At least I Wasn't Last.

I was properly spanked today.   Let there be no doubt, I deserved every punishing blow, every painful cramp, every bruise.  Struggling and bouncing from tree to rock off the back the last hour was my reward for having grown too large for my britches.   Yeah, I have been filling up with piss and vinegar lately.  Once again, Mt Agamenticus purged me of the worst of it.   I have not been this tired from a woods ride in more than a few years.   Four hours out there with probably 3 of them spent in the saddle.  3 hours at Mt A is more like 6 hours on most other trails.  Always in your face, dips, slips and butt puckering obstacles await around every turn.  You go down and it will hurt.

Fifteen riders went out today.  13 of them handed me my ass on a platter.  The last guy probably did too, but I have him convinced he didn't.  False bravado towards the end of a grueling dirt ride can shake the confidence of most new guys.  I am guessing he is still able to walk right now.  I am not.  But he does not know that.  In your face Pumpkin Boy.

Okay so what if I am taking credit for not being the last guy up the last hill to where we parked.  I needed some kind of victory.  I took what I could get.  And now I am bragging about it.  Puffing up my chest telling anyone who is even distantly interested, "At least I wasn't last."

It was gorgeous this morning.  Hurricane Earl breezed by but failed to hurl.  In the vacuum he left, some welcome Canadian air blew in behind him.  On the way to meet up at the bike shop this morning at 6:40 AM or so, I actually put the heat on in the truck.  

I had been hydrating since last evening.  I got plenty of sleep.  I even made it to the shop on time, not on CRUM time.  We left the parking lot to drive to Aggy only a few minutes past our planned departure time.  We were on bikes and screaming down 50/50 hill at 8:30AM.   Everything was in place for one of those special rides.

And it was a special ride.  We ran into Clem, a local rider who knows every rock and root on all 100 miles of trails in the Mt. A/water district acreage.  He took us on the trails not on any map.  Trails so secret, only the hardest core riders in that area know them.    Each trail had a name or sometimes two or three names, but to be honest, I stopped paying much attention after the first one, the Animal Trail.   I know we rode along Folly Pond (image at top courtesy of Water district folks) and we rode some of the Dam to Dam trail.  It was somewhere south of the Dam to Dam trail, I started to lose my mind.  I went on auto pilot and spent the following couple of hours just grinning, drooling and towards the end, whining.    Somewhere about an hour past my physical limit, every muscle still functioning and few that weren't revolted and my body became one big cramp.  My toes curled up inside my shoes, I had cramps in my hands and forearms, My quads were so bolloxed up, I am still walking stiff legged six hours later.

Damn, I had fun.