Overdoing It A Bit

Mountain Bike [2]
Originally uploaded by Lost Albatross.

Great weekend, but I'm paying for it now. Ouchie.

Got in rides on both Monday and Wednesday, with trips to the gym on Tuesday and Thursday (starting free weights, hooray!). Friday evening, right after work, I shot down ye olde under construction Beltline (which I normally try to avoid at all costs but this was a special occassion) and made it to the days' training rides' starting point at Olbrich park in good time. I was met by four other very nice ladies, none of whom were our ride leaders. My fella even showed up to ride along, but we continued to wait for the ride leaders to show. For whatever reason (hopefully nothing painful), no one ever showed, so we decided to take the initiative and do the ride ourselves.

Luckily, I still had a route map from the last Olbrich ride I'd been on, so we set out fairly confident that we'd manage to find our way back safely. Which we did. Which was good. We took Buckeye all the way out east to where it turns into County AB, then turned north onto County MN, then turned again onto Vilas Road, the latter being one of the most beautiful rides around the city I've ever been on. It's all rolling hills, farmland, old red barns and spots of forest. Along the route there were two separate places that kept drawf horses, which were interesting to see (and adorable, if a little strange).

We made it back to our starting point by way of Sprecher and then Milwaukee, getting a few friendly waves and beeps from people along the way (I wonder what it is about a group of non-competitive bikers wearing red that makes us stand out as ACT riders?).

Miles ridden: approximately 20

On Sunday I decided to do a little bit of cross training and joined in on a pick-up game of ultimate down at Reynolds Park. Despite me being an idiot and forgetting to put on sunscreen (ultimate farmer tan!) and despite me being generally out of shape when it comes to sprinting, I managed to hold my own and have a good time.

Monday morning, my fella and I drove out to Blue Mounds State Park for a little bit more cross training via mountain biking. See, we found this really nice hardtail freeride bike over this winter for a really, insanely marked down price and I had to have it. Thing is, I haven't been able to break it in until this ride, so it was long overdue. The bike handled itself marvellously, taking the big rocks and roots without a second though. Me, on the other hand, well I did better than I thought but still managed to clock myself in the crotch (disc breaks, I'm lookin' at you!) a few too many times. Though, to be fair, one time is one time too many. Yikes.

Miles ridden: didn't keep track, so I'll have to go back and check the maps of the trails.

Blue Mounds State Park is gorgeous, by the way, if you're looking for a good place to hike, camp or bike (I imagine it's good for skiing in the winter, too). The MtB trails are well-marked and provide something for both beginners (that'd be me) and intermediate/advanced bikers alike. The trails we took were well-maintained and provided just enough challenge to be fun without totally kicking our asses. Except for the one time where we accidentally got onto an intermediate trail...eesh.

That brings us up to today, when my legs feel like absolute rubbish and seem to be threatening a mutiny. I think I may have pushed a little harder than I should have, but hopefully I'll be relatively right as rain in time to do a couple of rides this week. In the meantime, I think there's a hot bath in my near future....