A Roadie Gets Dirty with the Velo Girls
I'm a roadie who also has a mountain bike. My usual route on the mountain bike is a nice 12 mile loop on the levees, where the biggest technical challenge is avoiding a few goose turds.
During the summer, the Velo Girls women's bicyle club puts on a Thursday evening mountain bike ride at the Arastradero Preserve in Palo Alto. Arastradero Preserve is known as a relatively easy place to ride a mountain bike -- the Kiddie Pool of single-track, if you will. Last night the stars aligned so I could cut out of work a little early, so I decided to load up my mountain bike and head off to Palo Alto and meet up with the Velo Girls.
First highlight of the trip: I got to meet velogirl herself! Lorri Lee Lown, the founder of Velo Girls, is as friendly and knowledgeable in person as she is here on the online forums.
At that point, four other women had shown up for the ride. Lorri wanted to wait for one other rider, so she sent us off on a nice gentle warm up loop.
My first thought: oh my, Toto, we're not on pavement anymore!! :eek: It's amazing how much you take solid ground for granted. Within a few hundred feet on the warm up loop, I encountered ruts, powdery dirt, a few stray rocks, some horse manure, etc. Now, I was in fairly familiar territory with the horse manure -- the goose turds had given me ample preparation. But the powder -- wow, what a momentum stopper! And when you slow down, it's harder to stay upright, so you turn your front wheel to keep your balance, which the wheel doesn't want to do in the powder, and well, it gets interesting.
But no, I didn't biff it!! :D
We got to the top of the hill, and the leader advised us that there was a series of whoo-de-doo's and that the terrain was rutted. Best approach was to keep the weight back, relax the arms and knees, and stay on the left part of the trail (less ruts.) OK!
Down I went -- I thought I was gonna biff it at any second. The adrenaline had kicked in, and I was laughing maniacally. Now this was some kind of fun!!
Somehow I got thru the whoop-de-doo's with nary a biff. We got back to the parking lot, and Lorri and the other rider were rarin' to go.
Lorri, riding her cross bike, led us thru a patchwork of single-track trails. I lost track of where we were, and just gamely followed along. We had frequent regroups, which was fortunate, because I was sucking wind like I hadn't done in ages during my road bike rides.
We negotiated a series of sharp switchbacks while climbing uphill. Notice that I didn't say riding uphill. Some of us rode uphill. Some of us couldn't get their front wheels to turn the correct way while riding uphill, so they walked their bike up the switchback part. And you know what? It was all good -- just get the bike up there, any way you can!
Toward the end of the ride, I had started on a trail and saw a lady coming toward me while walking her dog. At that moment, my front wheel hit some nice powder, and I almost biffed it. I unclipped, waited for her to pass, then tried to get back on my bike. No go -- I had a major case of spaghetti leg and couldn't clip in. Took me about 5 attempts to clip in and get rolling. Ms. Endurance Roadie was wiped out after about 9 miles of singletrack!!
All good things must come to an end -- the sun was coming down, so we headed back for the parking lot. After loading our bikes, we headed up the road to the Alpine Inn for some food, beverages, and comradery.
Will I be back? You betcha!
velogirl, if you're reading this, it was a pleasure to meet you and hang out with your crew!
- Melissa
