Taking it Easy and Giving Back – Days 6-11

I know, I know.  It’s been a while since my last update.  I have been riding, riding, riding while trying to balance personal life and what little work I DO have.  In my last post I mentioned my knee acting up from overuse.  I decided that I should take it easy with how I’m riding and what I’m riding.  Most of the pain was coming when I pedalled so I tried to shuttle, walk up any climbs, and head to the pump track a couple of times so I could stay on my bike.  It was important to me to stay committed to this project but not do permanent damage to my body.

I really enjoyed the “slow down” time as it gave me a chance to work on some skills and try some new things.  On a shuttling trip to Mt Seymour I was able to try some new trails and work on skinnies which ended up in this success:

Trust me, after trying that about 10 times and always chickening out after the first little part, this was an awesome achievement!

I also spent a bit more time at the pump track with my unicycling friend, Bryan, and got to watch him fool around on his uni.

He even let me give it a shot even though I’m WAY too short for it and my feet couldn’t reach the pedals if I were to attempt to move.

Hopefully he can get his hands on a smaller uni and I’ll give it a try again.  The pumping practice also definitely paid off when I got back out on the trails.

There was also a special day in the mix this week.  On Sunday, the North Shore Mountain Bike Association (I believe in conjunction with NSMB and Mosaic Homes.  Correct me if I’m wrong) had an open trail day where any member of the community could sign up to help out with some trail maintenance.

I got to spend all morning with some awesome folks digging a big trench, setting up a little bridge to go over that trench, and filling in other parts of the climb trail with ‘gold.’

The morning flew by and was really fun (which was surprising considering it involved digging a hole) and the lovely sponsors for the event, Mosaic Homes, even donated lunch for us all as well as some prizes that got given away.  Overall, it was a fantastic first experience and I can’t wait for more trail days to come.  If you have anything like it in your area, I highly recommend going to give back to the community and to the trail networks that you enjoy.  The other thing I learned from this is if you plan a ride after an event, remember ALL of your gear.  Hiking boots do not grip to pedals well.

Lastly, I had a great run for day 11.  My knee was finally feeling better and I broke my own record for pedalling up from the Mt Fromme parking lot.  I made it allllllmost to the Crinkum Crankum entrance.  This is roughly 2-3 times my previous record.  I was so excited.  As for other out on the trail that day:  if you passed by a woman on a blue Transition Bottlerocket singing Selena Gomez or Justin Bieber on the climb… that was me.  I’m so sorry you had to be subjected to that but it was what was on the radio on the drive and it kept me going.

That day 11 ride yielded a number of records, as my Strava showed afterwards.  It was a great day out and a nice, long ride by myself and it felt full of personal achievement.  Onto day 12 and some exciting stuff coming up for this week!

In case you missed the challenge.