Baby's Mama-Drama
"Tell him he should learn how to work on his own bike." Hmmm.... That's what the guy told my wife when she picked up the Niner Air 9 Carbon we bought from him. I found the bike on Craigslist. Looked like an excellent find. Carbon hardtail 29er, Fox 80mm racing fork, SRAM XX components all around, Stan's Tubeless set up. A straight-up X-country race machine. And that is precisely what he did the short year he had it. He raced the bejeebus out of that thing. Hence his little piece of advice on learning how to wrench. Before the bike made it to La Ruta I ended up replacing half of the components on the bike. That's what you get when you buy something from the internets from half a world away. Two good things did come out of the baby's mama-drama that was my bike. 1) I definitely learned how to work on my own bike. 2) The frame ended up having an warranty issue whereby the folks at Niner graciously sent me a new one. I win.
Uh-oh. Bad mistake.
So I finally get the bike in a rideable condition. Now its time to hit the trails! But crap I forgot, I don't ride mountain bikes. So where to go, GOOGLE! Alum Creek Phase 1 looked like a good starting point. No climbing, only 7 miles, and only15 minutes from the house, perfect! There was some mention of roots but how bad could those be? My plan, go do 3 leisurely laps to get around 90 minutes on the bike. That really was my thinking going into my very first ride on a mountain bike. Obviously I hadn't ridden a mountain bike before.
I get to the trail head unload and head off to get "acquainted" with my bike. One lap and 1 hour and 20 minutes later I finally make it back to the start point. I am exhausted. I am bleeding. I am muddy. My feelings are hurt. "What have I gotten myself into?" That's the only thought running through my head. As I limp back to my truck and load up I notice other riders, who have gotten off the trail after me. They were all clean. No mud or blood and they were smiley happy people. WTF!!!
On the drive home I contemplate selling the bike and telling R2 that I would be overly joyed to hand him water bottles during the race. Once I got home, cleaned my wounds and regained some of my dignity I decided to keep the bike.
Mohican State Park and the case of the hammered taint.
After such a demoralizing experience at Alum Creek Phase 1 I decided to search for another trail. I was in no hurry to return and have my lunch money taken from me again. Google told me that the Mohican State park has some great trails. 25 miles worth of single track to be exact and it was only an hour from mi casa. Off to Mohican I went. After my last performance I knew 25 miles was going to take me around 3-4 hours. So I came prepared for a long slog. Mohican has some climbing. Nothing too crazy or sustained but you can get a little over 3000ft in those 25 miles. What I wasn't prepared for was the downhill stuff. You'll be screaming down this little bitty trail weaving your bike through trees and then the trail decides to turn back on itself with no warning. The first few switchbacks I would slow to a crawl or stop completely and just walk it around the turn. After a while I started getting some confidence, then WHAMO! I eat shit and bounce my head off a root. I get up and feel a little dizzy. So the next couple miles I am taking it easy and monitoring myself. Once I realized I was more scared than hurt I picked up the pace again.
As I tick off each mile I can feel my handling skills getting better and my confidence building. "OK, this mountain biking thing is actually getting to be pretty fun", I start thinking. At about mile 19 I come across my first rock garden. And for the next 3 miles my saddle becomes a UFC fighter and commences to open up a can of "whoop-ass" on my taint (pun intended)! I try riding standing up to defend myself. But that just gives the saddle more time to build velocity before it connects. As I continue riding the rock garden the bike continues to buck. I try to tap out but the saddle just keeps coming. "WHO COMES UP WITH THIS SHIT!!" I am almost in tears. I actually start laughing hysterically at one point. If I go fast my taint becomes a speed bag. If I go slow the saddle actually tries to become one with my spine. And the only time the pummeling stops in that 3 miles is when I wreck. Oh the humanity. And then its over. For the last mile or so back to the truck I don't touch my saddle once. On the way home I start cracking myself up thinking of ways I can convince my wife to ice my, sure to be swollen, saddle area and I forget about how miserable I was.
Mohican, from that point forward, became my training grounds for La Ruta. I eventually found out how to bypass the rock gardens. And all was well with the world and my taint.
Myself and R2 morning of Day 1
Turns out you ARE a mountain biker after all, eh?!
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