A little Sunday Ride

Sunday I supposed was the day to make up for being lazy all week and not riding, so I trudged on out to Schaffer, where I had a very good time on my about 2 1/2 hour ride. I met someone I knew not long after getting on the trail; Mark, who was on his cross bike, a Surly Crosscheck I think? We decided to ride together, but I was fresh and he had a killer big ride yesterday on a fixie and wasn't quite able to keep up. After he popped a tube (and cut the tire) following me off a jump -- I guess you can't do that on skinny tires -- we parted ways. Funny thing is I slowed way down soon after we split. Must have used up the initial burst of energy and then had to rely on different stores, which I haven't been working on since the 100 really. So I was slow for a while. I picked it up again after about an hour when the body started to work like the well-honed engine I spent so much time developing this year. As I was heading back out to the trail for the third time, after my second trip to the car to pump up the leaking rear tire, I met Mark again, this time on his Kona rigid singlespeed. He was heading back to the car and home, but finding someone to ride with convinced him to go out for one more round. He let me lead, since I knew the trails better, and I took us pretty much straight out to the long yellow loop around the field, taking just one of the off-shoots to the left to make it a little longer. After crossing the four-way intersection on the way out where the yellow loop intersects with itself my legs were pretty much spent. I was having a lot of trouble getting up the hills with any speed, and the way back to the car was often unpleasant and Mark certainly wasn't having any problems keeping up with me; I'm sure I was slowing him down. But there was still a lot of fun to be had for sure. I don't think I've ever been so tired that I didn't enjoy going downhill or carving up some fast twisty section. I wimped out in the last mile and took all of the chicken-outs where they existed; I was just too tired to be bunny hopping anything unnecessarily. I can't wait to build up a dedicated hardtail singlespeed, something that will be a lot more efficient than my full suspension rig, as I found out previously on JoeP's Monkey.

I got to practice my superman impression right after getting on the trail the second time with Mark. A very wide stack which I didn't slow down for -- brought the front wheel up, fine. Coming off the back side, here's what I think happened. I pushed off to bring the rear up too late and it coincided with the rear tire hitting the first log of the stack. So the rear end came up with about double the energy I had intended and I landed nose first with my feet still coming around and over my head. As soon as I realized what was about to befall me I let go of the handle bars and braced for the impact with the ground. Which was quite jarring, and which I came away from with surprising little damage. A raspberry on my left knee on the outside, a little bit of pain in my wrists from breaking my fall with my hands, a bad habit I've been unable to break. Nothing serious, except the injury to my knee was exactly in the spot I've been having trouble with on longer rides, and getting back on the bike and riding I realized there was some internal pain there. I still think it's something to do with my Ilial Tibial Band, or maybe my Lateral Collateral Ligament -- or is it the Medial Collateral Ligament? And I still think it'll clear up eventually as my body adjusts. But it wasn't bad and I just put it out of my mind and kept riding and didn't think about it again until I got off the bike back at the car.