Stairs Suck!

Headed to Oak Mountain again to try to practice for the Day at Sway on the 15th. I had intended to try to get three laps in this weekend. Mal from BUMP wanted to do two laps starting at 9:00. Tommy and Moran were going to start at 10-10:30 and try for their second lap when I was starting my third. We hit the trail heading clockwise. The BUMP guys seem to only like riding clockwise, I don't quite understand. Anyway, I just rode with Mal and really didn't try anything on this lap but just rode. We got back and managed a 1:35 lap time (not counting the time we stopped to wait for stragglers a few miles in. I got back to the parking lot and ate a sandwich, energy bar, and refilled my water bottle.
A few more people had arrived to join us for our second lap so we headed out (Clockwise again). Gavin (I hope this is his name) joined us and I enjoyed tring to follow him as he was hitting all the log jumps and log rides as we rode. He actually cleared the large log before camp road so I decided to try it. I cleared it with my back tire, but landed on my front. It was definately not pretty, but I made it over. We rode for a while and Monty was having shifting problems and basically had to use the large chainring only. Shortly after he ran over a needle (like you air up a ball with and how this got on the trail I will never know) and had to chage his tire. He was having terrible luck. I stuck around to make sure he got it repaired (I would feel terrible if he had to walk out). We rode on to the North trail head and he decided to head back. I couldn't figure out why he didn't want to climb the hill in the large chainring only on the second lap :-). At this point I was 5-10 minutes behind everyone else so I decided to see if I could catch them. I tried to not kill myself but pushed pretty hard up the hill. I actually saw 201bpm on my heartrate monitor. According to the built in charts for my age that is about 107% of my max. Just call me an overachiever. I finally caught half the group at the top of the BUMP trail. I headed on down tring to catch the leaders. I finally caught a glimpse of them across the valley of Johnson's mountain. I was still a minute or two behind but kept pressing on. Finally I was getting close near the end of Mr. Toads, but could not do it. I got back to the cars about 5 seconds behind them. I looked at me time and was extremely supprised to see a 1:31. I did however stop for about 15 minutes for the shifting and tire change that would have bumped the time to what I thought I would have ridden.

I was not hungry, but I tried to force down a little food and refilled my camelback once again. I was able to talk Tommy and Moran into heading CCW as I needed a change for the last lap. Even though they rode this diection for their first lap, they graciously agreed. Gavin joined us as he wanted to also get 2 laps in even though he had gone road riding tat moring. We headed out and rode at a welcome slower pace. I was regretting pushing so hard on the second lap as I figured I would have to walk some of the hils according to how I felt on my last climb of the jeep trail. Supprisingly I made it to blood rock okay. I decided to once again try to ride up (even though I had already admitted defeat because I was so tired) and did better than I thought. I had to take a few steps at the tree as I was spinnign my tire and dabbed a few more time, but actually did better than usual. We continued on around and stopped at ditch #3 to take pictures of Tommy's jumping skills. Tommy tried to take the road back once we got to the North Tailhead, btu we conviced him that he was so close to getting two laps he had better not give up now. We stopped at the top of the first climb (everthing seemed like a climb at this point). Tomm wanted to rest, so me and Moran traded bikes (we swapped pedals) as Gavin headed on back due to time constraints. I rode the Stumpy the rest of the way and decided I HATE Specialized seats. I was doing fine till this and now my butt was killing me. I should have done something, but I just sucked it up and dealt with it. I am probably going to regret this decision tomorrow. We finished it out in 2:05 riding time and 55 minutes of resting. After a beer in the parking lot we headed home to get ready to go to Texas Roadhouse. I had a tasty New york strip and felt much better.

I just found out Charles and Charlie are going to Swayback tomorrow to ride. I think I could work the soreness out of my legs, but I am really saddle sore. I will have to see if I can even sit on the seat tomorrow morning. If I can, I may go join them. After all, I only get to ride on the weekends, it would be terible to waste a day.