Starting things off, two weeks ago I saddled up on The Crimson Ghost and took a spin around Demo to try out a few more of the trails there. In particular I wanted to get a lap in on Sawpit, which is down at the bottom of the park and, as such, doesn't get as much traffic as Flow and Braille do. It's also a newer trail, so I think fewer people have it on their radar.
The climb up to the top went about the same as always. It's about an hour of grinding away through some reasonably scenic but mostly unchallenging terrain. Riding down Ridge to the top of Braille/Flow went pretty nicely, I managed to clear everything except the one really chunky part just before Braille (I think it's just before braille, I have a terrible memory for these things). Although I didn't ride it, I did manage to scout a reasonable path through the chunder, so I think on my next ride through I should be able to breeze through it. Maybe.
Things started to get a bit more spicy past Flow. Since that section of trail doesn't get nearly as much traffic, there was a lot of forest debris on the path: lots of twigs and branches and leaves and redwood frond thingies. Tons of stuff to get kicked up and pulled into your spokes. At one point I thought a branch might have gotten pulled into my derailleur and messed it up, but I think it just knocked the chain down a few cogs, as it cleared up and behaved itself after giving the pedals a few spins.
The debris wasn't the only problem though: there were also a few huge, steep, eroded sections to deal with. Despite being fairly low traffic (there's really nowhere other than Sawpit to go on this section of trail) these steep sections were incredibly chewed up, and I ended up having to walk them. I really think these bits of trail should be worked on at some point, as I would shortly discover that they're by far much more difficult to navigate than Sawpit.
Sawpit itself was quite nice. Decent mix of features and nothing too wild or too mild for its blue rating. That said, I'm not sure it's worth the struggle of getting through the last section of Ridge trail, so I'll probably skip it in future.
Next up was Flow, but to get down Flow you must first get to the top of Flow, and I decided that I'd try climbing Tractor since that climb trail is much closer to Flow than Hihn's, the usual climb trail. I'd heard that Tractor was unpleasant to climb, but for most of its length it was somewhat unremarkable. A bit steep perhaps, but nothing I couldn't just gear down and grind out.
That is, up until the last section, where it kicked up rather severely and forced me to get off the bike and push through some sections. Oof. There was also some difficulty in backtracking through a short section of Ridge; the two of which combined giving me a pretty good idea as to why most folk skip this option.
I still got to the top in one piece though, and did a solid lap of Flow. I'm gaining confidence on this trail and pushing myself to actually ride the berms properly, but there's still room for improvement. Lots of excuses left to go out and ride it again I guess.
I also have some work to do on my endurance, as I have yet to make it down the trail without my legs cramping up a bit and having to take a rest break between section 3 and 4 (of 6 total).
Speaking of endurance, the only thing left to do was climb back out to the parking lot, and I managed to claw my way back up the hill in a pretty decent 40 minutes.
So with that done and dusted, things looked good for an XC ride the following week. I'd had a loop in mind that went through the Santa Cruz mountains to the south-west of me, and so that's just what I rode.
I saddled up on Blackbirb and rode out first thing in the morning. I was expecting the ride to take in the ballpark of 6 hours but I packed enough supplies to be able to safely stretch it out to 8 if things went a bit slow.
Things started out well enough with a few miles of pavement riding before hitting the dirt near Santa Teresa and following some familiar trails through San Vicente and Calero.
Next up was a long slog of pavement down McKean and Uvas, and by the time I hung a left to go around Chesboro things were starting to get a little bit meh. I wasn't really able to keep putting out the power I wanted to, and as such the ride was starting to go a bit slower than I'd been hoping for when I set out.
But I wasn't in the mood for a failed ride, especially when bailing out would mean having ridden my XC bike primarily on pavement, so I pressed on to see how things would evolve as the ride went on.
Near the top of the paved section of Mt Madonna I met another group of cyclists and stopped for a chat at the beginning of the gravel. They were turning around there but I planned to press onwards and upwards. The short conversational break gave my legs a little bit of a rest, but apparently not enough of one to really make a difference, but at the very least I felt a bit more comfortable riding my XC bike on gravel/dirt again.
When I got up to the top of Mt Mads I still wasn't feeling like I was doing too well, but I told myself (knowing full well it was a lie) that I might as well just continue the ride as planned since I was already at the farthest point. So I pressed on, just kept the pedals turning, and slowly made my way up Mt Mads/Summit road.
I passed the somewhat famous neighbourly gates and was again glad to be off the pavement (from the top of Mt Mads to the gates is paved). It's hard to say much about this part of the ride other than it was very slow and very remote. I was expecting the remote part, but maybe not expecting the slow part.
I rode past the abandoned car, came across a motorcyclist looking for directions, took a little snack break at the intersection of Loma Prieta, and was very, very happy when the road started pointing down again.
For the most part I really didn't see any other cyclists once I was past Mt Mads, but down around Lexington as I was climbing up the schoolhouse hill I did come up on another cyclist and, even as cooked as I was at that point, managed to climb past him.
From there it was just a matter of dropping down the Los Gatos Creek Trail, popping out at Main St, and cruising home. It was, in one way, tempting to take this section really slowly as it was mostly flat or downhill, but I hadn't stopped for a bio break since half way up the gravel on Mt Mads so I had ample motivation to not dilly-dally the last few miles.
In total the ride took over 8.5 hours. I feel like if I were as fit as I want to get then I'd be able to do it in under 6, or maybe even under 5, but despite the fitness gains I've made over the past few years that feels like it's a long way off.
So that leaves me with mixed feelings. On the one hand I did ride the ride from start to finish, but on the other hand I rode it so slowly that it barely feels like it counts as a success.
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