Today is Friday October 3 2025 and yesterday i took the day off work and rode singletrack out at the Swope trails.
It was very hard and by the end of it i was completely spent.
This was my last big ride before the Little Sugar race and i wanted to include a lot of proper mountain biking so i went to Swope and got my a** kicked.
Swope was always the place for me. I don't know when it was first built but i think i was there very early on, around 2009, for me it was the place to be. We rode it a lot. Now that i'm 45 and have spent considerable time away from any consistent riding out there i truly understand how hard it is.
Big hard rocks everywhere.
What a workout.
So yesterdays ride was very hard. i was gone for 3 hours and 23 minutes but only about a hour twenty of that was Swope single-track. That hour twenty was plenty. At first i was demoralized that i couldn't go longer but then, after pulling the plug and beginning the ride home i began to realize that i just did an hour twenty at Swope. Sure it was sloppy and i stopped a lot and i walked a lot but for the most part i was riding over some very hard stuff. Plus it was super hot outside. Plus i had done the hard group ride last night which didn't end until 8pm. That's a day game after a night game. Not easy. So i decided that i had just easily done a shi*ty job of riding Swope and that's a lot better then having a very hard time of doing a shi*ty ride at Swope. There is a difference, i swear!
So i crushed the ride. Despite feeling like sh*t.
Now its time to rest up and crush Little Sugar. Hopefully i don't feel like sh*t during that crushing.
After that i'm tempted to give cyclocross a real go but that's probably unrealistic. For one thing there aren't many races and i think i'll have already missed a third of them. Also i'm 45 and have spent the last 6 months training for endurance cycling. If cyclocross doesn't work out then i'll be free to just ride how i want, which sounds pretty great.
