Going Back For More

So much riding and so little blogging, I don't even know where to begin. I had nice little ride reports planned out in my head for the last three days, but was ultimately too tired and busy to put any of them down on the interwebz. Now I'm so behind that I will have to try to summarize in the interest of brevity.

Saturday was another big mountain bike ride. Luckily, this time I had good legs and good weather. I still didn't cover as much ground as I would have liked, because fearing that I'm quickly burning myself out on the loops, I chose a slower and more congested route to mix things up a bit. I spent the first three hours riding from the campground and covering the entire BCSP trail system, except Schooner Trace, which is the new "double black diamond expert trail" that I still won't mess with outside of Thursday night skills rides. After that, I went back to the campground to refill my hydration pack and then headed out for another couple of hours of out-and-back. It was hard going back out, because after my break, my body started yelling at me to stop. Many, many hurty body parts. Luckily, I was eventually able to get over it, which will be important because the Lumberjack will be require "going back for more" a total of three times after the first lap.

Sunday I had to go back for more in a very unexpected way. I woke up feeling like I'd been run over by a truck and procrastinated all morning. Finally, I forced myself to leave for a four-hour ride at around 3 pm (great idea). I just kind of turned the legs and couldn't really decide on a route. Normally, four hours on the road would mean a trip to Nashville, but I just wasn't feeling it. Knowing that I would be slow, I decided to do my normal three-hour route, and depending how slow I actually was, tack something on at the end. It was hot and humid and I ended up going through one of my two bottles in the first hour. I knew that trying get through three hours on one bottle was a bad idea, so I tried to hatch a plan to get more water. I detoured to the Morgan-Monroe State Forest shelter, hoping they might have a spigot somewhere, despite not having running-water bathrooms, but I had no luck. So I decided to ride almost all the way back to town, get water from the "bikers" water fountain at the fire station, and choose a new route based on my remaining time. By the time I got the water, I had killed two hours, and I was able to think of a good route to finish the last two. So it turned out that on Sunday, going back for more actually made me feel better, as I was able to complete the ride fully hydrated and thinking, "It's just two more hours" rather than dealing with the four that I had been dreading all day.

Finally, I capped off my long weekend with the famed 2.5 hour "BBQ Ride". I didn't eat any barbeque on the ride, but my in-laws came down and took us to eat catfish for Adam's birthday, which is later this week.

In sum, I finished the weekend with 12 hours and 16 minutes over a three day period. Until recently, that was a really not WEEK, not just long weekend. Sure, I'll have to do about double that in four days at the Pisgah stage race, but I have nearly five months to get ready. I just have to find a way to get past the second day garbagey feeling.