Back on the MTB saddle

That felt good. And it's been a while. Several months after putting the mountain bike away for the winter I was finally able to drag it back out of the storage cage and give it a proper good run out on proper mountain bike trails. Yes I took it out for a short ride through the park last week to test out the new Garmin, but that doesn't really count.

Kelso Park was the destination and I spent little over an hour ploughing through some of the trails with one lick up that rough climb at the front end of the escarpment. That was a wakeup call, but 98 percent of that park is single track, so all-in-all it was enjoyable.

I've got less than a month to my first race of the season now and no doubt I've a lot still to do in the way of stamina training, but it was nice to use the first MTB ride of the year to just enjoy it, turn the legs over, give the bike a run out and see how things were. The bike is running like a dream, so just me to work on then.

Over this month as I get up there, my rides will become a little more intense as I try to get myself ready enough that I'll enjoy the race rather than suffering to the finish line, though I still want to be able to enjoy those rides. Thankfully at a place like Kelso, you can have a challenging ride, via climbs and technical sections, but it's laid out in such a way that you can't help but enjoy it at the same time. That's one of the great beauties about suffering while riding a mountain bike.

Post-ride weigh-in: 194.2 lbs