Great ride at Renaissance

I will be going to Cancum on Friday with Sakshi and a couple friends of ours for about a week, but don’t worry I have some blog posts prepared that Mark Privette of guest posting fame is being kind enough to post for me while I’m away.  He may even have a guest post of his own depending on if he feels up for it.  This does mean that I won’t be pasting links on Facebook, so you’ll just have to check my blog periodically to see if there’s a new post.

Yesterday morning before going to work I went for a mountain bike ride at Renaissance Park.  I had about an hour and a half and wanted to work on my handling at race pace and being able to maximize my speed from the my pedaling effort:  my fitness has always been better than my handling and as a result I frequently pedal hard in places where I will have to brake shortly.  For those familiar with Renaissance I rode the loop at the far end of the parking lot, the side of the park that has the short track loop.

 After a 15 minute warm-up I started pushing my pace trying to be really smooth and fast through the corners and on the long straights and hills really trying to pedal hard, but being careful not to waste energy pedaling hard in places where I would have to brake right away.  My first lap of that section including relatively easy pedaling back to the car was about twelve and a half minutes.  I felt really good riding and knew that I had just ridden really fast and felt really good handling the bike.  I wasn’t sure how long I would be able to continue at that pace.  I continued and did five more laps and was able to maintain almost the same pace (all of my laps were between 12:30-12:50) though the end of the ride which I was ecstatic about.  Even more than the pace I was able to maintain I was so happy with how I felt handling my Epic Evo 29er, which worked AWESOME.  I was able to go much faster through corners and obstacles than I was able to last summer, and I was able to do this without feeling like I was going faster than I was capable of.  This isn’t to say I rode perfectly, but most of my turns were at least good and very few were poor or bad.  It was a great feeling to be more comfortable mountain biking that I ever have and to feel faster during a training ride than I ever have; really has me excited about mountain bike riding and mountain bike racing.