I've set a new World Record! I know, I can't believe it either. On Sunday, Dec 14th I rode 40 miles at Boyette. "How is this a world record?", you might ask. Well, You're in luck. I'm going to tell you. Never before in the history of the world have I ridden 40 miles, so that makes it a world record. Isn't that great?!? Now if you'll excuse me I have the Guinness Book of world Records on the phone for verification and then I'm due at the studio for a photo shoot.
All kidding aside, I really did ride 40 miles at Boyette on Sunday. I hadn't been able to ride my bike for almost 4 weeks due to a frame failure. After getting the new frame Friday afternoon I headed out for a 10 mile ride with Luis. I hadn't had time to "dial in" the bike yet so Luis had quite a few suggestions for me including the seat fore/aft adjustment and fork adjustments.
Putting all the adjustments off until late Saturday night I headed out to the garage at about 11:00pm. I slid the seat back a bit, set the sag according to FOX's suggestions, adjusted my specialized ergonomic grips, and swapped the cleats on my shoes to get more float.
We hit the trails at 8:00am Sunday morning. Everything was moving along smoothly until I came up to a sharp turn and tried clipping out. Apparently the difficulty required to clip out increases when the cleats are swapped to provide more float. Who knew? Needless to say I didn't get clipped out soon enough. This mistake resulted in my left cheek giving the ground a big ol smooch.
About 10 miles into the ride my spokes picked up a stick. I glanced down for a split second to check it out. The instant I raised my head my left shoulder slammed into the remains of a fallen yet trimmed tree. This instantaneously thew me to the ground. My arms went sliding into a palmetto bush, my upper right leg met a broken branch, and my shin rode up some part of the bike (Not sure what part). This was quite a painful and bloody experience (see slide show for the blood). Luckily nothing too serious happened. I hopped back on the bike, caught up with everyone else and continued the ride.
We rode quite a bit of the quadrants and unfortunately during the longest section I started having blood sugar issues. I was right on Wayne's tire and I didn't want to loose the group. At the same time I knew I wasn't going to make it to the end of the section without eating anything. I decided I was going to attempt to retrieve the Cliff bar that was in the rear pocket of my Jersey. After several attempts and a few close calls I managed to get it. I took a few bites and things started to come back into focus again. Crisis averted!
The rest of the ride went without incident. I even had a pleasant surprise waiting for me up our return to the parking lot...BEER.
A Few Notes:
- I need to figure out how to get food in front of me and readily available. I can't afford blood sugar issues on the trail.
- I had a lot of chafing from my "form fitting" shorts. Get some chamois butter.
- Even with the ergonomic grips my hands were still going numb. Ask around and see what others are doing for this.
