Back to the Wilderness

First off I want to give a shout out to Roger who has just started his own blog Dirt and Gears make sure to check it out. Secondly, I gotta start remembering to take pictures. It's just hard to remember to take pictures on a training ride. It's just so hard to break the flow to stage a photo.

Friday, I woke up late and my plans to hit Reagan park were foiled right off the back. I wanted to get something in so I jumped on my road bike with my trusty garmin in hand and set off to do a quick interval set. If you haven't used a garmin or haven't found this feature yet, the programmable interval work outs are a nice feature to have. It comes with a bunch that are more tailored for running but with some simple tweaks, like changing some of the intervals and lengthen some. Most are usable right out of the box. All you have to do is pick the one you want to do and little pop up windows pop up to tell you what to do. Anyway, Friday I decided to try out a new one I had programmed in, the Dirty Thirty. There's many variations but the idea is max effort for short periods of time and short recoveries, back to back. I choose to do 10 second max effort, 10 rest, 15 second max, 15 rest, 30 second max then 30 seconds rest, with a couple 2 minute recoveries thrown in. I did this set six times. The 10 and 15 second efforts I did as full on sprints in a hard gear, while the 30 second one I sprinted for the first 10-15 seconds and then kept up the effort seated. The idea is to simulate mountain bike race pace with hard efforts with little time to recover. It should help my racing pace if I keep doing it.

Saturday I met my friend Mike (Bionic Knee) for a ride at Vultures Knob. I felt in good form and my new fork and rear Derailleur finally made my Full suspension Pro-caliber not feel like a sluggish off. The new fork took at least two pounds off the bike which made a huge difference in it's corner. This and my good form made for a good ride for me, hitting all the technical sections with ease. It wasn't a horribly fast session but it was still a blast. It was also a big step for me since Mike was the rider I chased all last season, barely hanging onto his wheel and this year I was leading with ease and pulling away at times.

Sunday I met my friend Roger (mentioned above, have you checked his blog yet? No? Well go check it out and then finish reading mine!) met up at Mohican Wilderness. We did two whole laps with 2500 feet of pure off road climbing and my legs are begging for mercy. Bike worked perfectly again, but I remember it being a lot smoother the last time around. My hard tail gave me a beating on some of the fast descents. Roger is a strong rider and put me through my paces today. It was a good ride, I completed all the climbs and all the rock gardens. Thanks Rays indoor mountain bike park for the that!

This week is still up in the air. Either Monday or Tuesday will be a recovery day (depending on which day it's going to rain) and Wednesday hopefully the weather will hold out for another CAMBA group ride. Thursday will be a day off then it's off the Blue Knob State Park for the CAMBA summer campout, three days of riding. I'll be in heaven. I'll promise to take pictures on that one.