2023/02/12 – Endurance loop

Short day. Took Greg and Tom H up around the endurance loop.

The normal group ride was scheduled for Sunday, but the Sat forecast was way better.

I have reasonable footage of me chasing Greg on a slow loop, and Greg recorded a 9:19 lap, with me right on his arse, which seems strangely fast. The Dread Pirate Roberts course change cut off some significant distance, but it replaced a fast long chunk with a shorter slow chunk. I’d prefer the guys were comparing multi-lap times, but having the track being ridden is a good thing.

2022/01/23 – Oliphant – trail stuff

Wanted to make a Sea Level trail down below the enduro loop. (There’s an A loop, a B loop, and this was supposed to be C level… but it’s rough ground and version zero is too tight.) This really wiped me out. 3 hours of throwing logs revealed I’ve been spending too much time writing code for the TBR system and not enough pushups etc.

Oh, and there was a bit of snow the day before, which was melting. Got soaked before I got to the riding area. Did one run of the enduro loop. Abysmally slow… tried the rock face on cliffs of insanity and didn’t make it… fortunately didn’t slide down backwards under the bike either.

2023/01/08 – Muir etc. Technical ride with Rob, Chris …

Place holder for now… I have a few pix, should be lots of video. We rode up from EM400 (?) to Tugwell spur and then up to one of the Muir lookouts. Even with the new “soft” clutch (Rekluse removed), my clutch hand was tired. No surprise, not much riding recently.

Colin and Alex headed back early. The rest of us (Rob T, Chris C, Colin B, Greg S!) went up Muir 10000 hoping to make it through to Kirby, but instead hitting a newish clearcut and coming out on Muir 7000 and then bee-lining it back to the cars/trailers/vans.

Thanks to Rob T for another car-ride/share/etc.

I got a free “down hill” ride on a log. I’m sure anyone with safety sense would wonder “WTF were you thinking”. And I guess the answer would be “I wasn’t sure we could move it, or move it far enough”. I would argue that the fact I couldn’t see the end of the log explains some of my lack of foresight.

2022/11/27 – Did not meet my own expectations – (My lap at the suffering).

Two weeks ago I was completely psyched for the Bonzai Braapline — but the clutch trouble I’d had on the previous ride, manifested before the start. Turned out to be a blown o-ring on the clutch slave piston (*) — e.g. I didn’t get to start. Major disappointment.

The Suffering offered a Bronze class that was my hope for redemption. No such luck — the event was fine, but I failed to meet my own expectations.

Continue reading “2022/11/27 – Did not meet my own expectations – (My lap at the suffering).”

2022/10/28 – Oliphant with James, re-opened A loop

more “notes to self”. Butt just above the seat can allow you to put weight on the rear wheel (butt down) quickly, without having to do the pull on handle bars thing. Ride your own race. James talks about the battle of the egos… control your own ego, don’t fight everyone else’s. Just having Jammer follow me around was enough to push me past my pace, or otherwise stop me from finding my own flow.

Did some work clearing work on the A loop. Jammer cleared higher than I did … I haven’t been riding the forest part of that standing.

This was a friday, sunday forecast is for rain … unfortunately I missed the Sat ride with Rob, DRC folks and Taylor… I did spend some quality time with the puppy though (first off-leash session).

2022/10/18 – Oliphant

Quick run up to Oliphant, mostly to buy a used rear tire in Shawnigan, but I did some loop maintenance, and then ran three laps in just over 33 minutes (less if you credit me the seconds to stop and clear some logs). I thought I was taking it easy, but both my body and the stopwatch say I was NOT.