Friday, October 5, 2007

Another Diet Coke Please

I got home at 2am last night after a night ride at Mueller Park in Bountiful. with 4.5 hours of sleep last night, I'm feeling it. I've already polished off two diet cokes and it's only 10am.

I've never ridden Mueller before and am kicking myself for finding out about it this late in the season. I'm actually a little bit annoyed that my "friends" have never showed me this gem of a ride until now.


The group: Jamie, Tony, Joe, Sam, Justin, Jon L., Keith, and I.





We met at Mueller at about 9:45 and rode the 14 mile out and back of pure single track. The whole ride was in the woods with tight single track (did I mention that it was all single track yet?). It was one of the best rides of the year for me. At times, it was so tight, that I had to move my hands in an inch or so on my bar to avoid the branches.

Jamie started out at race pace and for the first 20 min, many of us were redlined. It turns out, Jamie was trying to duplicate the odd heart rate scenario he experienced earlier this week. The doctors have him hooked up to a HR monitor for the next 2 weeks (I guess he needs to leave this on 24 hours a day) and have told him to ride and see if his HR spikes unusually high again. Lucky for us, we were all trying to keep his wheel and ride at that pace while he was doing this test.

So when Joe mananged to break his chain about half way up the climb, I was happy to stop and wait for him while he fixed it. )Note: I always like to have Joe or Jamie along on a ride. They are both killer mechanics and usually can fix anything.)


Joe fixing his chain:






The entire climb, I kept thinking about how fun the downhill was going to be. I followed Jon L.'s wheel for the first half and had a huge smile. I didn't want to lose his wheel since he has ridden this trail a lot and knew what was coming. This was my first time down Mueller. It was in the dark and we were flying. I thought Jon was going to crash hard on one of the many bridges but he manged to ride it out.

The Post Ride Chill:







The "Heartland Scramble" (This is what I ordered...Mmmmm)

Two eggs scrambled with chopped bacon, country-fried potatoes, green peppers and onions, and topped with Cheddar cheese. Served with two strips of bacon, two sausage links, hash browns and three fluffy buttermilk pancakes.

This time we met at Denny's for some food. Did you know EVERY breakfast plate at Denny's either comes with sausage and bacon or bacon and ham? It's out of control how much food they give you for $6.

The storm is rolling in so probably no rides this weekend. This night ride should hold me over until Monday.

6 comments:

Jonnie J said...

Ricky -

Looks like good times...sorry I missed out on the fun. Catch you next week.

Jon

Anonymous said...

Famous last words; "I'm planning on going easy tonight fellas. I don't want you guys to have to call Life Flight for my sake." 6 miles later we all roll up on him at the half way point cross eyed and beet red with exhaustion, wondering what happen to the B.S. ride he promised. He proceeds to brush off his explosive start with a lame excuse about just testing to see if his heart rate will duplicate what it did Monday night. Well Jamie, your heart may not have hit 220 again, but the rest of ours did. Have you ever seen the pain cave at night? It darker and scarier than it is during the day. I hit my Zone 5 not more than 1 mile into the ride. My legs were screaming at me to give'em a warm up first. Rick, remind me next time we beat up on Jamie to skip the next ride with him.

Rick Sunderlage said...

Let's just hope he got it out of his system. That sucked.

tibiker said...

Just so you know, I was suffering like a dog too. And yeah it's out of my system. From now on it's just easy zone 3 rides for me.

Rick Sunderlage said...

Jamie- We just like to tease cuz you are so damn fast. Never back it down. You've earned your speed.
We are just silly for trying to keep up sometimes.
It makes us stronger.

Anonymous said...

Is there anything you can do about the post ride, sweat/bacon smell that creeps into our bed around 1am on those nights. B/C I'm good with a hint of bacon, then I'm just hungry for some breakfast. But mixed with salt dried sweat,sausage and eggs, sorry, no appetite... for anyting.
S.H.Wife