It's winter. Last winter was my first year of really training. I didn't know much, and was starting from scratch. A long ride to me was an hour of steady effort. I would go for mountain bike rides that were 2 hours or so, but not often. This year I have a lot of fitness built up from the past year, and I know what base rides really are. In running, base endurance is built up with lots of hour or hour and a half steady efforts, maybe a two hour run if you're a marathon specialist. But for 10k and below, an hour and a half is the most you usually do.
Cycling is a bit ridiculous in comparison, but the distances are so much longer. I can sign on for a 50-mile road ride. I've done a 75-mile road ride. But any longer seems like it would be way too boring. Granted I did an 80 mile rail-trail ride, and have been doing (almost) 3 hour rail-trail rides here and there. And those are super boring on one hand, but kinda nice to have to tempo your way through while being able to completely shut off (i.e. not pay attention to traffic).
Well instead of either of those I've been trying to make it so that most of my base training switches to the singlespeed mountain bike. This past Saturday I hit up North Park. Rob Lochner, Stick, Jake and I stuck it out the entire time. Ted King-Smith, Randy, and Justin(whom I'd heard of, and my roommate knows, but I wasn't aware it was Steevo's bro until I ran into steevo in front of my house the next morning) came out for about an hour and a half.
Wow!
I've been to North Park a lot, but always at night. I don't know my way around much of the park, but know a few trail entrances, and can find my way around after I recognize something (the sand pit, police training center, kotu buki, the trail that ends near DelVecchio's house, tennis courts, etc.), but I had no idea there was so much there.
We spent 4 hours and 20 minutes riding around on the trails as they were frozen then warmed up. The crazy part is, we only rode one trail twice and that was out of necessity to hook up with another rider. The crazier part is I know of at least 3-4 miles of trails that we didn't even ride, and would gladly ride more trails.
At the end of the ride my legs were taxed. Not quite to the point of failure, but nearly. The 32x19 on the single speed keeps it tough on the harder trails, especially with the Nokian Extreme tires. The tires definitely make it harder, but hook up well no matter how icy, snowy, or wet.
That said, I swapped them out for the Panaracer FireXC Pros to ride on Sunday, and noticed a drastic increase in speed. And the Panaracers are slow rolling tires too!
I definitely need a more powerful gear for anything flattish or downhill, but the 19 is nice for the ups. I think I'm going to swap out the 19 for an 18 after this weekend.
Hopefully I can hook up with some more people to ride with this weekend.
4 comments:
I'm not the fastest on the mtb, but I would be interested. I've never ridden at North Park except around the lake on the road.
North Park was my high school 'stomping ground'. I lived about ten minutes away for 7 years...I built some of those trails with PTAG and helped maintain them. After I find an mtb, I'll come up and show you how to do 20-25 miles without repeating a trail!
NP sounds like some great riding and sweet that you can get out on the trails in January. Here in Utah, not so much, but the snowboarding is shweeeeeeeeet! I think you'd like it very much.
Happy New Year, Happy Trails!
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www.singlespeedrevolution.com
Ride One or Ride None!
Ben, I'll hit you up for some riding this weekend.
Vaughn, we put in at least 30+ miles of singletrack w/ about 5 miles of road. It was intense. I'm good friends w/ Brian DelVecchio who lives literally next door to the park, and is now one of the park stewards.
@ Genghis: It is sweet, I'd love to hit up some snowboarding, but it hasn't been cold enough or enough base for good snowboarding at the parks in the mountains around here yet, but there is too much snow for mountain biking out there. (it's at that point of like 3-6 inches of natural base). Here in the city it never really dumps enough to take mountain biking off the schedule for more than a week.
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