scaqabout: Time Trial and Two Tandems

Sunday gave us a wonderful day of bicycling. It began with chilly temps not too far above freezing, but there was enough sunshine to make it feel great. I started the day's cycling by racing in a time trial at one of the local trails. It was a smallish event with about 80 riders on very twisty, tight, forested course, with plenty of roots, rocks, and narrow trees to make it challenging. There were some sections of new trail through mostly open fields, too, presenting a different suite of strength-sapping challenges.

For this time trial, we started one at a time with a 30 second delay between riders. It worked well. With the twistiest most technical section right at the beginning, there was plenty of space between riders. Although my race number was 9, I was the fourth or maybe fifth rider out of the start box. The ride started with a good climb and then some short ups and downs. Initially my legs felt stiff and tired. I feared my time spent on the dirt jumps the day before had taken too much toll on my leg muscles, but after half a mile or so, my muscles warmed and felt better. I passed one rider, also named "Shaun," within the first mile, and at the same time another rider, Steve, passed both of us. These guys both rode the Triple Trail event with me a couple weekends previously. That was last close-quarters riding or passing I saw until one speedy rider shot past me 11 miles later, about 100 meters from the finish line. I was almost lonely out on the course.

It was a fun ride on mostly familiar trail, although run in reverse in some sections. The tight and twisty trail and all the roots and rocks were perfect terrain for my Santa Cruz Nickel. The Nickel is more a "trail" bike and less a "race" bike for a variety of reasons, but it's marketed as a great do-it-all machine and I find that marketing accurate. This is good since I don't have the means or space to have a collection of multiple mountain bikes. I'll save the technical discussion of why I love the Nickel for another time. Given the relatively small amount of hard-packed trail relative to softer dirt and grass, both of which were a little slick, I probably would have felt more confident on a set of fatter and more aggressively knobbed tires, but my Maxxis Crossmarks did the job. I have enough sets of tires on the tire rack to experiment, but I didn't think to try something different. We do have an overstuffed bicycle tire rack. See the mud and sand packed into those tires? Thanks to DeadTreeRun for posting photos of the event.

I was happy enough with my performance. I finished the 11 miles or so in a little over 57 minutes. The fastest rider was one of the high school team riders who finished it in 48 minutes. A few riders finished in the 51 minute range. My perspective: nobody my age or older did it faster than me. Here's a link, at the moment, to the results: Click here. I forgot to wear Cindy's GPS watch, so I can't provide a link to my ride, but one of the other riders has posted a link to his: See it here.

After the ride, I hung around with some of the other guys from the Mid-State Mountain Biking Association (MMMBA), which is now an independent IMBA chapter. It's always fun to hear everyone review their ride and watch the other riders rolling across the finish. It's also a good time to check out other bikes and look at battle scars, too. One of the guys had lost control while cornering on roots and run straight into a tree, bending his fork. He finished the race in good time, but his bike wasn't steering very well after that. He'd been thinking about getting a new bike anyway. I didn't hang around talking too long because I was anxious to get back home and load up the tandems for the second half of the bicycling day.

I grabbed some sandwiches on the way home so we could eat a quick bite of lunch, swap the Nickel for the Fandango and Cannondale tandems, and make the 45 minute drive to the Island Lake trail head. Island Lake is another one of Michigan's State Recreation Areas that has a some good bicycle trails. Who would have thought we'd run into another couple on a black Fandango tandem? Not me, but we did. Maybe they were not actually a couple, since the stoker was the captain's friend's girlfriend, but whatever. We had a nice chat about tandem mountain bikes before hitting the trail. We'll be seeing the captain at the Iceman Cometh, but he'll racing with his brother on the Fandango. Actually, they'll probably be going much faster than us, so I suppose we won't see them. Once we were on the Island Lake Trail we leap-frogged with that tandem team and the other person riding with them for several miles. They must have been taking it easy.

The trails at Island Lake are generally smooth and fast. They are very well used, too, as was evident from the huge parking lot at the trailhead and the 50 or so other cyclists coming or going. The trail surface was firmly packed sand, slightly damp from recent rain. There were frequent holes where drainage had created a significant divot in the trail, the sort of obstruction one might easily wheelie or hop over on a single, but requiring a rapid deceleration on a hard-tail tandem to avoid stoker-launching. Despite the occasional hole and a few eroded climbs, the trails seem to be holding up well to heavy use.

We had a really nice ride at Island Lake. The sun was shining and the temperature was, I think, in the low 60s F. The trails were swoopy and fast, the bikes were working well, nobody was too hungry or cold or tired, and I don't think any one of us could find anything to complain about.