I'm battered

I did a good job battering myself to a pulp over the weekend. I kicked off the weekend with Friday night's Alpental excursion and a trip to the gym for the first time in weeks. Saturday morning I couldn't move my upper body at all and my legs were hammered from boarding. Didn't stop me from packing up the Kona and hitting the Tapeworm for her maiden voyage. The Kona rocks! It's awesome to have a mountain bike that actually fits!

I rode tapeworm better than I normally do and I attribute it to the bike. We hit the Parasite, then Tapeworm, then took a break and did it all again. My skills were better the second time, but I have a lot of room for improvement. Of course, I had a few nice crashes that left a couple of new bruises and some embedded blackberry thorns.

This morning I cruised to Black Diamond with a teammate to race my first mountain bike race ever. It did not go well! I ended up last by like 8 minutes or something. Wow, that sucks! I had no idea what to expect and the course turned out much more technical than I thought it would be. At 8:30 this morning there was also a nice layer of frost on the ground, which made every root, rock, and corner slick as hell.

The first part of the course contained a rock garden of baby heads. I could not ride over those damn things to save my soul and crashed three times in about 10 feet. On the second lap I did a little better but got stuck on one rock, had my front wheel turned at a 90, and had a split second to think, "Oh shit" before I fell over hard. Lost my chain, killed my knee, but managed to finally get up and finish the race.

So...I suck at mountain biking! But, it's fun as hell. If I batter myself every weekend at Philip Arnold and the Colonnade, I have to get better, right?