consider that we were above average riders and that maybe - just maybe - we could do it all in 2 hours instead of 3.

Wrong.

The ride started just fine. It was singletrack and had some fun little technical obstacles that were tough, but not so hard that they couldn't be conquered. I would say it was a similar to Trabuco as far as the climbing experience went. Frustrating at times, but also rewarding.

After the first mile or so the fun ended abruptly. What followed was a variation of the following sequence:

- Look ahead 5 feet
- Realize the section is not rideable
- Hike over rocks
- Look ahead 5 feet
- Ride 10 feet
- Andrew breaking his chain (ok this only happened once)

I swear we must have ridden only maybe 20 yards at most on any given section of the trail after the first mile. Everyone was starting to get frustrated too because it was seemingly never ending. Most trails have sections that require hiking - but they are just that ... sections. Not an entire trail.
The other thing that made this ride tough was how narrow the singletrack was. It was very tight in quite a few sections and it made hiking/riding that much harder.

Rideable section:



At about 6:30PM we decided to call it quits. We were only about 3.5 miles into the trail and it showed no signs of getting easier. We needed to get back before dark and unfortunately there was no place to "bail" to. I failed to mention this earlier in the post, but the entire trail was alongside a creek that ran through a deep ravine. There was no way we could hike to a road or a fire road etc.

I was pretty upset that we were going to turn around because I love to _finish_ rides, but we didn't have a choice. At this point I was pretty upset too because the trail had not been fun at all.

The ride back made up for it though. It was a blast. I rode maybe 90-95% of it whereas on the climb I would say I rode 65-70%. It felt great to ride over some technical stuff and clear it without any problems. The Los Pinos/Bell Ridge rides really helped out my downhill skills considerably.


By the time we got back to the condo everyone was pretty tired. We ended up eating Japanese for dinner before crashing. Day two was the climbing day which meant that day three would be the DOWNHILL DAY!

Day three coming soon ...

Mammoth - Day One

In order to make things nice and neat, I figured I'd write one post per day of riding at Mammoth this past weekend.

I went up to Mammoth last Thursday with Matt, Andrew and Corby. We stayed in a condo which served as our base camp for a long weekend of riding. Melissa, James, Josiah and Kirstie also came up and stayed in the condo, but we didn't do any riding with them, so they'll be left out of the rest of the posts for the most part. Ha.

We rolled into Mammoth on day one somewhere between 2PM and 3PM. The condo wasn't ready so we drove around a bit and killed some time. When the condo was finally ready we dropped our stuff off and quickly hit the trails.

A quick detour from the narrative ... The shoes I've been using for the past 1.5 years have finally died. Both shoes have huge holes in them and no tread left on the bottom. I didn't realize how bad the tread was until I bought new shoes this past week. I wanted to get new shoes for Mammoth because somehow I thought it would make the riding better. Wrong.

In addition to the new shoes I bought new pedals. I didn't want to wrestle with the cleats on my old shoes so I was able to justify buying eggbeaters. I've heard they are generally better then SPD's, so I figured it was good timing.

I'm still forming my opinion on the new pedals though, so I'll save that for a later post.

The reason I mention the new shoes and pedals is that I had a total of four "accidents" on the trip. Three of them came on day one.

The first accident was from just riding in circles in the parking lot of the condo's management office. I was doing circles and started to lean to the left and was unable to unclip. BOOM. I ate it hard on the pavement right in front of a family that had just checked in. Embarrassing and painful. I got a small bruise on my left hip/thigh from that one as well as a few scrapes.

Accident number two came on the trail. Not quite as bad. Again I was leaning to the left and I couldn't unclip. Bam. Into the dirt on a sandy switchback. Bummer.

The last accident on day one was in the underground parking lot. Andrew was riding straight for me as we were doing circles and I didn't know what to do. He wasn't braking or moving and I didn't want to collide so I went to unclip. Oops. I ate it hard on the concrete once more.

I had put shims in on the bottom of the shoes because Troy had recommended it, but they didn't seem to help much. In fact I ended up taking the shims out after day one because my feet kept coming out on the climbs. Funny how that works ... feet coming out on climbs and NOT coming out when I start to crash. Worst of both worlds.

Anyways on to the ride for day one ...

We decided to ride up a trail called Juniper because it was close to the condo and because it was free. Mammoth requires a "pedal pass" if you want to ride on their official trails and since we didn't have one, we would limit ourselves to the open and free trails.

The trail started right away with a climb. The nice thing is that the entire trail was a singletrack. The bad thing was that a lot of the trail was very loose and sandy. This would be a theme for the weekend.

The elevation at Mammoth got to me a little on the first ride of day one, but for the most part I was ok. We rode to a series of lakes - just like last year actually - and then cruised back through the park before heading back to the condo. We did poach a little, but no one was out and we made it through without any trouble from "the man".

It was a good ride to get us in shape for the next two days. Apparently the pace was a little fast, but I couldn't help it. I was trying to ease up so that I wouldn't burn myself out, but instinct kicked in at some point. I've been in "push" mode for a while, but I really did try to relax more and slow the pace down. Overall I would say the ride took very little out of me.

Album:

Mammoth 07

Who is that jerk?!

All riders know this guy. You're riding along and he passes you without a word. As he goes ahead of you he doesn't even acknowledge you're alive. Then he peddles into the distance and disappears. You think to yourself, "What a jerk! There isn't a race going on around here or anything. Geez."

Well I've turned into that jerk it seems. Haha.

I think there have been a few things that have turned me from the nice guy that says "Hi" to everyone to the guy that never looks at anyone else and just wants to get past the slow poke in front of him.

The short list:

- Stress in life (thus I need an outlet, which means riding "angry")
- Wanting to get faster
- *Enjoying* riding faster and not wanting to settle for slow
- Competitive nature

All these things listed above add up and make me want to ride faster. With riding faster comes a few bad side effects. You don't have the time to talk to other riders as you pass and you seem to not care for anyone else because every stop etc. takes away from your "time".

I think I need to take my time more and not try to race around every trail I go on. Maybe 1 race day a week and the rest at a casual pace.

The real problem is that on certain trails I'm not having fun anymore unless I'm pushing myself and trying to go faster and faster. Especially on shorter rides. I feel like I've built up a lot of stamina for 1 hour rides, so anything around that time means I'm going to push _hard_ for an hour. After all my body seems to handle that with no problem.

Also I'm wondering if the biggest boon to my performance hasn't been girl problems. The more girl problems I have the more frustrated I get, which in turn means the more I want to take out those frustrations on the bike.

I'm sure someone somewhere said "You can't ride away from your problems ...", but they were obviously WRONG. Ha.

Mild Discomfort

So hooray I have some time to write about the ride this past Saturday.

The ride was scheduled to start in Aliso Woods, but that was all I knew as I showed up at 6:30AM. I had to take my friends dogs out to pee before showing up, so that meant I had to wake up at 5:15AM. Lame.

The group consisted of Mark W., Mark C., John "La Ruta" Colvin, Troy, Andrew, Matt and I. A pretty large group, but the more the merrier. The nice thing is that even though we had a group of seven, everyone kept up and no one was a jerk about waiting for other people. Attitude makes a huge difference.

The ride started with a quick trip up Wood Canyon and then over to Coyote. I'll never done Coyote backwards (as a climb), so that was new. I went to go over a technical rocky section and tipped over and banged my shin and knee on a few rocks. It drew some blood, but nothing too bad at all.

We went from there to Cholla where I'm pretty sure we went 7 for 7 in clearing the entire climb. There was one part at the top I was watching for, but I made it no problem.

From the top of Cholla we went right - around a gate - and went down an unmarked trail. When I got home I looked it up in my "little green book" and found out it is called "Corridor". It wasn't legal, but whatever. It was short and I see no reason why it would have a DO NOT ENTER sign at the top. I've poached before and felt bad about it, but not this time. I don't see the big deal.

The trail was fairly steep, but nothing like what we have been doing lately. In other words it was no Pinos.

From the bottom of Corridor we went over to El Toro Road and rode up to what I guess is called the James Dilley Preserve. Something like that. It was a mild fire road climb up to some sweet singletrack that dropped us into a valley. I'd really love to go hit this area again because the singletrack was non-technical, but fun. Also you don't have to work very hard to earn a fun descent.

We got a little lost at the bottom of the singletrack but ended up making our way over to the "Nix Center". This area was one of the highlights of the ride for sure. Apparently Laguna Coast Wilderness Park (LCWP) has just opened up a few new trails and we were able to break them in. We climbed and dropped a sweet singletrack called "Stagecoach", which was probably the highlight of the ride for me.

Stagecoach had some really fun switchbacks on the climb as well as the descent. I'm starting to really enjoy switchbacks all over. They're a challenge and it feels great to clean a tight, tough switchback.

We then wandered over to what I guess is the back side of El Moro. I dubbed that part of the ride the "Cactus Car Wash" because of all the brush we were riding through as well as the cactus that was all over the place. Several times I had to move quickly to avoid brushing up against a cactus.

Somewhere on this singletrack John Colvin ran over a bunch of dead branches and twigs and had one of them actually go into his leg around the ankle. When I say "go into", I mean go into like how a spear would penetrate the skin. It looked like it went in maybe an inch or so. Gnarly.

We patched John up and made our way over to El Moro where the singletrack let out near Fenceline. I got poked in the eye by a branch on the way, but otherwise came out ok.

From there we bombed down the fire road to a new trail for me called "Lizards". It was very subtle on the side of the road. No signs and really no obvious entry to the trail. This was a really fun trail as well. Not quite as good as Stagecoach, but still really fun.

This spit us out near Willow, which we took down to Laguna Canyon Road. From there we crossed the road and made our way up Stair Steps.

I will say I was proud to have ridden several sections of Stair Steps. When I say "sections" I mean very, very short sections. Haha. I only mention it because I took on a few challenges that felt uncomfortable, but I figured what the heck ... might as well try. I remember driving home wanting to go back and try to ride up more. I came off on one section that I wish I had kept going on. I had built up some great momentum but stopped to be safe. I want to conquer a few sections of Stair Steps on the climb!

We eventually reached a fork in the hike up Stair Steps at which point I made a horrible, horrible decision. I went right while everyone else went left. Bad idea. The trail quickly disappeared and I was too stubborn to turn around and take the easier route. Eventually it became pointless to back track since going forward was as painful as going backward.

The brush was very, very think and I'm just glad I didn't pick up any ticks or run across any snakes. This was probably the worst hike through brush I've ever experienced - and I've been on some tough hike-a-bike rides before. The real frustration was that the "trail" was rutted and I couldn't get solid footing on the ground.

After getting to the top of the ridge we rode over to "Top of the World" and then down Meadows. I will say that Matt gets honorable mention for popping his shoulder out of its socket for a split second while tipping over going up Stair Steps. Good job dude.

Going down Meadows was a blast. It really was. I had only been down it once before and that was over a year ago. I remember being _very_ scared of it the last time. It felt over my head in a few areas and I remember the guys I was riding with took it like it was nothing. They flew down it and I "survived" it.

This time I was aggressive but safe. I could have gone faster, but it still felt good to descend comfortably. The fear of switchbacks and steep sections has been replaced with excitement. What a great feeling.

Overall the ride was pretty awesome. We managed to stay on mostly legal trails (haha) and we got to explore a lot of new areas I had never been in. It's great also to connect several parks in the area to get a better understanding of what's out there and how things fit together.

The only downside was that my average speed was only 7.6mph. =( I attribute this to the amount of hiking we had to do. Especially my unwise trek up Stair Steps.

It's a Trend

The new trend is not posting on the blog. Life has become too busy to post even though lots has happened on the bike since the last post.

Yesterday I went out for a ride with Matt and Corby and had a great time. I hadn't been on the bike since last Thursday, so I was anxious to get out again. Plus I had picked up my bike from Rock'n'Road and was excited to see if the new drive train parts would work well.

I can't even remember the last time I had been out at El Moro prior to yesterday. It's been that long.

The ride was really good for building confidence, cockiness and for clearing my mind. Only two of those things are good, but oh well. Two out of three ain't bad.

Some major points:

- Corby has gotten much faster. He was right there the entire ride. You can see the hard work and dedication paying off.

- I climbed "I Think I Can" in exactly 11 minutes. This was a very tough climb for me. The grade is not bad at all and the length really isn't anything to write home about. The reason it was tough was that I went as hard as I could. When I finally got to the top I was spent. I remember spitting and my spit tasted like metal. Not a good sign.

- Talked with Matt and Corby about how there are no black mountain bikers. Five minutes later what do we see? That's right. A black mountain biker. Haha.

- I thought I had been on "Fenceline" before, but I guess I was wrong. It's a short singletrack, but it's fun.

The first route took me 56:30 to do, which was 20 minutes faster than the average time on GeoLadders. It also got me over the coveted 10mph speed. This is one of the big new metrics for riding. I like to look at average speed as a good barometer of how I'm growing. Obviously the faster, the better. My goal is to get an average of 9+ on most rides. So for the first loop it was "mission accomplished".

Since we had some extra daylight we decided to go back out and do a quick ride up "Poles". I had never been on it and Corby told Matt and I it was worse than Dreaded Hill. I still think Dreaded is tougher, but Poles is definitely a challenge.

The last section is very steep (maybe the steepest thing I've ever climbed) and on top of that it is loose with sand. Not a sand pit, but just enough to give you some trouble. The climb was also tough because I couldn't decide which gear to use. I ended up going with the granny on the back which worked out ok. It takes some extra skill to keep the front end from coming up though.

Overall I was very pleased with the times on the loops and I was pleased that I was able to push very hard without cramping or blowing up.

Manuel Prado (my socal mountain bike hero) has a quote on GeoLadders that says something like "Pain is temporary, but glory is forever." I keep thinking about this when I'm trying to push myself. It might hurt now, but when you get a good time on a ride, that will last forever. Have to look for motivation where you can get it. Ha.