Shenanigans

The first weekend of "base" training began on Saturday as I went to George Washington National Forest in VA to ride parts of the Shenandoah 100 course with Matt and Aaron. We packed all our gear into my Subaru and left Ship Friday night and camped out at the trailhead. It was a perfect night for camping... in the 40's and mostly dry. Everything was quiet until I got a wakeup call at 3 a.m. with Aaron in a panic. He says that he heard an animal screaming somewhat like screeching tires on pavement. Matt and I tell him it's deer snorting and go back to bed. 5 a.m. I am awake and scared shitless from a similar type of noise.... this was no deer. It sounded like a velociraptor or something of the sorts and my mind was out of reasonable possibilities before resorting to fictitious beasts. I wake up Aaron and tell him what I heard. Matt was also awake from the noise and our fear caused us to start up the camp fire again. We eventually got some good sleep and our riding comenced around 11 a.m. Saturday morning.

Just as we were about to take off, another car strolled in the parking lot with a bike atop the roof. Out came a rider, who asked to tail along. Without hesitation, we accepted, but didn't expect our new friend to last too long. We couldn't have been any more wrong as the four of us took on the first 30 miles of the course without any hold ups.

Following the ride, we packed up our stuff and headed to Starbucks to get directions to go to a new (to us) unridden trail in WV. When we arrived to this new location on Saturday night, we found all of the parks to be closed for the winter... how convenient. Well it started to rain anyway, so the three of us slept very uncomfortably in the car seats. It was still raining in the morning, so we went to eat breakfast at some joint down tha holler (down in the hollow). After breakfast, the rain cleared, so we decided to give it a go. The trail was 25 miles and would be an out and back for a total of 50. It started off with a big climb and near the top it started to become more and more of a hike a bike. But once at top, the sweet vistas made the hike much worth while. We continued to hike and ride for about 2.5 hours before turning around to make it back before nightfall. We took another option on the way down, which consisted of a sweet rocky, rooty, steep downhill that was 100% ridable and 100% fun. Concluding the ride, we lit a fire in the parking lot and cooked veggie burgers and dogs before jetting home in the night.

What a great way to start this years training.