Just 99 miles to go

Sunday, May 07, 2006

First time at Fountain Head

My buddy Peter finally got a group ride together at Fountainhead park in Va. This was my first time out there.
The way its been described to me was
1. No resting, your always climbing or descending .
2.rooty.
3.something at the end called shock-a-billy hill which is sketchy.

My take on it.
1. Yup, they were right although they’re short in duration.
2. Yup, a lot of them and they were huge.
3. Damn thing scared the shit outta me when I first saw it.

The ascents are short but steep. I had to walk quite a few, not because I wasn’t in shape for them but my technique needs some work. I’m not getting forward enough and keep letting the front wheel go up.

There’s no way to take the descents but fast. If you don’t carry momentum you end of getting stuck and more than likely doing an endo.

The weirdest part of the park is the Shock a billy hill. The trail is 1 large loop with the exception of the leg of it that goes to the parking area. So you leave the parking area, take the leg of the trail to the loop. At the end you make a left to start the loop but shock a billy hill is to the right. That’s where the loop ends. I gotta a real good look at what I’d have to do to finish the ride. My first thought, "Holy shit, there’s no way I’m riding down that. Looks like I’m going to embarrass myself again and walk it in front of everybody." It looked like this thing went straight down. I had doubts that it could even be walked.

We do the first loop. I’m having fun and enjoying myself. We had a great bunch of people to ride with. We make it to the end where you have to go down SB hill, or take an alternate route which the others told me was harder. Not as steep but full of babyheads and a tight switchback. First guy in the group says, "Let me go first, I’m going to walk it and don’t wanna get it yalls way"

As if I’m not feeling nervous enough. That piece of shit.

So everyone goes down except for me and Pat, a guy I’d ridden with before. Helluva nice guy and he’s right at my fitness level, but a little above me technically. I think we’re sitting there waiting for the other to go first. Although neither of us are saying it. I’m thinking, if he does it, I’m doing it. He might be thinking the same, I’m not sure. Although he had been there before and I think he didn’t make it down before.

I bite the bullet and go first.

You can’t really see the hill from where we were sitting. You go down a small decent and make a slight turn, then you hit it.

I go down the small descent, right away I get my butt off and way behind the saddle, cause I know what’s coming. I’m on a steeper section, doing good, but keep looking ahead to see when the nasty part starts. After a few seconds I see the bottom and the rest of the group waiting.

I was on shock-a-billy and I was doing it!

I get to the bottom and look up and can’t believe I rode down that.
It still scared the hell outta me looking at it even though I had just ridden it.

We did another loop after that, the 2nd time down SB hill was breeze. I was THE man now.

Actually I wanted to take the other way down just to see it but I was having problems with my cleats.
A screw had come loose in one them and I couldn’t unclip my left foot the last half of the second loop. I had the same problem during the first loop and held the group up while I tried to fix it. I wasn’t about to let them know my first attempt at fixing it didn’t work.

Thanks go out to Pat and Mike who lent me the stuff to fix my cleat the first time.

seeyall

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Time for the Spinner Miles, Tom!

gwadzilla said...

sounds like a good day on the bike
I had a good hike with the wife and dogs
we did some good rock hopping