It's hard to improve on the perfect single speed, I've upgraded my SS situation with the carbon version. I'm hopefull it treats me as well as Stumpy...The heat has been oppressive in the North East of late. Temps in the high ninety's and eight percent humidity have really sucked the life out of me in the past week. This week was supposed to be a final push for the upcoming races on my schedule but was a complete wash. With the exception of this weekend.
Saturday, Jocelyn and I decided that if we were going to get out at all, we better do it early. Not 8am like I tried and failed at on Thursday. SIX!!!! Who rides at 6am? People who live in the desert maybe. It's been so hot so that when I suggested it she just groaned "I'll do it". Jocelyn is not a morning person. A couple strokes of the keys and I posted the ride on Facebook also just in case anyone else wanted to join in our sleep deprived suffer fest. It turned out it was just her and I but we were fine with that. We rode all our favorite trails and Jocelyn even turned me on to some super sweet single track I'd never seen before. This early Saturday ride was great, getting me home like a normal person at a reasonable hour to do some chores. I may make it a regular thing.
Sunday morning we headed up to Stewart to ride this years Dark Horse 40 course. A big group ride was on tap. I often don't do group rides but I rode with a few guys on Tuesday and had a ball, so I figured, why not? Stewart lends itself to a good group paced ride because the trails are so fast and flow well not to mention the 40 course was marked so if anyone dropped off the pace they wouldn't get lost. Roger Foco, Gordon and I ended up floating off the front after a while and proceeded to lay the smack down on the course. We all traded pulls the whole time only slowing to get by the small groups of preriders that we would come up on once in a while. About mid point of the second 20 mile lap the pace was starting to slow so Gordon got to the front and put in a monster Jens Voigt type pull snapping Rog and I out of our funk. Gordon was all business, Laying a solid pace down that had me thinking that if he had gotten in to the race he may have been a lock for a top ten finish. Shortly after, we finished in the rain, it felt refreshing on this hot and humid day.
The whole experience of the day had me thinking that if I could ride like this every week I'd be a very dangerous person on the XC circuit. Hmmmmm, maybe a group ride isn't so bad after all.
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