Making it work........um, kind of.
Last year was totally different compared to this. We had pretty good riding through most of January and February - until I busted my ankle in March. This go around, it's been rough - as in little to no real riding due to snow. This past week the "old stomping grounds" up on the Bonneville Shore Line Trail burned off and made for some fairly good terrain. Monday night, I took one of the kids up with me; his first time up in that area. We did a few miles of simple familiarity on the service road and jumped up to the single track directly above the Douglas trail head. This is a section that starts out pretty fast, but still easy, and then turns rather technical. The key is to keep the momentum up while getting over the rocks. Balance and position are important. You can find yourself over the handlebars, if not falling down the mountain due to stalling and falling over.
About a mile into the single track, we ran across a guy that we'd been following, but had crashed. The dreaded "stall and fall". Having piled-up about 9 feet down, he was pretty beat up. After checking him for head injuries, we found his left arm was jacked up. Looks like he tried to catch himself with his left arm, which always ends in disaster. Long story short, we cut our ride short to get him off the mountain and back to the Douglas trail head. So much for that ride.
I hit it again last night after work, only to have to deal with a bunch of other riders in both directions. Word spreads fast. The short of that one is, I need a ton of time to get my confidence back on the MTB. Maybe I'll start running up there during "lunch", when it is less likely to have much traffic. This is a really good place to build leg strength and cardio early. I'm thinking we'll be road riding in about another month. That is more dependent on sand and salt, rather than clear roads. That crap really causes problems all the way around. Until then, mountain biking on the other side of the mountain.
In case you didn't figure it out by now, I didn't make it to "True Grit" last weekend. That really sucks. I couldn't get any local riding in, thus there was no reason to go down for the any training rides. Add to this the delays in funding; we are not doing very well on any front at the moment. We're hoping the funding comes through this week for the MS 150, LOTOJA and Huntsman. Kind of late, but I think we'll have everything in hand by the end of next week.
Hey, it's not Sedona, but it's still my old stomping grounds.
Ride HARD!
