I rode this morning at Tryon. With the heat, it makes sense to ride early in the day, but it was still hot. Just like with my last ride at Bay Park West, this was my first time to Tryon this year and a lot of trail work has been done. The new trails and improvements were good, but Tryon is still a very tough place to ride. I still don't know my way around completely, and I think I sometimes ride trails in the more difficult direction. I need to come back and work on picking a smarter route.
In my exploration of energy supplements, today I tried using grape flavored CytoMax powder in my CamelBak water. I liked the taste a lot. It wasn't too sweet. But did it help me? Of course, once again, it's hard to say. But with a 5 pound canister, I plan on using it again!
There was a big snapping turtle crossing a trail I was on, so I dismounted. He began turning to face me as I walked past him. I think he would have snapped at me if I were a bit slower!
I rode about 5.5 miles. Actually, probably 20% of that was walking. It's a tough place. Here's my GPS map:
Yesterday I posted about my ride at Bay Park West and my use of No-Xplode, PowerBar gel, and other energy products. I questioned whether any of it made a difference.
Today my quadriceps are pretty sore. That's unusual and I wonder if I actually worked harder yesterday than I realized. Maybe the energy supplements actually did something?
I swear Mother Nature is against me. She knew I wanted to ride this morning and despite the 10% chance, it rained. But only a little, and it let up, so I headed to Bay Park West. This was my first time back there since last year.
It's a tough area to ride for me with its many hills. But I noticed the trails were smoother than last time, because they've been ridden a lot more since then. And they're in great condition.
I stopped in at Tryon Bike Shop yesterday and picked up some supplements to try. At home, before leaving for my ride, I ingested a Rocket Chocolate Honey Stinger bar and half a serving of No-Xplode.
The instructions on the No-Xplode make it seem like you're going to turn into Mr. Hyde if you take too much. It suggests taking half a serving to start and wait an hour to see the effects. I didn't bring the second half with me.
I was expecting to feel some kind of super power boost. I figured I'd be jumping of the walls... err trees. Not so much.
Probably 30 minutes into my ride I was wondering where my extra energy was. It's a tough place to ride, so I decided to down a PowerBar energy gel pack. It was the Double Latte flavor with twice the caffeine. I continued my ride and never felt anything special.
At some point on my journey out of the trails I was feeling a bit hungry. I ate a few bites of a PowerBar. I completed my ride feeling like I usually do.
I did ride up more hills than I have there, but there were still plenty of hills I ran out of steam on. There were plenty of times that I stopped for minutes to catch my breath. I feel like I met my expectations given my current fitness and skill levels. So I'm not convinced any of those energy food/supplements helped. I wish I could have a vision of the alternate reality for comparison.
It started raining about 20 minutes before I got out of the trails. The trails started to get a bit greasy, but nothing too bad.
I rode 5.4 miles, which is a lot for me, on those trails. I mapped my ride, but EveryTrail.com doesn't seem to be working. I'll try again later.
EDIT: Finally, two days later, my EveryTrail upload is working.
