MTB Mayhem and the SWAT team

It's been a busy couple days.

Monday night, Mike and I went to the Velo Club Mt Bike ride in Rockport Park. I had an off night. The decision was made to work on some of the technical aspects of the trails, in particular hill climbing and some of the single track stuff. I fell down a lot. Several of them really hurt. I became convinced the Schlegels were trying to kill me. We ran through spots in the park named FUBAR, the figure 8, the roller coaster, and broken pinky. Broken pinky was especially heinous. It is a gimongous steep hill covered in loose gravel. I pretty much spun out midway up and fell off my bike onto to my elbow.

I struggled with:
- my clipless pedals. The shoes for my road bike and my MTB have different style clips. I could not get clipped in a lot of the night, kept using the wrong motion to clip, pushing forward instead of stepping down.

- my emotions. The more frustrated I got with the ride, the stupider I rode. I had trouble with shifting sensibly and just did some stupid crap for no reason except sheer frustration.

- my fears. The more I had clipping problems, the more I timid I rode. Because I rode scared, I kept riding into trees. Or flipping myself off my bike.

- my directional orientation. We rode the trails backwards from what we have done the last two times. Totally threw me off and just felt wrong. I think this led to my first (of many) falls off my bike where I slid backwards down a hill and took out a tree. The poor thing never saw it coming, but the scrapes down my back where I slid down the bark as I laid that sucker out will last me for a while - they are pretty raw.

- My balance. I fell off my bike a lot. Sometimes for no real reason at all. I felt like a big giant ass.

- my stupid bike. Did I mention I really hate her this week? I do. Just as I reached the peak of my pissiness, I was pedaling uphill and the chain broke. I let out a little whoop. "YES! I CAN'T RIDE ANYMORE TONIGHT! WOO HOO!!!" Unfortunately, Bob whipped out his fixy thing and fixed up the chain. I rode some more, then as we were fixing to leave the park it broke again. He fixed it again and we went home. I hate my stupid frigging bike this week. I'm sure it will pass, but I blame her for this ride. Lord knows, it's not MY fault..... :-)

Tuesday was our first Tri-out (like a work out tripled). We started in Rockport Park at the pool. We swam some laps. I swam/walked beside Mike trying to help until he got pissy and got out of the pool to pout. Then I swam some laps of my own and got out myself. I no longer want to help coach him since I just get the brunt of his frustration with it. I plan to call around for a coach for him, letting someone else get bitched at would be well worth it for me.

The bike was an easy 20 down Afton Road and back. I cannot fathom why they ride that busy road with glass all over the shoulder when there are tons of virtually empty country roads branching off it everywhere, but whatever -it was not my party so we went with it. Not knowing what to expect from this group, we hung towards the back at first, then took off and hammered it a little harder on the way back in, getting ahead of a big chunk of the group. We skipped the run, mostly because we didn't bring our shoes. Maybe next time. It seems like a nice group, very helpful and offered some good advice so far. We'll keep going for a while and see where this goes. The seem to keep a good pace for us, which is what I was most concerned about.