Is This A Logo??

Is This A Logo??

Tuesday 19 June 2012

A Mountain Bike Mix – What a Weekend!


Between work and weather last week saw some spotty mountain bike activity.  In fact one day had me doing HIIT on the roadbike.  While most athletes hate HIIT, I think it’s great!!  First, I like to go fast and HIIT give you the opportunity to go as fast as you can.  Second, I like to know that my efforts are producing positive results…and with HIIT if you are giving full effort you know you are getting results; you can feel it!!  (Sometimes for days!)  Also ended up with a couple of days of hill repeats on the mountain bike (which are still a type of HIIT); again great workouts!



However, the real fun was on the weekend.  Chris, a mountain bike customer of Bicycleworks, invited a group of guys out to his cottage near Haliburton for a weekend of mountain biking and I was fortunate enough to be included on his list.  I also managed to get NewfieSteve included.  First, Chris’ cottage is an abode away from home to dream about; nicer than my house and right on the water of a crystal clear lake in cottage country. 

Second, Chris’ brother, Darren is a chef (who mountain bikes…not while cooking), and he took care of food and cooking…and what awesome meals!!  In fact I am sure that there were more calories in than calories burnt over the weekend.
Finally was the riding.  Participants arrived at the cottage on Friday (10 in total), some sitting around a campfire was done, and after eating too much of Darren’s cooking for dinner, woke up Saturday morning to eat too much of Darren’s cooking for breakfast.  Then we headed out to Haliburton Forest.  The trails here were great!!  Technical rocky, rooty twisty climbs and descents…single track and double track.  All among the Canadian shield and forest for over 3 hours.  The weather was near 30 degrees…so a warm one!!  The ride finished off with a 5 – 10 km (can’t remember exactly how much) blast down gravel road, to totally finish off the legs and get us back to the vehicles.  Then back to the cottage for a swim to cool off, and hot tub to warm up (repeated as necessary).  Some time was also spent trying to get Chris’ dock straight, and Tim was brave enough to try wakeboarding, and was pretty darn good at it for a first timer!!  Oh and Tim also made an attempt at some type of fishing…FAIL!  We then ate too much of Darren’s cooking (do you see a trend here??) for dinner, especially considering a couple of guys left early for other obligations (meaning extra food).  (Also, no consumption of adult beverages to report here!!)
Sunday, woke up to (you guessed it)…too much breakfast.  Then packed up and drove off to Buckwallow to ride.  Very fun, very technical Canadian Shield rocky trails.  Great workout, up and down rock faces, and twisty singletrack.  Over 2.5 hours in total!!  NewfieSteve was totally in his element (as were Tim and Chris) on these technical trails…all kicking my sorry arse all over the place!!  Luckily for me, the race circuit does not require these types of technical riding skills.  Still, I would really like to get better at this stuff.
So over 6 hours of hugely fun mountain biking on the weekend…thanks to Chris and Darren!!
Now the 24 hours of Summer Solstice coming up this weekend ahead!!

No comments:

Post a Comment