Achy breaky body !!

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Loading the bike onto the car 

I thought that after a summer of biking across the country that I was in good physical condition, after all I did cover over 8,000 km, but Sunday morning I found out that that was not the case, my adventure in the Durham Forest left me with an aching body !!! , arms, shoulders, stomach , back all ached for the next two days !!! , I should have known , mountain biking is a much more demanding sport then road riding , but it still caught me by surprise !

So I have decided that if I’m going to play this new game I’d better get my body use to it , with that in mind I loaded up the bike today after work and headed to my local park “ Centennial Park Centre” that’s literally five minutes up the road. 

I know the trails there quite well as I use to race on them a few years ago.It’s a small park with three loops ( easy, intermediate and difficult ) totaling just over 5 km and a number of connecting trails were created once racing stared to be able to create a variety of different courses. 

I stayed on the loops today and did them three times, they are fast flowing single track and I had fun !! I was swishing left and right !!!, hopping over the small rises !!!, dipping into the hollows!!!, dodging root, stones and branches !!!, taking the bends at speed , breaking coming in and letting loose in the turn , climbing the banks when there were banks !!!, dodging the trees with just millimeters to spare !!!, bouncing like crazy over the exposed roots !!!!, just having a ball !!!!! no wonder my body aches !!!! 

I ended up doing 16.6 km in 1 hour and four minutes with an average speed of 15.4 km/h, a good work out that had me huffing and puffing !!!

I am toying with the idea of perhaps doing the 8 hour ride up at Hardwood Hills ( Duke's Fall Epic 8 Hour Relay ) on the 25th , crazy perhaps ? 

On a sad note as I was driving to the park I spotted a squirrel crossing the road and stoping , I slowed right down to see which way he would go but the oncoming car didn't and ended up running him over and killing him , I just don't understand why the car couldn't just slow a bit and let the squirrel get out of the way , what’s the rush ??? why the indifference to life ??? You could say it was just a unimportant squirrel, but that just goes to show a lack of being able to live in harmony with the creatures around us, we can get all upset about people killing elephants in Africa and clearing forest in the Amazon  and at the same time don’t give a dam about a squirrel in our own back yard , strange how that works !!! ( I’ll write more on this another day , it’s something that concerns me ) 

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