SWAMP Club Urban Assault and Social at New World Brewery

Tonight I rode with the SWAMP Mountain bike club on their bimonthly urban assault and social. The meeting spot was the New World Brewery down in Ybor City. We left at 6:30 and headed toward downtown Tampa. Now, it should be said it was starting to rain a little (it has been raining nearly nonstop the last 3 days), so we took out knowing we may have to abandon bike and head back. At any rate, we headed down some of Ybor City's back streets, down Channelside Dr to where there was a Navy Ship docked. We headed back down Channelside, through the Channel district (it was quite fun to see nearly 30 mountain bikers riding down the sidewalk). From Channelside we went over the bridge and into Harbor Island, did a quick run through there, back over the Florida Avenue bridge, back behind the Convention Center (and watched a couple of the more advanced riders go up and down the staircases), back up to Platt Street, over the Platt street bridge (the wet metal grates of the drawbridge coupled with mountain bike tires makes it feel like you are riding on moss!), around the little dock where the Gasparilla pirate ship is docked. Next we rode over the David Island bridge, around Tampa General Hospital and through Davis Island. We pretty much rode the reverse back, except when we came back we took the new Riverwalk all the way back to Channelside. The riverwalk is pretty nice, albeit a little slick on off road tires.

Back to the Brewery...
Knowing that I am not a beer drinker, one of my coworkers suggested the Lindeman's Framboise Lambic a raspberry beer. I ordered a beer and a cheese pizza, and they were both fantastic. The beer was really smooth (it really didn't taste like beer!) and the stone seared pizza was unbelievable. I relaxed and chilled out with the rest of the crew, until it was time to head home and it started pouring rain again anyway...

Ride Stats:
Started: Aug 25, 2010 6:24:47 PM
Ride Time: 1:21:42
Stopped Time: 0:00
Distance: 9.93 miles
Average: 7.29 miles/h
Fastest Speed: 12.80 miles/h
Climb: 245 feet
Calories: 401


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Today exercise

Today was a dreary rainy tuesday, I got in 20 minutes on the tread mill and 15 minutes on a stationary bike...Not much else to post ;)

Back on the treadmill

Since my birthday I have had a pathetic start to getting back into running shape. Today was one of my best efforts, thanks in part to Juno Reactor's 1997 album "Bible of Dreams". Definitely helps me forget the pain of running those first few weeks. You'd think with the amount of biking I do, that I wouldn't notice it, but that isn't the case at all. What it does help with is endurance (the same could be said as to why I can out distance most of my riding buddies).

Today's workout consisted of the following sets of leg press (weight x reps)
60x10
120x12
160x10
200x7

I also busted out a miserable 3 pull ups, then I stretched for a minute and ran.

Did a 5 minute warm up, varied speeds from 4.5-5.5 mph, cooled off at the end having put in 2.75 miles.

At least we're back on track!

Fording the river

Well, sort of.

Today started out like any other Sunday, waking early to go biking. Ryan and I had already agreed to ride the Wilderness trails (Morris Bridge to Flatwoods to Trout Creek and then back to the parking lot). I almost thought we wouldn't be biking today as I was awoken by the sounds of thunder and rain against the patio. A quick look at the weather and it looks like the rain had escaped the Wilderness trails. I texted Ryan to be sure he was still up for it and he confirmed. Jason and his crew headed over to Alafia today, so we wouldn't be seeing them. At some point I'll convince them to give these trails a run.

At any rate, we were just finishing up Heartbreak Ridge when the deluge came. The weather to this point had been terrific - nice and cool, and surprisingly dry. Now we were riding in an all out downpour, not my favorite thing to do, but alas, no lightning and it looked like it was going to be short lived, so on we continued.

Depends?
I suspect that if I were to guess what depends must feel like to wear, a soaking wet biking short chamois must be really close in comparison. As we were doing the road section between Morris Bridge and Flatwoods, I ran through a 2" deep puddle that the tires decided to deposit down my back and my ass. Fun times. At this point we are about 1/2 way through the distance we plan on covering.

By the time we made it to the paved loop at Flatwoods, the rain had stopped and the sun returned. The interior trails on the loop were pretty muddy but the clay gully was no worse that normal (bottom of the pedals touched the water).

Fording the river...
At this point we were already fairly soaked, but I wasn't really prepared for this. I wish I had taken a picture, but Ryan and I were trying to figure out the driest way around a section of trail that had turned into a small lake. Lord knows we couldn't back track 40 yards to the paved trail, and then walked our bikes through the brush on the other side.

This is where the "Oregon Trail" approach kicked in.
You have 3 choices 1) ford the lake, 2) ride around the lake, or 3) wait for conditions to improve.

We decided to do a combination of 1 and 2. We geared down (too far) so that when we were pedaling, sometimes the rear tire would just throw mud up on our backs. After some major pedaling (and eventually putting my feet straight down into the water when I sunk) we made it to the other side. It was about that time I noticed the paved loop was only 30 feet to our left.

At this point the trail really straightens out as it approaches Trout Creek. I dropped the hammers and blasted through the rest of the trails until we got to the parking lot, never happier to see a towel in all my life.

We did avoid the "going to die feeling" but still had a great time.

Ride Stats:
Ride Time: 1:58:40
Stopped Time: 0:00
Distance: 12.62 miles
Average: 6.38 miles/h
Fastest Speed: 16.39 miles/h
Climb: 315 feet
Calories: 685


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Boyette Scrub Park

Its Florida, in mid August. For those not in the know, that means the dew point is in the 80s, and its in the mid 80s to 90s before noon. Today was no exception.

I really like Boyette, it is easily my favorite park as the trails here have so much variety and there really is something for everyone. It was sad to see the amount that burned about two weeks ago (apparantly due to a lightning strike). If I had to guess, we rode past at least a mile of burned trees. The SST trail which used to run through this section was pretty much destroyed from what we could tell.

At any rate, our journey took us through Lock Ness, to Spider Berm, to Upper Spider Berm, onto Golf Cart, Mt. Boyette, Canyon, Pandemonium, Sidewinder, Swamp Thing, West Forest, East Meadow, back through Spider Berm and out. Everything felt so good today, not sure why! It was all going well until the heat began to take its toll on us and it just wasn't fun anymore.

I will say the new rear tire (Maxxis Ignitor) is leagues better on the back then the Kenda Nevegal was!

Started: Aug 15, 2010 8:30:34 AM
Ride Time: 2:00:19
Stopped Time: 0:00
Distance: 11.36 miles
Average: 5.67 miles/h
Fastest Speed: 14.71 miles/h
Climb: 102 feet
Calories: 628


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Saturday Pinellas Trail Ride

As is our usual Saturday custom, we dropped the angel off at Ana's parents house and headed out to the Pinellas trail. Today we did a little more than 15 fast miles and went up a little further than we had previously. It seems like the further north we go, the prettier the trail gets. On the way back, we did our usualy stop at Cafe Alfresco and rechareged.

Ride Stats:
Ride Time: 1:35:18
Stopped Time: 6:09
Distance: 15.23 miles
Average: 9.59 miles/h
Fastest Speed: 19.45 miles/h
Climb: 213 feet
Calories: 787


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Fast ride with wagon wheels

So I decided a week or two back that I wanted to get a road wheels and tires for my mountain bike since I end up putting way more miles on my bike on the road than I do on the trails. Combine the expense of replacing mountain bike tires which wear out quick on the pavement with their inherent slowness and it makes sense to swap wheels unless you want to buy another bike. I already had an extra front wheel that I ran the stock tire on for the streets (which was still really slow), so I just needed to get the back end and another tire.

I ended up getting the Kenda Kwest tires in the 700x35 size (since I bought a 29er, I can swap road wheels all day) which have enough tread not to be a slick, have a liner to prevent flats, and at $16, are a freaking bargain. I mounted everything up last night, and finally got a chance to take it out. Man what a difference. So very quiet untill you get up to speed (where the wind noise gets very loud). It makes handling a snap (you could never turn as fast on the MTB tires).

So, my ride stats were as follows:
Started: Aug 12, 2010 7:36:41 PM
Ride Time: 45:53
Stopped Time: 0:00
Distance: 10.80 miles
Average: 14.12 miles/h
Fastest Speed: 20.57 miles/h
Climb: 78 feet
Calories: 624