Ouch

That's kinda how my knee and shoulder feel right now after last night.

Last night I thought it would be a good idea to work on my night riding skills so I geared up and rode on down to Memorial Park. The ride down was good and the temperature was nice. The night was clear and I thought it was a great night for riding. The singletrack was good and I was feeling good until about 2 miles into the ride when I clipped a tree with my handlebars and bit it bad. Apparently when I clipped the tree my front wheel must have been off the ground and when I landed it must have been almost sideways. I heard the bead on the tire break as I was sailing over the handle bars and then the bike landed on top of me. I'm sure the crash was pretty awesome to watch. The I got up and realized I bent the wheel pretty good:

I picked myself up and walked my poor bike out to the entrance to Memorial Park and waited until my friend Josh arrived to pick me up. On my walk out I noticed my leg was a little sore and then I felt the large bump on my knee, from the handlebars? It was pretty sore by the time I got home so I just chilled and hung out with Josh for a bit.

This morning the knee was pretty sore but it feels considerably better now. The shoulder feels alright too. The wheel should be ok, the hub and spokes are all intact so hopefully I only need to replace the rim. Maybe a couple days off would be good too . . .

I had a great time

last weekend going up to visit Lauren after a good ride on Saturday morning. The ride was definitely good, I hadn't been to sure about how the power training was working but I set five new personal bests and still felt pretty good after the ride. Then I headed up to College Station to hit up Spoons, er I mean Lauren! Lauren was studying up for some tests she has this week. Then we headed out to her professor's house for some bitchin' fajitas and sweet tea. This was only after the Longhorns sucked it up against UCLA.

Sunday I travelled down to Rocky Hill to ride with Dave and Joshua. Joshua helped to get me started mountain biking and training and Dave is a crazy randonneur. Definitely some good and fast riding. The riding was good prep for the upcoming 24-hour race out there on the 23rd and 24th of October, I love that race. On the way home I found out that the Kolache place no serves some great bacon cheeseburgers. Apparently I dropped an onion in my car though because it smelled richly of cheeseburger Monday morning.

I'm not sure I approve of the earlier and earlier nights, makes for some interesting riding. Fun night mountain biking though.

Since then

then being Camp Eagle, I have been pretty busy. Work has been busy as I have been given more responsibility, I suppose that's a good thing. Outside of work has been pretty busy too. Two weekends ago I went up to Lauren's and hung out with her. I did some Paydirt, volunteer trail work for the Spring TMBRA series, and then went riding. I thought it would be good to ride the trail since there is a duathlon up there in a couple weeks that I am tentatively committed to. The ride was good until I got to the back part of the loop where I discovered my cleat was loose and I couldn't get my multi-tool into the screws. I kept riding and once I got into the wooded area I noticed a disgusting high density of spider webs spanning the trail. Not only were there webs but there were bunches of spiders too, including crab-looking spiders and orb spiders. Orb spiders eat finches, see below:



Just the sight of the spiders brought me back to an encounter I had another big spider, banana spider, during a past climbing trip, see below:

I was quite disturbed by the spiders everywhere to the point I crashed because I didn't want to go through the huge web engulfing the entire trail with a big spider in the middle. It was at that point that I got onto the open trail and avoided the uncleared single track for the rest of the day. Then I rode back into college station and got some yogurt with Lauren and went to the bike shop to fix my shoe. On Sunday Lauren and I went out to ride the horses and then got some frozen yogurt and I headed up to Austin to ride with a friend. We rode Walnut under nearly perfect trail conditions, good times. I miss Austin. I was in Austin for a recruiting event at UT Austin, had a good time, saw some friends, and recruited many. Then back to work.

Fast forward one weekend to last weekend, Lauren came down from CS. We didn't really do anything which was kinda nice and relaxing.

Camp Eagle 2010.2

The race morning was good. Some good brefackst then a nice morning ride and finally some warm up. Some a couple of old friends during the warm-up and the dude that crashed and got medflighted back to Kerrville. He turned out ok and apparently just had a concussion, sweet ride home from the race though, pricey too. The start of the race was good and fast. I hung with Patrick for a little while and then took off. I was in either fifth or sixth so I knew I had some people to catch. My first lap on the South loop was ugly, I climbed very poorly and definitely lost some time. The North loop was good, the second pass at the South loop was much better, the climb felt good and I passed one guy in my class. The Cat 2's were out on course so I was passing a bunch of them which made it somewhat tricky to tell who I was racing. I thought I had passed another guy in my race and when I got in I was placed third. The race felt good and the legs still felt pretty good after the race. Apparently someone in my class had come in and they had missed them so I ended up fourth. Oh well, still felt pretty good.

After the race I went down to a friend's cabin down in Leakey (pronounced Lakey) which was about 45 miles away or so. When I got there we had some food and then travelled on down to the creek to put our feet in the water. It felt pretty dang good. Later in the evening we took a tour of the community on the golf cart and we saw some pretty big deer. Since Ben, my buddy, and his wife were getting up super early and going to a run I decided to get up and head on back to Houston. I got back to Houston around 10:30 and got some things done around the house.

It was a good Labor Day weekend.

Camp Eagle 2010

Last weekend was the first race of the TMBRA fall series. I was pretty excited about the race since I hadn't raced since the end of May and I'd been putting in a bunch of training miles. I also switched to training with a power meter about a month ago so this was the first test to see how that was going. Camp Eagle is a pretty technical course with some tough uphills and some technical descents.

I left work a bit early on Friday with hopes of beating the bad drivers out of Houston, I was doing pretty well until I got to the edge of Houston where five lanes of freely flowing traffic condensed into a two lane creep of winter molasses. Once I got far enough out of town traffic finally picked up and I headed to Buc-E's to get some jerky, I also got Lauren a present but I cannot post what it is since I have not given it to her yet. I arrived in San Antonio a little after 9 to stay with my friend Steve who I did the 24 hours of Rock Hill with last year and who is going to marry Lauren and I. It was great to catch up with Steve and meet his family!

Saturday morning I got up and had breakfast with Steve and family and then headed out to Camp Eagle. Two hours further West from San Antonio I arrived at Camp Eagle but not until I saw two deer-like animals fighting in one of the large ranches on the side of the road. I met up with Kathy and Alan and then went for a pre-ride of the south loop. The course was good and I felt pretty good so I tried not to overdo it. There is much more climbing at the Camp than in all of Houston combined. Then Alan, Kathy, and I headed in to Kerrville for some steak and a good night's sleep.

The race was Sunday, I'll write about that tomorrow.