Frederick Mini Epic - 7/26/08

32 miles of fine Frederick trails in 8 hours.

We, Aaron, Chris, Dan, Denis, Rob, and I, started off Hamburg going south, followed the blue, through the rock garden and straight down to the Valley of Death. When we climbed up to Gambrill, Denis insisted following the blue to the Gambrill lower lot. So, again blue we went. We suffered (except for Rob and Denis), we cursed, we even plotted some evil plan to attack them when regroup. We avoided the steep climb off the lower lot, went cross the road instead. The rest of Gambrill was done pretty much like we always do. Lawn mower was fun as usual. First -timer Dan really enjoyed it. Aaron cleaned the rock garden on his full rigid SS, crazy!

Dan peeled off after getting back to the Hamburg lot. The rest of us stuffed our stomach with Gatorade, Banana, bloks, gu, PBJ, and pressed on north bound. The rocky descent gave spring-less Aaron some hard time, at one point, he had a cramp in his left arm... Anyway, after the rocky Little Canaan and a couple nasty climbs, we found ourselves playing at the lollipop and golf ball trails. I'm not sure who cleaned what because I was way behind and couldn't see. It was already past 2pm at that point, so we decided to skip the Salamander. We flew downhill, crossed Fishing Creek and headed towards Supersweet. Chris' slime-filled rear tire finally gave out - that was the only mechanical on the ride, not bad. At the bottom of the Supersweet, Chris whipped out his water-filter again and thanked Brizn for testing it out the first time :). I overheard Denis cleaned the first big rock drop leading to the sweet candy - good job!

We came back to the 4-way at Thurmon overlook via upper ridge trail. We did the Brizn's nightmare climb as promised. I felt tired at that point, but Denis was just finally warmed up :). A couple guys on the ride experienced for the first time the exhilaration of flying down Death March - as a matter of fact, Rob was so excited he missed the left turn onto the Death March Alt :). The rest of the ride was just a plain story of going back to the cars.

MoCo Epic

Denis and I did the MoCo Epic ride today, touring around five MoCo parks. My gps logged 44.66 miles, 5,000 ft elevation gain, riding time 4:19:28 and total time 6:14:08. Denis should have ~12miles longer than that since he started from his residence. I went over the handlebar 5 minutes into the ride, on a 3" log (yes, three inches) and of course was laughed at by Denis. We added the Little Bennett figure 8 into the loop - it was actually really fun to do it during the day time, we should make it standard for the MoCo epic.

Denis stopped numerous times to exercise his arm muscles with his midget hand pump :P. He also bumped into an angry hiker XD. I, on the other hand, met a couple fellow Texans and had a nice small talk.

GPS trace.

Weekly Shed Ride 7/9/08

It rained a little before the ride. I had a lot "fun" sliding left and right on rocks. We were pushing 18 miles this week. I believe we will be hitting the 20 miles mark pretty soon.

"A Heck of A Ride"

... is a direct quote from Denis, who just completed his epic ride in France, totaling 750 miles and 100,000 feet climbing in 16 days. Details here.

Good job!

Weekly Shed Ride

We rode a couple loops in Hamburg south and a lollipop (or streetlight?) in the north, 16 miles in a little under 3 hours. Mark seemed to be going strong despite an 80-mile road ride he did on the previous day.

Image source: Wheelbase