Tuesday, March 15, 2011

A Training Week in Late Winter

  Since the February Bootleg Canyon Race I have tried to step up my training, preparing for the up coming race season.  My approach to training is diverse, which some people call cross training.  I play lacrosse, workout at the gym , dig new trails, and of course ride the bike.

  Lacrosse has started, and I have practices on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  Practice is fairly easy but I use muscles and neurological-paths that would not get used doing anything else.  This takes up two days that I would otherwise be going to the gym.  One time I went to the gym after Lacrosse practice, and it was not so bad.  Now I don't really have specific days when I go to the gym but just go when I get the opportunity.  But really, its been hard to get to much training in due to all the other things going on.





  Back in December Mr. Anderson came to me with a proposal to build a pump track at the school.  I told him that I would like to build one, and so he and my dad started to talk about it through email.  Nothing happened with the pump track for quite some time, until about 3 weeks ago.  We ended up getting approval from the principal and the vice principal.  We began construction without Mr. Anderson because he had surgery on his shoulder  and he was down for the count.  So with a little digging and then a little more and a ton more we finished the track.  It took us all of about a 2 weeks to complete it. 

  After about a week of riding it, we where notified that it was going to be torn down now, because it is a liability.  It is kinda hard to make a case that it is a liability when Mr. Anderson's five year old road it great, and to get going up to any speed you have to be quite the bike rider.  So as usual, it is people that don't have a clue about what a pump track is that decide that it is too dangerous.  My dad tried to fight it buy notifying polititions such as the Mayor, to try to get them on our side.  Sadly though the track was destroyed before we could take action.





     Some of the trails are dry enough to ride most of the time now so I can finally sharpen my skills back up on the bike.  I Street has drained out quick lately so you can ride it even a day after a storm.  Sections of I Street are better now than they were all of last year, but a few spots have not been smoothed out yet so it can get a little moto like on a hard tail.  Someone put a lot of work on both the step down to step up and the I Street line.  Over all I Street has been quite good.