Can you believe it, it’s been a whole month since the last time I was out on a mountain bike ride. I’m turning into a novice again and I hate the feeling.

I’m just glad that I’m still in some what of a shape to be riding my bike. You see, over the past month, I’ve been in this team bike challenge thing here at work. It’s riding, but mostly riding on the road.

So I originally had planned on riding Saturday morning, but a few things were on my Honey-Do list, I never got around to pedaling. When I had seen a couple of guys from the Facebook group that I had recently joined post up that there was the chance to ride on Sunday, my hopes were up that I would be able to salvage some riding this weekend.

They were planning on riding Pleasanton Ridge, a place that I was more or less familiar with so I had no apprehensions about riding this place. The first thing on my mind actually was debating which bike I would take out for the ride. I had always wanted to take the single speed out there, but riding with guys that I wasn’t familiar with, I didn’t want to slow them down. The Blur would be the most obvious choice for this ride, but I had just taken her out on the previous ride. That left me with the beast, the Nomad. I thought to myself, this isn’t the trail for this bike, but she does need a work out. After just adding on the Ti Coil, I really wanted to see how she would do as well. So my mind was made up, I would take the Beast out.

I woke up that morning thinking that I was going to load up on the back of my Grand Cherokee, unfortunately, my wife had already taken it. I can’t carry the beast in the Wrangler (hard to remove the front wheel), so what was left was trying to carry the 32lbs+ bike on the 240. I hadn’t done this before, so I was little scared. I had only carried my road bike on it, and at short distances. But I said what the heck, let’s try it out. It worked out fine.

As I was driving to PR, I wasn’t sure where the guys would meet. Normally, we’d meet on Main Street and do a little warm up ride to the park entrance. So this is what I did. I was a little early, so it wasn’t a bad ride to the park at all. It also gave me a chance to warm up my legs.

There was a group of 10 of us for this ride. I figured I was going to be slow, and take my time. I hadn’t been in this park in over a year, and this is no exaggeration. Since then, they’ve blocked off a lot of the single track that used to be out there. It was still a fun ride however.

Well this post is going to be short, mostly because I’m typing it in as a backlog. I went out riding with Fluffee, Norm, & a couple of new guys that are friends of Fluffee. Rich & his friend “O”.

I headed up to Mike’s place and we carpooled up to Lake Chabot.

It’s been like a year since the last time I rode up here, but it was nice. Took out the Blur to stretch out it’s legs. She hadn’t been out since 24 hours last year. Good long ride and a work out.

Tuesday’s ride was certainly a great day to get back on the bike and hit some dirt, in fact, it was the first time for me in 2010 to be riding a fat tire.  I had done a few road rides on the 700cc in January, but sometimes you just miss the smell of dirt - or is that horse manure

This was logged as “Lunch time ride #26″ for me.  I went out on the Single speed hardtail, sporting 32/20 gearing. Yes, I know for some of you hardcore types, this is a whimpy ratio, but it works for me. (where were you on Tuesday?).

I headed out from Building A’s, well correct that, Building 7’s workout room around 11:15 or so, greeting our lovely workout instructor on my way out the door.  The weather couldn’t have been better.  The ride up on Arastradero Road, was decent.  Riding up the the backside, just on the other side of 280, I was sucking wind, as well as carbon monoxide from the cars accellerating to get up the hill.  Just as a reminder to all the cyclists out there, please, obey all the rules of the road, stop at stop signs.  I don’t want any angry motorists looking to run me off the road because they’ve encountered a discourteous rider.

Once I got in the park, I was mildly surprised to find that the ground conditions were great.  I was actually expecting a lot more mud, considering all the rain that we’ve had in the past few weeks.  I had expected some of the single track (narrow trails on dirt - for my roadie friends out there ;-), to be closed off for “seasonal weather”, however the loop was open.  For the route that I take, the single track is a climb.  For those who have never riden a single speed mountain bike, it’s a full body workout experience, as with the ratio we run, it’s usually something a little bit harder, ergo, you’re forced to pedal out of the saddle.  With the way I’ve configured my bike, it’s like doing pushups and climbing stairs at the same time.

The running I have been doing in my cycle off season has certainly helped with my stamina, but it surely didn’t help my tired arms much.  But on this route, there was now an opportunity for me to relax a little bit as I dropped back down on to a flat section.  Gearing now on a fire road, with a slight ascent.

After doing this a while, you get to ride more single track.  To a mountain rider, single tracks are like a wet dream.  Anyways, I ended running into equestrians.  I have mixed feelings about equestrians, because so many of those riders don’t believe in sharing the trails.  But in all honesty, I take every opportunity to be a good ambassador of my sport.  So when I encounter a horse, I stop, still, and let the rider pass by.  On some occasions, I’ll even get off, unless the equestrian tells me its okay otherwise.

The rest of the ride was as fun as I had remembered it.  There were some light patches of muddied areas, but what’s riding offroad without getting a little soil on you ;-).  The whole ride was about 1hr long, I burned 584 calories according to Ms. Garmin. Hope you enjoyed my post.  I hope next time you’ll be able to join me, until then, enjoy the ride and the photos.

Ride On Garmin: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/24922018

Man, it certainly has been a while since I actually posted on here. Life has pretty much been keeping me busy and it sux that I havn’t had the chance to update the website. So hopefully beginning today, I’ll have a chance to start back logging and put all of my cycling activities up.

Went out at lunch again, still trying to get back into shape

Went out with Phil and Zo for another great ride up at Demo. Getting a little bit better at doing some of this technical stuff

Went out for a good ride today.

Went out on my SS today at lunch

Against my better judgment, I decided to get out and go ride today. I had a crap load of stuff to do at home, but I felt like I deserved a break from doing the house chores, so that’s exactly what I did, take a break. Phil had been talking to me for a couple of weeks now about doing Soquel Demonstration Forest, I knew his bike was made for this type of terrain, and from his known riding style it would fit. I finally confirmed with him more or less on Friday about the ride.

Zo had also been itching to ride, even though he rides like every week, but what better guide to have than him up at SDF. I called him on Saturday to see if he was able to ride, and true to form, he was. Zo met up with me at my place and I drove over to pick up Phil for the ride up.

In the parking lot, we met up with Phil’s other riding friends, Nick & John.

Zo did not disappoint with his trail choices. After not being in shape for so long, the ride was a little tiring for me at the beginning. It was hard to keep pace with this guys and I played the role of Slacker as I have always done. The trail had it’s drops, jumps, roots, everything that you could enjoy. I followed Phil through a few sections that I probably shouldn’t have, but did anyways. It was a nice challenge. There were some things that probably surprised Phil as well, as he was right on Zo’s tail following him through some of the paces.

Nick & John played it a little safer as from what I understand, their history was on their mind, I don’t blame them, this is not a fun area to crash, but it does happen. Fortunately, we only had one minor spill, that was Phil coming off a log.

As we were getting close to the bottom, my legs were starting to give out. I was cramping so bad, I couldn’t stand up straight at one point. The climb back out was painful for me, I was last. It was painful, not because my heart was out, but I was fighting the cramping pains to get the wheels turning.

All in all it was a good ride, a little masochistic, but a great ride none-the-less.

Well for those of you who normally follow my blog, you know that it’s been quite a few months since my last post. The reason for this is that I’ve been taking care of some things on a personal level. Nothing bad, but it just kept me off my bike.

A couple weeks ago, I helped my friend, Phil locate a Nomad, very similar to the one that I have. Well he was wanting to ride and explore ever since he got this thing, so on Saturday, we decided to head out to Santa Teresa and utilize the travel that in this bike.

Now if you remember, the last time that I rode on this trail, it was right before the race and it was with my other buddy, Fluffee. I had ridden the trail using the Blur, well with the race out of the way, I wanted to make good use of my Nomad as well.

We started out from Stiles Ranch, to give myself a much needed warm up. After the first few minutes, my ass told me that I hadn’t been on a bike in a while. It actually took a little bit to get comfortable in the saddle again. I felt like I was doing okay. I had been hoping that I was able to retain some of my balance, which I had. What I hadn’t retained was my stamina.

There upon I came a technical section where I didn’t want to risk riding and ruining my day, so I decided to get off and hike it. This proved to be an interesting event, because as soon as I stepped off the bike, my heart rate started to slow very rapidly. Pretty much it was pegged at around 190bpm, and slowed down to 58 within about 2 or 3 minutes. To the point where I was feeling like I was going to black out. I sat down to recover and reduce the risk of falling down and cracking my head open, or worst, drop my bike.

The rest of the ride was pretty good. I got back into the grove of things. Thank goodness for the overcast, as the weather helped keep the ride cool.

As we climbed to the top of the ridge, we ascended into some mist, which felt good as the climb itself was still as tough as I remember it.

Coming down Rocky Ridge was still as exciting as the first time, and was still the full body workout. You see as you come down this rock and boulder ridden trail, you must let the bike dance beneath you, no matter how much suspension you have.

All in all it was a great ride.