Clean

Crappy phone pic (new phone to me) pretty much worthless. Zion ready for action. The saddle stayed that low for the entire uphill and subsequent downhill.

Skull Valley overlook.

Very nice day for a ride yesterday. Shorts and short sleeves.
I took the newly moto'd Zion up 37 to drop in 40 at Granite Basin. By moto I mean I was trying out the 28" wide Sunline V3 bars as well at the shorter 50mm stem I just installed. Apparently, I am trying to see what is the shortest possible cockpit that is still rideable by a human my size.

Discussed briefly going with Dave, but the times did not work out. He felt he could clean the 37 climb because his legs were feeling good. I watched Dan nearly clean it a week ago, and at that time thought I never would be able to do it simply do to lack of strength.

At the bottom, I thought what the heck, lets go for it. My strategy was to go very slow between technical obstacles, the use my sprintness to get over them, the try to ride slow and recover for the next one. I failed in prior attempts because I just lost my wind so to speak. The strategy worked...unbelievable. You could hear my whoops for a mile around when I cleared the crux move, going up and over a log with eroded rocky uphill leading into it because I knew I had it in the bag at that point.

I never, ever thought this trail was entirely ridable by me on a SS. It's actually no too hard with suspension, but SS is another world entirely. Just goes to show what a proper mental attitude can do for you. Thanks for the encoragment Dave.

I then descended to the 40 turn off. At this point I decided to continue on 37 to the overlook just to see if I could prove it with another difficult technical climb.....cleaned it again!

Then went down 40, and repeated most of the ride Dan and I did last week. Unfortunately on the next technical uphill out of Mint Wash(which I amazingly cleaned last week), I blew both the crux moves, but got up the rest.

Loving the big bars and short stem. Does not seem to affect things in the least negatively.


Edit: I also got to swim a few laps at the Y while the kids had their lessons. I did 200 yards. This was hardly considered a warm up in the day. The pace would be equivalent to an easy walk, but by the end of 100, it felt like I went out too fast on a race pace 200. By 150, My arms were fried. By 200, I had difficulty getting out of the pool.

Lordy, things are not what they were. Interestingly, my HR never got over 120, and I was never out of breath: just totally deconditioned in the swimming muscles.

Maybe it is time to sign up for a tri again, to motivate a little swimming and running cross training. My weakest link in Triathlon has always been the bike, and for once, I am probably in the best biking shape of my life. The swim would be easy to ramp up. Just need a motivator to run.