1/2 century

Sunday I finally rode my first 50 (well it ended up only being 49 cause I left from the shop instead of my house but I did ride the 2.8 miles to the shop so I'll say 50) mile ride. I rode from the shop to my parents house in Nebraska City. It was a totally new experience riding out on a 4 lane highway in the complete open. I felt very comfortable the whole time and really enjoyed the ride. It also helped that I felt great. I probably could have easily turned around and came back home for a full 100 mile day but I had some family stuff in town so I had to stop. I haven't felt that good on a bike for a while now. I did fuel differently than I have for races and other long rides and maybe that had something to do with it. I plan on trying to get in more long or longer big rides in more often now. I made the trip in 2 hours 21 minutes with an average speed of a little over 21 miles an hour. I think I could do better in the future but I'll take it this year.

Today the plan was to go out on the mountain bike ( finally) and check and see how the local trails were doing. I was pleasantly surprised to find that for the most part the trails were dry with the exception of a few wet spots. So I was out cruising singletrack and loving it and feeling good after yesterdays ride and I noticed my rear tire was going flat. So I stopped to change the tube and I was instantly swarmed by mosquito's. I have never seen anything like this before. They were everywhere. I knew with all the rains that they were bad but this was insane. I quickly changed the tire as fast as I could so I could get moving and away from them. After a little while I noticed that the rear tire was going flat again. I should have checked it better to find out why but the mosquito's were killing me. The problem with this flat was that I had only had one tube and one co2 and I had already used them. It wasn't all the way flat so I just kept moving slowly trying to make it out of the woods. Of course shortly after that my front tire went down and I was left with a bike with 2 flat tires and nothing to change them with and I was about 8 miles from home in the woods getting eaten alive by mosquito's. So I hopped off my bike and jogged the rest of the way out of the park and then made the call to my wife to come get me.

I'm planning on heading out to some of the out of town singletrack coursed over the next couple of days to get more time training on trails with climbs. I think I'm going to go to Branched Oak tomorrow morning and then to Platte River State Park (my favorite course) on Wed early AM.

Now I gotta go get my stuff ready for tomorrow morning and then get some sleep. After I get home from riding my wife and I are taking the kids to the zoo. Should be fun. Later.

Harp