56 Miles of Broken Bike

I recently participated in my first endurance mountain biking event, the Naked Indian Ride, held on Jan, 3rd. Also known as the NK, the ride led us through some of the most beautiful central Florida country I've ever seen. The terrain ranged from sidewalks to paved trails, single track to rail road beds, and packed dirt roads to sandy power line roads. This ride truly had something for everyone. I'm not going to give a detailed description of the route, mostly because it was a blur to me. I spent most of the time trying not to get drooped or, when I did get dropped, trying not to loose sight of the group. You can see the route here.

I got the chance to ride with a couple of local mountain biking celebrities like Karlos A Rodriguez Bernart (The Naked Indian himself) and Harvey Minton, just to name a few. Check out the pictures below if you don't believe me. I of course spent most of the ride looking at their backs but it was still pretty cool to ride with them. My computer calculated a total distance of 56.3 miles. That's 16.3 miles farther than I'd ever ridden before. I figure my average speed was probably around 13-14 mph. The average speed is due mostly to the paved portions of the route where we were reaching 20 + mph.

I started the ride with a small crack in my frame. About 32 miles into the ride we stopped for lunch. I got every one's opinion on whether or not they thought I should continue riding. The consensus was about 50 - 50. So...I decided to finish the ride and deal with the consequences if the seat tube broke off. You can read more about the frame here.

Once the ride was finished we had all enjoyed some good food, great beer, and great conversation. A great time was had by all and I will definitely be riding the NK again next year.



Things I learned at the NK:

• Karlos is f'ing crazy!
• Everyone that rode was way cool!
• Terodactlys still exist.
  
• Horror movie like small cult towns do exist.
  
• Hammer Gells maintain my blood sugar levels much better than originally thought.
• I'm still VERY weak on my bike!
• I need to learn to stick to my own pace. (This ride was a bit different due to the route. I didn't want to get lost)
  
• I need to drop some weight from my pack.
• I need to ride more!
  

Click here to see all of my event results.