Wicked Ride!

I wanted to share this post I put on my personal blog about last night's ride. I was so excited about it! This post pretty much says it all.

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Tonight I did a mountain bike ride with the "Girlies" from the local mountain biking club. While no longer titled the "girlie ride", it is almost always led by women. Tonight's was led by an incredibly strong tiny woman who does 24 hour solo mountain bike races, and to say she is fast and strong is an understatement! This is the ride that is basically her back yard. I did it last fall with her and one other guy, and I was totally wasted. The kind of wasted where you can't even turn your front tire without falling over because you've got no reserves with which to pull out of any type of mistake. I couldn't walk for a few days afterwards!

So I was nervous about tonight's ride. I remembered the pain of the ride, most of which was in the dark, and recalled none of the fun. But I wanted to get out with the group and this promised to be a good group of folks tonight.

Well, I wasn't the fastest, but for the first time (?ever) I wasn't the slowest either! Now I've been on rides where there were clear beginners that I was faster than...but this was a ride with a bunch of technically experienced folks. Now maybe some of them were out of their regular shape, but when I was the 3rd of 6 people to the top of the last climb up from the river, man was I stoked!

I felt strong through the entire ride, and this time, i had a blast. Near the end the ride dips and dives over and through the creek about 8 times as the trail meanders towards the river...what a blast. I topped it off with a 10 minute trail run as part of my triathlon training.

I'm ready to ride with the girlies again anytime!