Ride Report Clementine

WOW what a great ride! Started out super cold, brr, toes and hands frozen, breath visible and this is on the climb! Then nice tacky buttery singletrack and perfect trail conditions that made you forget all about the cold! The fall trees were pretty and it was so crisp - leaves falling off trees, and lining the trail, bright sunshine alternating with cold shady parts. I'm not sure of the whole trail but i think we did connector trail to foresthill divide to clementine loop back to connector to culvert to confluence. 25 miles, in 3 hours. Woowhee! Regroupings were extremely brief due to the cold weather. A few fun nice technical sections as well that were very fun.

We did have one misfortune, Jrm crashed badly on culvert and sprained the hell out of his neck. He said he misjudged a line, and his front tire hit a rock that was thought he was avoiding. He was going pretty fast and ended up with front wheel stopping and him traveling over the handlebars and landed on his head/neck. At least its not broken. He felt ok and didn't want to go to the ER. I talked to him not long ago and he is hurting but ok.

Anyway thanks everyone for a great ride. I'm not even sure of everyone's names, but George, Joseph, Alex, Jrm, Erich, Dennis, Kevin, and Mark were there. I never did catch/remember the names of the other 2 with us (went down confluence with me?). Did i miss anyone else in the faster group? Thanks Dennis for your guidance on this great ride. The few pics I have i will post tomorrow.

You can say that again! Yeah, great frickin ride apart from the end. Impy is quickly becoming a downhill speed demon. She was already a fast climber. Marla Streb should loose some sleep at night. I had a blast. I was just starting to bonk at the end a bit. I shoulda eaten more during the ride, but rest breaks were brief and devoted to keeping my toes from freezing. My foot was numb up to the arch, which was very abnormal for me. I'm used to frozen toes, but this was keeping me from biking well. I first tried the bag trick, that is cut off the corners of a plastic shopping bag, stick your toes in, and stick them in the shoes. This usually works for me, but for some reason it didn't on this ride. Impy sported me a pair of her chemical based toe warmers which worked well enough to keep my feel in a normal state of cold toes, without being painful. I was about 100 feet behind JRM when he stacked, so I didn't see what happened, but came up to him flat on his back moaning and swearing. His bike was 6 feet away, surprisingly undamaged. After sitting and resting for 10 minutes, we limped back down to the street. I rode behind him on the road back to the cars, just to be sure if something bad happened somebody would be there to help. He was in decent enough shape, so he declined the ER visit. He's gonna be big-time sore on Sunday, I tell you what. Ride stats for me, including the downhill road ride to the cars: Total Distance: 24.06 miles Riding time: 2:55:17 Average Speed: 8.2 MPH Max Speed: 36.5 MPH

The story from the fast group.... Now we start the day with the intention of splitting up into groups but everyone go to the ravine late. There fore we started late. No usually a big deal except after the first part of the climb at the first regrouping Kevin (Ogre's bro) realized that he was going to be late for something so he was in a rush.

So starting from the connector trail we started to boogie. I found out later that Kevin had just upgraded to Cat 3 so he's in good shape and he's a good biking size so he put the hurt to me on the climbs. While my time in the weight room was helping, it was also keeping my legs sore and my legs hurt the whole fricken ride.

Kevin lead, Alex, Mark and I followed. The connector trail and Forest Hill trails are very similar. It's single track through the trees with no real technical sections. It just rolls in and out, up and down with a few climbs mixed in just to make me suffer.

We'd stop and wait for the others just to make sure no one missed a turn but the only long break we took was about half way through the Forest Hill loop where we crossed the road. After a bit Joseph showed up and then shortly after, the rest of the crew followed.

We started on the second half and this time Joseph had joined us. So the 5 of us motored though the rest back down the connector trail and waited at the bottom of the the last climb before culvert downhill. We figured this would be a good place to wait for everyone so Kevin left us at this point and I hope he made to to what he had to do.

The four of us decided to stop pushing so hard and just drop into the granny gear and take a nice easy spin up the last climb before we finished the day's riding. At the top we thought about how far we had ridden and how much fun we had. As we talked, a crowed gathered, from full on high travel suspension bikes, to SS hardtails. Everyone was having a good time that day.

Alex threw on his armor and lowered his seat. I made fun of him for doing so. Shortly after we were flowing down the mountain. It's been a few months since I had been down this trail but it's not nearly as technical as I remembered it. The tunnel came quickly and again I was freaked out by the darkness. I slowed way up until the darkness subsided and I shot out the other end. For the first time I cleaned every section of the trail without hesitation and popped out onto the road.

Alex and I met up at the road and just kept going... He shot for the john pimlott jump and I went around and pulled ahead of him. We picked our way through the rocks, avoiding most of the jumps, passing guys on full downhill bikes and cruising up to the last section and pedaled slowly back to the car.

Ogre mentioned something about hitting some extra trails but we were wasted. All I wanted was something to eat and some clean warm clothes. It was too much fun.

george