Training Wheels

I rememeber my 5th birthday well. My parents surprised me with my first 26" bike. It was white with blue pads and blue tires I think it was called a Trax 3000. man was I cool, even with my training wheels. I really don't remember when I stopped using them though. My son is now 5 and we bought him an 18" bike. Funny part is that it's white. It has training wheels and that makes him comfortable so I just let him go at his pace. But man can he tear it up on his Razor Scooter tho....you'd think he was born on that thing. I have seen him fly over the front of it and he gets up like it was nothing. I am seriously considering taking him to a skate park and introducing him to hips, halves, fulls, spines and fun boxes. He has a helmet and gloves but I need to get him some more pads or the wife will put the smack down on the idea.

My training is going well. To my surprise I have about 130 trail miles in for the month of April. That's about 70 more miles than this same day last year. The biggest factor in that is my ability to ride further faster. Moving up to Expert forced me into longer races so my training rides needed to be increased in time and distance. Two hours on the trainer on the weekend over the winter was a normal thing. It has paid off because I am already doing 30 mile trail rides with energy to spare. After this weekend's race I plan to increase my milage per ride more to get ready for the 60 Mile trail marathon race at Stony Creek in late June. I'm expecting that to take at least four and half hours to complete so I need to be ready to go the distance. U-Dog and I may do the 6 or 12 hours of Addison as a two person relay team. We need to check our schedules.

I rode the Tree Farm over the weekend for the first time this season. Was great to hit that trail again. There's a couple new log piles but over all it's still the same. A lot of people don't like to ride there because it's a hard place to carry speed due to the many, many , many turns. Chaquita and I like it because it's a great place to train bike handling skills. Speed doesn't set times there. Braking smart, accelerating out of turns, control and overall focus is what sets the curve.

As for the team there hasn't been a whole lot of team action yet this year. Hopefully this weekend at the Bloomer XC we'll see a bigger team turn out. The best races are the ones that we can get the whole team to. Check back Monday the 28th for race results.

Keep you head up and your tires down.

Aryn