The Vineyard and Miccosucki

I like it when rides start lining up early in the week for the following weekend. I'm a little O. C. D. when it comes to planning and like to know what and where by Friday night so I can relax knowing I've got plenty of pedaling lined up.

With a few of the regular crew out of town the trail Yoda/ BW was kind enough to call me and see what we had planned for the weekend. I'm usually at the bottom of his invite list and feel honored just to be allowed to tag along. So imagine how surprised I was when he actually called me to see if we had plans for Saturday. He had a route in mind starting from Joe's and heading east. I was hoping we would go over to the Lines tract but like I said it's so rare I get a personal invitation I jumped at his offer.

I let PP and PJ know what our plans were and we agreed to meet at Joe's at 8:30. I question the sanity of going to what I consider downtown Tallahassee to begin a MTB ride but I had never been on this particular route so I was looking forward to it. A local rockstar decided to grace us with his presence not to mention his amazing wheelie skills. So we set off through the sleepy neighborhoods over to Fern, through Tom Brown, over to the vineyard off of Mahan, then onto the Miccosocee Greenway, back down Blairstone, onto Fern again, then back to Joe's.

The only sketchy parts were the four lane road crossings. PP decided to use the middle of Blairstone as a bull ring and cut me off, forcing me to unclip and almost dump it on the concrete median. I'm pretty sure she did it on purpose as I could hear her laughing as we crossed the Digestive Disease Center parking lot.

We ended up with 27 miles for the day and grabbed lunch at El Jalisco. Unfortunately for us and any patrons sitting close, PP and PJ wore their riding kits to lunch. But in a Mexican restaurant the smell just kind of blended in. PP, that's what you get for the take out maneuver.

Sunday we joined a large group for the Dirty Spaghetti (which takes place October 15th) pre ride starting from the school in Micosuckee and going to Thomasville Ga. and back using mostly clay roads. I got to ride with a lot of people I don't normally ride with. I don't remember much about the scenery since most of the time I was just looking at the wheel of the rider in front of me. 38 miles at 15.5 mph average may not seem like much but I was pretty whipped at the end.

Neither Blake nor I got all of our chores done around the house since both days we just came home and fell asleep on the couch. I'm lucky to have such an awesome, beautiful, and understanding wife who doesn't mind letting me feed my cycling addiction. When I got the first "how was your weekend?" question at the office Monday, all I could say was "awesome". To which she replied "wow, sounds like it was better than mine". I'm pretty sure it was.

P. S. no, I don't know how to spell Micosocee and I'm too lazy to go look it up.

Unfounded Fears

I'm a wimp, I admit it right up front. I'm scared of pain, scared of crashing, and even scared being scared. On a recent ride I fully exposed my list of fears to my fellow riders. The only response I got was something to the effect of "you'd think somebody who used to race moto wouldn't be afraid of a little root or log". Another kind piece of advice was "you'll be fine, you just need some more confidence" or something along those lines. They just don't understand.

It was the same in MX when it came to clearing new obstacles, mainly double jumps. I'll assume you know what a double jump is, the name's kind of self explanatory. They would build them just far enough apart so if you backed off just a little you'd nose dive into the landing jump. Not fun. Or if you did clear it, maybe you'd clip your rear wheel on the landing jump, thus sending you head over heals. I thought about these things every time I lined up to do one. In fact I'd wake up early on race day in a cold sweat imagining the approach and what would happen if I failed.

I know that's negative thinking. I should picture myself flying off the take off and landing perfectly on the downslope. But I always thought about the crash instead. The root of all these problems goes back to my very first attempt to clear a double. Waaaaaay back in 1983 I entered a MX race in Milton Fl. I had a Yamaha 125 and absolutely no business racing MX. I'd only raced a couple of off road races before, how hard could it be?

This was the first double the track owner had ever built. I remember it being not much of a gap but deep, kind of like jumping a ditch. It was hard to roll it and dangerous since you ran the risk of getting jumped on. On the first lap of my first moto I was in the back of the pack as I came around to the jump. The only thing I remember is twisting the throttle and pulling back on the bars. The next thing I know track workers are gathered around me while I tried to breathe. The flagger said I looped over backwards and landed on my butt from about 6 feet in the air. I walked away eventually but it was weeks before I could take a breath without wincing.

Anyhoo, there you have it. I went on to clear some doubles but I never got comfortable with it. It's really amazing I participate in anything remotely dangerous. The point of all this old man rambling is that I have 2 obstacles that have buffaloed me when it comes to MTBing. If you know me you know what they are. They have both been cleared by almost everyone I know. But that doesn't help my fear. I can picture rounding the corner, gathering speed, lining up for the best line, pulling up on the bars, annnnnnnnnd plowing face first into the ground. I tell myself "this is the day I hit it" and then find some lame excuse to back off.

The only positive side of this is I've been able to enjoy some fairly dangerous sports for a long time (I raced my first moto off road race in 1974). I can still get out of bed in the morning without groaning and my list of broken bones is very short (so far, I don't like to tempt fate). But still I have a little panic when I think about that spot on Cadillac or that section on Red Bug. Some things never change. But you know what they call somebody with no fear? An ambulance.

Edict

My first sport class Florida State MTB race was hard. I know I say that after every MTB race and I guess that's because every race is hard. This one had me almost passing out at the finish. Poor hydration (again), pushing too hard at the beginning to keep Steve in sight, and riding the 3 days prior to the race all contributed to my list of excuses. I had hoped the new bike would magically enable me to stay on Steve's wheel, but alas that was not the case. Plus the seating position on the Felt is more aggressive than my Stumpjumper and this caused some back and hand discomfort that I was not accustomed to. Wow, I do have a lot of excuses don't I?

Maybe it wasn't a good idea to ride the new bike, but how could I not ride it? I should have taken a few days off before the race like I normally do but could you really just let that brand new toy sit in the shop?

Anyhoo enough with the whining. I got 6th out of 17 in the old man sport class. I didn't leave anything on the trail. The bike handled flawlessly. I dropped my Endurolyte pills while trying to open the bottle on the second lap. I almost crashed twice drinking from my water bottle. In the future I'll run a Camelback and some sort of liquid electrolyte mix in a bottle. I cramped on the last lap and almost didn't make it around the BMX track at the finish. The heckling from the BC gallery helped me ride through the pain.

I know that's not much of a race report. I could go into a little more detail such as I was on 4th place's wheel until we climbed out of Kudzilla on the second lap, then I lost touch with him. 5th place didn't catch me until I sat up on Magnolia on the last lap. I guess since it was our home race and we ride that trail all the time there doesn't seem like there's that much to say.

Blake had a good ride. I try not to brag on my kid but I was proud of the way he went after this race. In the 15-18 class there's not any distinction between base, sport, or expert so they all race together. He came around on the first of his two laps in second place. He lost two spots on the last lap and ended up 4th. Since this class is the future of MTB racing I had hoped they would trophy back to 5th, however they only went to 3rd. Higher Ground stepped up and gave him prize money anyway.

Speaking of Higher Ground they treated us like factory riders for the day. Donuts and bagels for breakfast. After race hot dogs. I saw them fix all kinds of bikes for free and they worked all day Saturday on the skills track.

Even with all my excuses it was still a great weekend.

Rain

I don't sit around very well. After a great ride at Tom Brown and getting to watch the college kids race on Saturday I was hoping the forecast for Sunday was wrong. It wasn't. I finished a book, cleaned the shop, and then stared out the back door as it flooded. Is it the endorphins I'm hooked on? Why do I crave riding my bicycle? I watched another episode of Mad Men.

It was too wet to do any yard work. Blake had a loud game going on the PS 3 and I hadn't seen him in hours. I stared out the front door. I watched a little football. I really wanted to ride. In the past it never failed to rain the weekend I brought home a new dirt bike. I expect the new bicycle won't be in till later in the week so I hope fate just missed it by a weekend.

I went back out to the shop and decided to put some of the old moto trophies away. Why I didn't just throw them in the garbage can I'll never know. They're just cheap gaudy plastic trophies that take up a lot of room. I can't even remember the specific race where I won some of them. Sometimes I would get a trophy for first place even if just 3 riders showed up. Such is life in the moto 45 plus world. Wow, you actually rode motocross old man, here's a trophy. I stuck them in the rafters.

I threw away a whole box of Honda parts. Grips, brake levers, and assorted stuff I couldn't identify. As I was digging through the box I found a couple of pictures from the Alligator Enduro that took place in Daytona during bike week every year. One was dated 1996, man 15 years ago? That race was cool, kind of like a national. All the pros were there, it ran on Thursday and had a 500 rider cap that sold out every year. It wasn't a very fun trail but was always a challenge. We usually rented an old house in the Ocala National Forest for most of the week so all I had to do after the race was drink a margarita and head for the woods. Good times!

It was still raining. I was feeling old.I grabbed a beer and turned on a little music. Maybe it won't rain tomorrow.