Saturday, I gathered up as many of my nutbag friends to head up to Mohican for another 5 or 6 hour mountain bike training workout. No it did not include any of the women in said photo, but I got your attention didn't I?We were hoping to attempt a 6 hour training ride, at least several of us sticking it out. Our plan was to ride Mohican Forest trail at a fairly good speed, hit the car for new bottles and more food, fix up any light mechanical issues and be on our way. We did get in a good fast lap on the Forest trail, one of my faster ones, and managed to stick to Ben, Tim and Glen's wheel with Layne mixed in there somewhere along the route. One minor misshap of Pete flying over his bars, superman, landing about 12 feet from his bike. He hooked his outside foot on a large rock and just launched himself. Too bad we didn't get it on video.
After finishing the Forest, our "short quick stop" at the car, turned into a slow stop with some indecision about continuing on for some. The age of smart phones has become the demise of just going for it and not looking at radar. I guess I don't blame them for bailing, it was damn cold out, some were sick, some were just sick of riding in the rain and spent some dough on fixing their bikes after Cohutta, so we take off from the parking lot and about 2 miles down the road, they decide to throw in the towel. Now, we are Five, down from our original group of about 10 we started with at the beginning of the day. Jon, Pete, Dave, Nick and myself are off to Wally Road to ride a loop at the Mohican Wilderness trail I hate to love so much. We make it to the bottom of the big grass climb and Dave from B1 Bikes is still having chain / cassette issues. As Jon and I wait at the top, for Pete, Dave and Nick, Jon ends up having to ride back down, I nominated him to see what the issue was, since he's younger :). Nick, Pete and Jon all make it back up, Nick found out he only had 1 chainring bolt holding his granny gear hence, why his chain was sucked between the middle and granny mid way up the climb. Finally, we are off again, up and up and up this tough technical rooty twisty climb to the top. The sprinkles begin to fall as we get out into the grassy dome atop the hill. We ride into the woods to wait again, duck under a pine tree, discuss Bear Grylls and what he would do with pine needles and the branches and take off again out into the open, where it had stopped raining already. The trail is dry and tacky and wet in some sections, but holding up well, sans the giant rocks that I walked over. It was a good day, for most of us. A what I call, Breakthrough workout for my man Pete, his longest ride ever on a mountain bike. Go Pete, he's been shaving off 10-15 min every time we ride the forest loop, but he had a hard way to go on the way back down Wally Road (false flat) and had to sit on and could barely hold 12 mph on the road. We kept him motivated and moving all the way back to the car.
Pete, time to stop drinking iced tea and move up in the world of on-the-bike nutrition my friend!
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