Durango – 7.07.08

Spent the morning cleaning up the race bike from last Friday’s race and finally got out for my ride at around 1:30. Headed up Dry Fork Trail to the Colorado Trail for about 1,500 feet of climbing. About 30 minutes into the ride it started to sprinkle, just enough to make the foliage on the sides of the trail wet. The dirt was still pretty powdery, so no worries. Hit the Colorado Trail and started the descent into Durango. Stopped at Gudys Rest for a short breather, enjoyed the view for a few minutes, then jumped back on the bike for the sweet switchback descent into Durango. The light rain continued throughout the ride, but it never turned the tread into mud. It’s pretty hard to describe the sensation that one feels when flying down a trail out here, in the big ring, probably going somewhere around 20-30 mph, carving corners, swerving around trees and rocks, the slightest hump in the trail gently lifts you off the ground with a landing so subtle that you barely notice it. You get into this groove and life is amazingly good…


If you're riding your mountain bike and you happen upon this sign, you know that you're about to have an amazing ride



What can I say about this?



Gudy's Rest



The view from Gudy's. My buddies from Milwaukee would call this a 'schpleeba moment'.


Made it into Durango and parts of the streets were pretty wet from the rain. Stopped by Miles house to see if I could coheres Jesse or Miles into some off road goodness. Jesse took the bait and we headed over to the Telegraph Trails where he proceeded to administer a little pain into my legs. I could tell throughout the ride that I was still smarting a little from the race and yesterdays ride and hadn’t taken the time to properly recover. My days here are numbered, I’m here to ride, so I’m gonna ride, I’ll do an easy ride tomorrow… maybe.
As we were riding the South Rim trail, the light sprinkles turned to a light steady rain and the top surface of the dirt started to turn to a sandy mud. It stuck to the tires in such a way that it looked like I was riding a Surly Pugsly. Nothing really stuck to the frame, I kinda like this type of mud! The rain only lasted about 10 minutes, the sun came back out and the trails were back to their powdery consistency within a few minutes.
We rode down this short, gnarly descent called Anasazi Descent, it wasn’t nearly as crazy as it usually is. Not as many big rocks to dodge. About halfway down, there was some dude standing on the side of the trail, he didn’t look like the type that you might expect to see on this type of trail. I didn’t think much of it and kept going. At the bottom of the descent we stopped because Jesse’s back tire had a slow leak. As were standing there, a guy rode by us, talking on a two way radio. He was riding a tricked out looking S-Works, I quickly realized that it was Ned Overend. For those of you that are not in the know, Ned was the first mountain biking world champion back in 1990. The guy is 52 and still places in the top ten overall for the mtb national championships… yes, he’s still the man and the one mountain biker that inspires me the most. I said ‘Hey, it’s Ned’, he looked at me, smiled and said that he couldn’t stick around to chat because he was looking for an injured rider. Shortly after he split, a bunch of emergency rescue guys came running up the trail. I told them that we saw some guy standing about midway down the Anasazi. Maybe the guy was riding with a buddy, and his buddy to a ‘small detour’ down the side of the cliff. Not sure, whatever happened, I hope the person is OK.
After the ride, I headed back to the cabin, cleaned up and went over to Miles pad to score some grub. Grilled chicken, chips with homemade black bean salsa, salad, bread, Häagen-Dazs ice cream and a bottle of La Crème…