Fort Mountain Ride

After being stuck at the office until 10:30 last night, I took most of today off and headed up to Fort Mountain State Park for a ride with Chris. We hit the East-West Loop - probably one of the toughest 15 mile rides around. My objective was to test out the S-works on some steep downhills and my goal for the day was to make it down the big "powerline" downhill without any dabs, crashes, whining or other signs of weakness.

I was shocked after one of the tougher pitches when I stopped on a flat section and looked at my heart rate monitor and it said 151. I wasn't even pedalling!! Probably hadn't been for a good 2 minutes at least - so it must have been the adrenaline factor. I made it down without any issues, although it sure seemed easier than I remember. Next we hit a couple of miles of rollers and then it was granny gear time, with about 3 miles of TR style climbing. We found some orienteering bags on the way, hung for an upcoming TrailBlazer training day. The sneaky, evil side of me briefly contemplated moving one that was in a creekbed about 50' away to the top of a prominent rock prow. I reconsidered when I realized what a pain it would have been to scramble up there in bike shoes. The weather was great and even if I had crashed 6 times, had 3 flats and a broken chain, it STILL would have been WAY better than being stuck at the office.

Some pics: