More Trail Builder than Roadie

Last Saturday was the High Point Hill Climb TT. I am not, never was, nor do I plan to become a road racer any time soon, yet I made a last minute decision to enter this road race again this year. Each year, I find it harder to motivate myself to “train” and usually just ride my bike for enjoyment. In the winter and spring I need to find ways to motivate myself enough to get the riding in to cover my training needs. Training races are one option, and that was my thinking for why I signed up to race my road bike 5 miles uphill. To the average person, the thought of riding your bike up hill for 5 miles must sound like torture. I will not deny that I suffered some during the 28 minutes it took me to get to the top, but the race itself gave me the motivation to push harder than I normally would push while out riding.

It was a beautiful day and much warmer than last year. I felt good in the morning on my warm up and I had high hopes of improving my time from last year. Although my start and finish felt better than last year, I still hit a wall in the middle, where I felt like crap. I was disappointed to be a few seconds slower than last year. However, I did not let that ruin my day. It was a great training run, and the sun was shining with awesome trails all around me waiting to be ridden. As soon as results were posted, Art and I headed over to Wawayanda with our mountain bikes to pre-ride a lap on next weekend’s H2H new race loop.

The promoter of the race, Black Bear Cycling has built some new single-track and it will be used in next weekends race. This is just another reminder of the kind of progress that the PayDirt program has made for mountain bikers. It encourages racers, race promoters and mountain bikers to get involved in the future of mountain biking. The end result: new and improved trails for mountain bikers to ride and race on. Thanks to all the racers that have supported this program and to those involved in building the new trails at Wawayanda. Riding this new single track on Saturday was the highlight of my day.

My Sunday was spent building a new trail at Ringwood, which will also be used in an upcoming Eduro race. I can honestly say that I got more satisfaction from the trail work on Sunday than from racing my bike up hill for 5 miles. Would you expect any different from any real mountain biker?