Shredding a Flying Dog

Well, at least Kris shredded the Dog. Me, I was just doing my best not to lose his wheel! This was our first time on the Glenwild trails in Jeremy Ranch and while the ride didn't start out too well when I discovered 1 minute after leaving the parking lot that my CamelBak and keys were locked in the car, it turned out to be a fun ride regardless. Luckily I had my cell phone in a jersey pocket and was able to call my wife who agreed to meet us later with a spare key! At that point I still didn't have any water but another biker who was waiting for a friend in the parking lot loaned me a water bottle. Saved again! So we headed out the second time and since we'd just lost 15 minutes of ridetime Kris, as is his natural tendency, took off like a bat out of hell. What made this particular flight especially painful for me was the fact that the trail immediately began climbing. It wasn't a steep grade, and in fact none of the climbing over the course of the ride was difficult, but as many of you know, if the pace is high the climb doesn't need to be hard to inflict pain!

So if I remember the route correctly we started on Glenwild and then jumped on the Preserve Connector which dropped us off at the top of Flying Dog. We shredded the Dog (at this point, and on this particular downhill, I was riding well and stayed right on Kris' wheel) back down to Glenwild and then decided to do a quick run on Ant Farm. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on who you are and from what perspective you view mountain biking!) neither of us are downhillers, me even less so than Kris, so I was grateful there were no armor clad, low seatpost, full face helmet riders around to observe our making a mockery of their beloved downhill run. Thankfully (again, this is entirely dependent on one's perspective!) the trail ended quickly and we began the climb back to Glenwild and returned to the parking lot where Cami and the kids were waiting.

We were a little apprehensive about the weather but as it turned out we only encountered a few rain drops and heard thunder from a nearby storm that seemed threatening but never moved close enough to be scary. For me the cloud cover and cooler temperatures were a lucky break given my single bottle of water. Even so I ran out of water after an hour and rode the final 70 minutes dry. My legs started to run out of steam as I finished the run on Ant Farm and I'm not sure if it was due to the lack of water or if I just needed to eat something. I had a Cliff Bar, but without water I wasn't in the mood to force it down a dry throat. So looking back I suppose I experienced a little of what Fox feels on most of his long rides. Of course, he doesn't really start to feel it until he's ridden at least 4 hours whereas I started feeling it after 90 minutes!

Thanks to Kris for snapping some pictures of the trail. I need to get back in the habit of bringing a camera.