September 3, 2009

  • Horsetooth or Bust

    Another Saturday night and I wasn't sure what I was going to do on Sunday.  I was thinking about doing a RR when I checked my email 10:00 PM and saw that Kent was doing a MTB ride with some friends and invited me along.  Well this was just the ticked, cause I was a bit tired and the thought of getting punished on the group ride wasn't all that exciting..

    So, hmm,  oh yeah I need to rebuild the rear hub of the bike before I go out since last ride it was making all kinds of noises.   I Google for the instructions and find a nice video which detailed the whole thing!  Nice and in 1/2 hour or so I was good to go for the morning jaunt.

    I arrive a bit early at Soderburg and rode a bit of the trail with this guy I met on a 29'r and a T-shirt.  He was really fast so I only did 1/4 mike with him before I turned around to go back to the parkling lot.  There I met Rory who was also waiting for Kent and Dave to arrive.

    Soon we are off and running and heading up the  fire road!  Dave was flying and Kent was ahead of me and I didn't have the legs or the motivation to ride that hard that early. Rory was behind me so I knew I could ride my own pace and not feel like the group was waiting for me too much.    We went up and turned onto the Stout Trail.  This was good clean fun.   I haven't done this trail before of at least I didn't remember it.   It was pretty sweet with lots of  technical stuff.  

    Kent and Dave were cleaning a lot of the stuff and made so much of it look easy.  Rory and I were able to clean some of it but I wasn't a comfortable on some of the sections.

    Some where on the way up Dave snapped his chain and we spent some time fixing that.   We road some more and stopped a few times to do some do-overs.  I like this kind of riding because it gives me a chance to practice some stuff instead of going on, cause "I or the group is training" which most time doesn't fit with the plan

    Finally we make it to the  Whathum (sp?) trail and this is a lot of fun to try and climb.  Lots of technical stuff that the 4:50 boys do in the dark with no problem but I needed a bunch of do-overs for some of it and didn't clean a couple of things after much trying.   

    I wasn't long until Dave snapped his chain again.  This time it was the SRAM master link again but we coudln't find the whole thing or maybe Dave just chose to use the chain break tool and be done with it.   I don't know what the deal is with these links.   This was the same problem I had at Leadville a while ago when one of them came apart on me too.

    We are riding again and life is good until Rory snaps a spoke on the rear of his bike.  He's got one of those paired spoke wheels and it was seriously compromised!  Oh well Game over and . we  decide to head back to the cars. Dave and Rory went one direction and Kent and I went the other.  The plan was to get the Cars and go fetch Rory.  

    On the way down we come to the fire road but the single trak is just too tempting so we decide to do that one which will take a bit more time.  

    When we get back to the cars,  Rory and Dave are waiting there for us.  Turns out that it wasn't too bad to ride the bike down and they made some good time. 

    Time to call it a day for Kent, Dave and Rory, but I wanted to go over to the Pump track and do some playing.  After about a 1/4 mile of riding I see I have a leak in the tire so I decide to call it a day also and head back to the truck. 

    Not sure how many miles we did but it was fun!