Ouch

Frostbike winner Andrew De Cal got to my house by 10:30 for a complete bike fix-up (swapped the chainrings, derailleur adjust., brake adjust.) while I fueled up. Thanks alot man, the bike was running alot better than the engine today. I got a little crash course on how to adjust a derailleur, we'll see how it goes.

We arrived at The Funkey Monkey with 5 laps of the race course in mind. With the new snow that fell since the race, the trails were really tough. Most of the climbs were unrideable. Alot of the trails didn't have tracks on them and the doubletrack became even harder to pedal through with the fresh layer. De Cal's booties were attracting too much snow so we swung by the car before we started the second lap to remove them and get a little fuel. The second lap went much smoother then the first lap, most of the climbs were still very sketchy but the dismount and climb still gives a good workout. My crash count wasn't too bad at this point.

We did the third lap the other way and after 1/4 way through we knew this was the last lap. Fatigue and hunger brought many crashes and frustration. We had been riding for 3 hours by this point and I couldn't hold a line at all. My legs were still feeling fresh but my upper body was extremely tired and I had a very hard time controlling the bike. This is where my crash count shot up, I convinced myself that hitting all those trees and rocks are just going to make me a tougher rider. We made it back to the car with somewhere in the 3.5-4 hour range. It felt much longer, we got a better workout than we thought we would. Winter mountain biking is sure going to improve my brutal technical skills for the o-cup races.

Tomorow's plan is take 2 at the circle loop around Niagara, should be fun.