Back in the saddle again

Well, I finally felt good enough to go riding again after Monday's spill on the rain slicked wooden bridge. I did manage to get some new hardware this week, from selling some old camera gear on eBay. I bought myself a new set of pedals for the bike and they just happened to arrive today. The piece of junk stamped steel factory pedals had already worn down and my feet would slip off when it was the least bit wet. The new pedals however have small spikes that stick up about 1/4" and stick to your shoes like glue. They also have fantastic rebuildable bearings on the inside that really transform the pedaling experience and make it seem so fluid.

The high levels of water in the nearby creeks and lakes was nice, it was like riding past an open refridgerator in some sections. I noticed on the wooden bridge that there is a nice clean looking patch from my bike and my body sliding across it on Monday. Lesson learned! Otherwise tonights ride was fairly uneventful. I added a small loop to get me over the 14 mile mark. Just need to get up enough energy to get down the rest of the way to where the main road dead ends. Adding that section should get me close to 20 miles round trip. I wish my evening rides always felt like this - cool and relaxing. One thing I really find funny is how often I can actually beat most cars across the intersection when I have to stop for lights. At two traffic lights tonight, I was nearly across the intersection before the first car caught and passed me.

At any rate, tonights ride stats:

Started: Jul 8, 2010 7:24:44 PM
Ride Time: 1:09:54
Stopped Time: 0:53
Distance: 14.17 miles
Average: 12.16 miles/hr
Fastest Speed: 19.73 miles/hr
Climb: 92 feet
Calories: 993

An object in motion....

Tends to stay in motion. So goes the laws of physics.

This morning I woke up at 6:10, and looked out the window and saw and heard the rain. Last night I managed to sneak in a 5 mile little trip before the heavens opened up again, and Alex and I were supposed to go hit Flatwoods (weather permitting). Well, it was pouring, so Alex said he was going to stay home and go back to bed. For me, once I am awake, thats it - I am up. I fixed some eggs, had a few cups of coffee and looked at the weather - light rain, but no thunderstorms. I can do this...

I headed down the road, and quite honestly - it was fantastic. Nothing like a light mist to keep you cool while you are pedaling, and since most people had the day off, there was next to no traffic out.

Then we get to nearly the 3rd mile...


Now this picture was taken in the winter - so you arent seeing the overgrown foliage sticking out into the bridge. You also cannot see that it is covered in slippery black mold. Now I had slowed because I knew that being wood and having been covered in rain for the last 4 days it was going to be slick. Unfortunately for me though, I tried to duck one of the branches that stuck out into the bridge. This is where all hell broke loose. As far as I could tell when I ducked the front wheel slid to the left, which forced the rest of the bike down on the right side...while this occured I take a superman pose and slide about 5-10 feet down the trail (the reflective jacket and slick wood seemed to combine to create the world's worst slip and slide).

Once I stop sliding and I start to try to figure out what the hell just happened, I start thinking...where's my bike? At this point a woman in a minivan stopped and asked if I was ok, to which I replied, everything except my pride thanks! This is when I discovered the bike, handlebars and headlight underwater in mud, and the back tire and derailler resting against the edge of the wooden bridge. I fished the bike out, to my amazement the light still shining brightly, and the tail light was just a blinking. As get the bike back up on the wheels and spit some water out on the lights, brake levers and shifters, I try to get the chain back on the big rings. No dice. I look back at my derailler which I thought was busted, when in fact, the chain jumped the rear sprocket and jamed between the frame and the smallest gear on the rear cassette. This in turn pulled the lower pulley up against the cassette. I freed the chain and made sure the gears, brakes, and wheels were good to go.

I pulled some napkins out of the zip lock bag and wiped the grease off my hands and cleaned my shades. Then I surveyed the damage to my body - A nasty raspberry about 1"x5" on my left inner thigh from it scraping across the seat, and my right knee was skinned up. Otherwise just black mold covering my right side of my jersey and the front of my safety vest.

I took it easy pedaling for the next mile and felt good enough to at least ride some more. I ended up doing 9.85 miles, and it was one of the nicest rides I have been on in quite some time (one of the coolest too!).

Started: Jul 5, 2010 8:10:12 AM
Ride Time: 56:41
Stopped Time: 0:00
Distance: 9.85 miles
Average: 10.43 miles/hr
Fastest Speed: 17.50 miles/hr
Climb: 341 feet
Calories: 475

301 Paved Trail

So I took notice last night when feeding some friends who are vacations pets, that a really good section of the new paved trails along US301 in Riverview were finally paved. It also appears that once they finish there should be at least another 2 miles of nicely paved trail I'll have access to. The good thing is that the trail is really smooth, looks to be well lit (once it is finished) and has a similar look and feel to the Pinellas Trails. Unfortunately people in Hillsborough see bikes as targets (or don't even look for them) which made this ride difficult. I though that crossing Big Bend Road would be the scarriest crossing, but quite honestly, one subdivision and on entrance near a McDonald's were the really difficult spots. I guess visions of egg mcmuffins blinded some of these folks.

At any rate, aside from that, the trail is great, and I cannot wait till it is done so I can have a solid 20 mile paved ride nearly in my back yard. (2 mile ride from the house to the nearest entry point for me). So it is like a completely flat version of Boyette.

Ride Stats:
Started: Jul 3, 2010 8:26:49 AM
Ride Time: 1:10:53
Stopped Time: 0:00
Distance: 14.40 miles
Average: 12.19 miles/hr
Fastest Speed: 19.63 miles/hr
Climb: 276 feet
Calories: 658

Balm Boyette Scrub Park Ride

Today's ride Recap:

Todays group met up around 8:30 at Boyette Scrub park. This jewel is about 10 minutes closer to most of us than Alafia, and would be even more popular if there was not a 2 mile ride (some of which is full of wonderful florida sugar sand) to get out to the beginning of the trails.

We started out by taking the fire road thorough the creek crossing and up towards Vista Ridge. This area must have had a ton of rain drop at once - most of the creek crossing was washed out, and the bike path on the fire road was pretty washed out as well. We headed up the hill to Vista Ridge - which was a pretty good description of this trail. One misguided slip to the right was likely to send you rolling for a long while - but the view spectacular. At the end of Vista Ridge we kept going on down West Meadow, a meandering trail that winds through the upper western end of the park. When we got to Randy's Trail (Randy is a member of the SWAMP club) we road it over to spider Berm. I am not sure if Randy likes super easy trails, but, this is one of the easier and shorter trails out here.

Spider Berm...
I am not really sure why they call it this (I see very few spiders here) but it does indeed ride along a berm. The lower section has some really nice drops and relatively easy climbs (as long as you keep pace). It was nice to ride this trail and not end up on my ass this time (the first time I rode this was the day I got my bike, and I caught some loose leaves at the edge and ended up sliding off the bike). When you hit the end of lower spider berm, you take a quick u turn and head back down the actual berm. The funny thing about this part of the trail is that it is more like a rock garden than Rock Garden on the alafia trail system. What we weren't expecting was a tree that had fallen in the way of the trail, its a good 8-10" in diameter, or in other words, too tall for me to hop! A quick hop off the bike, lifting it over and we are out of the trail and on towards Gator Pit and Golf Cart.

Gator Bait is pretty rough to start down - the trail is hollowed out of the ground and catches a pretty nasty tree and roots about 6 feet down the drop, followed by some roots a few feet further. The real fun is the sugar sand at the bottom and the huge climb back out the other side. We finished this portion of the trail and headed back out to where we could pick up Golf Cart, at which point we decided to take a break. It was about this time our nameless friend and his lady friend came ripping past us on his high $$ Ellsworth (which is apparantly the cats meow of bikes).

While we are on break, my latest take on nutrition on the ride...Today I really felt energized. I started the day with a Muscle Milk, 2 eggs, 1 Bagel Thin (with a touch of butter) and just before we headed out, a cup of blueberry coffee with cream and splenda. By the time we took this break, we were riding close to an hour, and had climbed and rode nearly 4 miles already. I wasn't the least bit hungry and my energy levels were still good. At this point I had drank about 1.5 bottles of water from the Camelbak, 1/2 of a 32oz Powerade, and it was time for some food energy, which I satisfied by eating about 7 dried apricot pieces. Shawn had mentioned these things on our ride last weekend - great for energy (29g of Carbs) and loads of potassium. This keeps down cramping, and the carbs keep the energy levels up. Anyway, back to the ride...

Golf Cart...
This is arguably now my most favorite trail of all the local trails. Its a good long ride, has enough technical parts to keep you busy, changes in elevation, some small rock garden sections, and just a few roots. Good fun! When we reached the end of Golf Cart, we stopped and talked to another rider about Mt. Boyette and Canyon (we noticed the sign for these trails when we stopped here). He said that Mt. Boyette was one of the steepest climbs, and the canyon trail was just a simple intermediate trail. We took off down the trail and found the climb, the other rider wasn't kidding, most of us rode up the climb as far as possible, then walked the rest of the way up. Knowing how hot it was, we all had also previously agreed that we weren't going to be going out of our way to pedal hard up these trails and waste our energy. From Mount Boyette (which did offer some pretty nice views of the park) we headed down the canyon trail. This trail was a more difficult intermediate trail, in that there are a few sections that if you dont make the turn, you're gonna fall a long way. The next part of the challenge was a couple of the climbs that really penalized you if you fail to gain enough speed down the previous drop. The only really mentally tought section was a tough climb that had a hard left at the very top that then dropped and at the end of that drop forced a hard right between trees and a dirt wall. Let me say that I rode side ways on a small section of that dirt wall (the 29er is a slowwww turner!).


If you want to see what Gator Pit, Golf Cart, and Canyon look like, check out the video below, courtesy of Proedgebiker.com



From Canyon we decided it was time to head over to Pandemonium, Sidewinder and Swamp Thing. I rode the Pandemonium bypass today (didn't feel like doing the bigger drops) while the others rode the easier (but still hard) drops. When we finished here we took the nice drop out of Pandemonium and hit the hard right back towards Sidewinder. Sidewinder is another more advanced intermediate trail, with lots of small drops and switchbacks, along with terrace rides that remind you NOT to look over the edge. Swamp Thing is a lot of the same thing, albeit some of the drops are a little less forgiving (more like those found on Alafia). We rode over to where Ridgeline was just so those of us who had never ridden it could see what it looks like (the trail was closed due to recent rains). Definitely some major drops here!

On our way back from our on foot sight seeing trip:


After looking at Ridgeline we rode the rest of Swamp Thing till we hit the fire trail, then headed back up the fire trail. The majority of the crew wanted to ride Pandemonium one more time, while that occured Alex and I pedaled down to the end and waited for them to run through. After everyone had finished, we had all pretty much agreed we were done, I had the brilliant idea to take the guys over to the spur jump...yeah we rode it the wrong way and didnt get to jump and we were too tired to attempt it again.

At this point we had about a 3 mile ride to get back (the last 3 miles doesn't show as the battery on the phone had died). We all rode hard back to the parking area, total mileage was probably about 13 miles for the day.

Ride stats for the time the phone was still powered up:
Started: Jun 27, 2010 8:34:13 AM
Ride Time: 2:48:56
Stopped Time: 0:00
Distance: 9.49 miles
Average: 3.37 miles/hr
Fastest Speed: 13.78 miles/hr
Climb: 292 feet
Calories: 436


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Saturday's Pinellas Trail Ride

Ana and I headed out to the Pinellas trails Saturday for a ride on the pavement. It is no doubt blisteringly hot outside this time of year. Today was no exception. The only saving grace today was that it was partly cloudy so occaisionally we'd get the relief of a a cloud obfuscating the sun for a few minutes. In retrospect that was a rather technical way of describing the sun going behind the clouds for a minute.

Since there was an arts and craps festival in downtown Dunedin (pretty much how I feel about these events), we parked up at the Publix at Alt 19 and Curlew Rd. From here we pedaled all the way down to court street in downtown Clearwater. We passed over a small bridge just south of Stevenson Rd, and saw a few manatee's cavorting and playing around out in the distance. It is always amazing to see these huge creatures just having a good time rolling around in the water.

When we got to downtown Clearwater, it was amazing to see how dead the area that we used to have to drive through to get to the beach had become (you no longer can get to the beach directly from downtown). The area looks amazing but you can see how many of the mom and pop shops have closed up as a result of the loss of business.

Pedaling a little further, we took a break in a parking garage that had a set of benches in it. This section of the trail offers very little in the way of shade, just plenty of reflective concrete.

After cooling off for a bit we headed back up the trail and stopped for lunch at our favorite spot, Cafe Alfresco. We both had omlettes, but I also opted for some of the raspberry cheesecake they have which is absolutely fantastic.

After this we headed back up toward the car, but decided to go all the way up to the overpass so we could ride it back down (we like to go fast!).

Ride Statistics:
Started: Jun 26, 2010 11:25:20 AM
Ride Time: 1:39:06
Stopped Time: 50:02
Distance: 13.65 miles
Average: 8.26 miles/hr
Fastest Speed: 17.82 miles/hr
Climb: 249 feet
Calories: 654

Google Map of the Ride:

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Thursday evening ride

Tonight's ride was great, still in the 90s (no rain to cool things off). I bumped the seat up another 1/2" and it made a world of difference. I remembered my water bottle this time and the batteries in my headlight were fresh. This time I experimented with locking out my front fork and that too helped speed (at the cost of comfort). Now that the fork is broken in, it rides much better, but that squish factor wastes a lot of power.

At any rate, ride stats:

Ride Time: 1:08:28
Stopped Time: 0:00
Distance: 13.29 miles
Average: 11.65 miles/hr
Fastest Speed: 26.93 miles/hr
Climb: 705 feet
Calories: 669



Eating adjustment: Down 2.3lbs since Monday morning.

Making lemonade in the dark

I had intended to head out the door around 7 tonight...but being Florida, the electrical storm was in full swing out here in Riverview at the time. Finally around 8pm it finally cleared up, so I got put the lights on the bike, suited up and headed out the door.

It was quite refreshing out tonight - maybe 84F since the rain had cooled things off. At 8pm it is still pretty bright out this time of year, so the lights weren't really necessary at that time. I made it down the road about 4 miles when I noticed that my headlight wasn't very bright. Another 2 miles down the road...ah crap, I forgot my water bottle. At this point I figured I should head back, it was now pitch black, my headlight was dying and I had nothing to drink. By the time I made it to the 8 mile mark, the headlight called it quits and I still had almost 4 to go. The saving grace here is that I witness one of the most beautiful electical storms - there was a huge thundercloud over Pinellas County that had lightning dancing all over it. It was also nearly a full moon. The bad thing is that the headlights from cars coming toward me kept me from seeing the trail at some sections, which really slowed me down. I made it back home, feeling great, having enjoyed the outdoors, my bike, and the adventure of riding a bike in the dark - thus turning my lemons into lemonade...in the dark

Ride Stats:
Started: Jun 22, 2010 8:30:02 PM
Ride Time: 1:06:35
Stopped Time: 1:09
Distance: 11.72 miles
Average: 10.56 miles/hr
Fastest Speed: 18.72 miles/hr
Climb: 512 feet