Monday, March 27, 2006

Back roads in the spring

One of the pleasures? of living where I do is the multitude of back roads, usually dirt, that I can take from my house and ride for hours and have very little traffic. When I moved to Michigan it seemed that every time you turned off a major highway the road turned to dirt within a half mile. Of course dirt roads aren't so great when they are wet. Or dusty. Or full of potholes.

Today was a recovery ride and I figured I would take an easy jaunt around some of the dirt roads that were damp yesterday, thinking they would be fine today. They were dry all right, the county had gone through today and graded the few roads I planned on riding. Grading brings a whole new set of problems. The road was now loose with numerous rocks, branches and who knows what else that had been turned over and brought to the surface. Plus the piles of loose dirt that formed in ridges along the edge of the grader blade. Riding all this on a skinny tire cyclocross bike did not make for a very relaxing recovery ride. I'll count it as training for the Paris Ancaster race in two weeks but I hope their back roads are in better shape or it's going to be a long race.

Tomorrow it's back to VO2 intervals as my coach continues to try and get my motor humming at higher speeds. With the warmer weather coming in I may make it out to the west side to ride some real singletrack this weekend.

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