Weekend Update

So after a weekend away from the blog I have some new material to put up, which is good because I wouldn't want to get boring to my audience (though let's face it, my life isn't going to make it to the movies).

This weekend was really nice, if you don't mind high heat and pretty good humidity. When I lived in Edmonton I found that I missed the humidity, I think I was just delusional due to dehydration. The humidity here is a bit of a pain, particularly when it gets up around 30 C. I guess the last time I experienced consistent temperatures like this I was living in Montreal, and I had my blood properly diluted with alcohol to keep me cool, or just oblivious, either way it worked. Now however I don't have alcohol to help me escape the heat, though ice cream is a good replacement.

Despite the heat I did get out for a couple of bike rides this weekend. Though it is a bit sad that even though I am trying to ride with a club I still only ended up riding with one other person on each day. I'm really going to have to whip these kids into line and get them training properly. But the Saturday ride was nice, but real fast. The guy I was riding with is only in his first year of riding, he used to be a swimmer/diver (I think) well either he's really fit or I'm way out of shape (probably a little from column A and a little from column B) but we were just motoring on the way out of town, averaging about 35 km/h with not a very strong tailwind. On the way back though the heat, crapy diet of the past few days, or the late night (~4.5 hours of sleep) started to catch up to me and I was feeling really beaten down. It's funny for me to feel that way on a three hour ride. I remember riding with ERTC when I was fit and frequently leading the ride back into town, into the wind, now I was the one sucking the wheel and needing to draft. Oh well, there's more motivation to ride and train more.

Sunday I was out on the mountain bike again, I'm really enjoying riding it this year. It seems that after a couple of years trying to keep up with Paul and either Kristi or Christina have made me a better mountain biker. As it is I have yet to actually crash the bike, which usually happened about once a ride back in Edmonton. Though maybe it's the lack of significant challenges to the trails, seriously I think I've had to ride over only 10 roots, and they were all perpendicular to the trail, and dry. For those that don't ride off road much, many of the trails in Edmonton have vast amounts of roots from the trees crossing the trail. Roots become challenging to ride under a couple of conditions; when they are not perpendicular to the trail, and when they are wet. It always seemed that both scenarios were the case when I rode in Edmonton. So it certainly seems that my riding skills have improved after the challenges that I faced when I started to ride off road again. I was out on Sunday with one of the girls in the club, she's apparently one of the best mountain bikers in the area, and it shows, she rode so much more smoothly than I did. Plus I recall her saying she was going to take it relatively easy on the ride, yet I recall gasping for air most of the time, while she was kind enough to keep talking to me as my answers consisted of as few syllables as possible.

Either way it was a fun weekend, though I did manage to pull/twist something at the front of my ankle near the end of the mtb ride. It's probably going to be sore for a few days, but I still haven't been bleeding from a mtb ride, so I don't really mind.