Well, someone else has probably ridden a cross bike at Bay's Mountain Park before, but it was the first time for the ole' baldman steed. Jeff and I arrived at about 1:00pm in the heat of the day. Tame deer are running around like dogs up there. They just walk right up to you and possibly out in front of you. Hope none of them wonder of Bay's they'll get nailed by a hunter real quick. I digress, It was freakin hot! In the nineties again as we started down the road and up th Azalea Trail. Very dry, and sandy but climbed pretty fast up to the road. The heat even permeated the woods.
Once we reached the road I was thinking about the last time I rode here which had to have been five years ago. It's unbelievable how one doesn't realize how much they have changed over a period of time till there is a bench mark. When I last rode here I was on a mountain bike with a 30x32 granny gear(I can eat a pizza of that rear cog), this time I road my Bianchi CX bike wit a 36x26 low gear. Riding up hills on my CX bike that I couldn't ride on the MTB was very gratifying for me. Descending skills have really improved as well. I've always been a good descender on the road but at the bottom of a MTB descent I used to have to pry my white knuckled fingers off the bars. Riding the rollers on Bays which is loose rock gravel, bigger rocks and sand I felt confident not terrified as before. The last descent on the north of the rim around Bay's is very rocky and rutted in places, again not a place one would think of riding a cross bike, but I descended it faster than ever before and without walking. All these things combined bode well for CX season. We only rode for about an hour, but I felt very good about how I'm riding. Hopefully, with the start of cross specific training next month I'll be a bald cross machine in October. Also,when October rolls around I'll have more cross specific stuff to write about. I never realized how much fun it is to talk about oneself. Stroke the ego. I guess that's part of what a blog is about. Isn't it?
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