I'm not a natural born climber!
Nope, neither Nature nor Nurture favoured me with any skills regarding
climbing. As evidenced by the following...
Linda and I are climbing up a steep pitch that has two sections. The
first one I clean, but I'm barely moving along in granny. Slowly I
recover on the short flat before to the second pitch. Up we go. Shifting
I eventually run out of gears, then balance. Now I'm pushing. Once it
becomes ridable I'm back on the bike and we spin up to the top.
When we get to the top I'm gasping, wheezing and trying to get air. I
turn to look at Linda, and grin. She smiles back at me. She's sucking
wind too!
Then I barfed!
Technically I guess it was "dry heaves", as nothing came up, but it sure
felt like barfing.
Heat, humidity, effort and a lack of ability all conspired against
me...bleah!
We chose an area for our holidays that was rather... well... Hilly!
Really hilly. The trails hadn't seen maintenance for a loooooong time,
so most of our potential rides turned into woodtick infested hikes. One
unmaintained set of XC ski trails actually had dozens of Bee Hives
waiting at the trailhead (we didn't hang around there for long).
What I learned, or rather reinforced, from this holiday is that like it
or not, I am a flat land rider. I have neither the legs nor the lungs
for prolonged climbing.
Other than that I volunteered at a 75mile MTB Enduro Race. I was at the
second check-point, about half-way, and were those riders ever happy to
see our little band of volunteers! As well, Linda and I went to see a
mountain bike race that wasn't too far away from where we were camping.
Lots of mud and loose shale on that course. A fun time was had at both
events.
From a biking point of view the past two weeks were a bit of a let down,
but over all we had a great time doing things we'd been told about, and
finding things of our own to do.
--
- Rog
http://www.wpcusrgrp.org/~rogerbuchanan/index.html
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