Sunday, November 30, 2008

Turkey Burn III Ride Report


Well, the Turkey Burn is in the bag after a successful ride event Saturday. There were 10 guys in total that showed up for some scrambling around on some frozen, leaf strewn trails. Fun was had. No fouls were committed or suffered. Thanks to Jeremy Bidwell and Casey Dean for all the efforts throughout 2008 and for this little get together. It was a lot of fun for sure!

It all started for me when I loaded up the car and met my co-worker Craig for the trip north to the trails at 7:30am. It was cold! Probably in the teens when we got there with little to no wind, fortunately. I was surprised to see a couple of guys from out of town that showed up. They had heard about the ride and came over since they were back for Thanksgiving. Cool!

We all lined up after the service road climb to get into the single track. I took last in line, since I had no idea if my body would co-operate with me or not at this point. Plus, I was on a single speed with a lot of very fit younger riders all around me. I didn't want to hold them up if they wanted to go fast!

Well, turns out that they did want to run at a fairly spirited pace. When the trail started climbing, I let them go on. Captain Bob was kind enough to hang back with me for awhile, but then he went on ahead too. I turned out to be able to only go at a "casual" pace but I was working pretty hard to do it. If the trail went up, my legs just didn't have anything for it, and in fact, they felt sore and painful the entire ride. Oh well!

I completed one big loop with the guys and headed back to the cars with Captain Bob and another young man, (Sorry! I can't recall your name!) so Captain could switch bikes and the other guy had to leave. We ended up having MTBidwell come along too. The rest of the crew went out for another shorter loop.

Back at the cars, we noticed that one of the other riders, a local- Tom K- had a flat tire on his pickem-up truck. So we called Casey D and let him know to tell him about it. Not long after, Tom K was back, and was getting his truck jacked up. A couple of the other guys showed up that were out riding by this time, and some checked out to go home. I suppose this all took about a half an hour, at least.

I had thoughts of packing it in, but I needed to get some photos, so I jetted off for "The Pines" and took some shots. I decided to go ahead an make another loop of it. Legs felt better, but still not great. At least I didn't feel as sluggish now and I had a little snap on the climbs. Still no where as good as it could be.

Once back at the car, I could see that Captain, Jeremy, and Craig from the shop all had gone out again for one last loop. The last of the Turkey Burners for '08. I loaded up and headed home. I probably got an hour and a half of riding in. Not bad, but it took a toll on me! Once I got home and changed, I ate, and then fell asleep for about two hours. Then I awoke to a very stiff, painful body. Wow! I haven't hurt that bad in a long time.

In typical Turkey Burn fashion, the ride marked the last of the "good" weather to ride in, since it snowed last night! Guess I will be taking it easy anyway to see if maybe I just need to rest a bit. Hopefully a short break will allow me to recover from this what ever it is" that is going on with me. Anyway, thanks to all that came out yesterday. It was still a great time for me, regardless of my condition.

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