Happy trails near Deep Creek Lake, MD

Last weekend, we made it a long weekend, and we rode 5 days in a row in Western Maryland. Thus, this is also a long blog entry. The good, bad and ugly.

The great: Davis, WV race loop.

A mere hour from Deep Creek is the West Virginia State Championships race loop - 18 miles give or take of pristine single track on private land with a trail head pretty much in the town. We stopped by Blackwater Bikes and asked the skinny guy, Van, where his favorite riding is nearby. He sent us away with a free map, lots of notes about where the colored blazes change, and awesome beta about how to make it through the area they are currently logging. He also sent us to Hypno Coffee - we liked it enough to buy a freshly roasted pound of espresso blend. At the trailhead, we contemplated whether to take the dogs or leave 'em in the car - it was low 60s, but totally remote with the possibility of a shorter loop if they got tired, so we decided to bring 'em along.

Really great riding - true single track, seriously well built for bikes. With all the instruction about where to go, we only mis-navigated once, winding up traversing a quarter mile or so of bog cleared for pimpeline access. Like occasionally sink up to your rear hub bog. Yuck. It connected back to the main trail, though, so we were all good. From dry singletrack through grassy meadows to the 'famous' moon rock section (think large rock slabs with pits, pockets, and gorges the width of a tire - I walked a bit), switchbacked climbing on loam, and a kick your arms into submission rock garden laden downhill, this loop had it all. Loved it. We'll be back. I didn't have to holler "Honey, we dropped the dogs!" until about Mile 16. It was great to have the furry monsters along. Allie found the bogs much more fun than I did...

The pretty frickin' good: Margraff Plantation Trails, Accident, MD.

At Deep Creek, we visited the 'bike shop', which also sells kayaks, waterskis, snowboards and all things sport related for a recreational mountain lake. And a few bikes. The guys there sent us to Margraff, which I had read about online and wanted to try. "A bit overgrown" was the warning. Really, it was actually only overgrown if you go the wrong way into the bramble bushes, walking your bike ahead of you to stay skinny, emerging with itchy scratchies all over. This loop, which is only 7 miles, absolutely rocked. I noted to Shea that it really felt like we spent a lot of time going downhill but not much going uphill. That's a testament to how well laid out the uphills must be. I wish they ran a race there.

My notes on Margraff: directions online were a bit confusing. Turn left at the sign that says "Margraff Plantation" and park in the lot there. Directly behind the car is the easiest singletrack to find. Turn right the first intersection and ride the loop counter clockwise. There are a few places here where it's good to keep sharp eyes out for white blazes on the trees - for instance (in order as I remember them) climb a hill, come out in a meadow with a gas well, and grab the trail behind the gas well on the left. Get back to the main set of intersections where the trail forms a figure 8 and stay right. After climbing on singletrack, cross the gravel road and look left at the edge of where it (might be) mowed for the trail, which is an awesome loamy section with a pretty fun log pile that is bigger than I normally ride, but I got it. Fun! Shea even found some jumps.

Just after those, instead of dropping further down the hill to the right (into the brambles), stay left and emerge in a field. Cross the dirt road, stay left of that gas well and near the tree line to find the single track hidden in the weeds. Another fun downhill and a climb to the car for a refill of the water bottles and another lap. Unless you have the dogs with you - apparently fat city dogs do not become fast trail dogs overnight.

The not-as-good: Green Ridge Park, Flintstone, MD.

The MD state champs were held here many years ago and the guidebook suggested it was on the 12 mile loop that's 'impossible to get lost on'. That was mostly true except for one spot where local kids might've stolen the sign - we eventually figured out to cross the road and start up the road where I spotted a single mtn bike sign in the woods on the left less than a hundred or so yards from where we hit the road in the first place. Anyway, I wanted to like this place. It's like 3 miles off of Interstate 68 on the way home. But the uphills were aplenty and downhills mostly on doubletrack without much technical or twisty fun. A bit rocky, sure, and eventually we came upon a few really nicely built bridges that seemed a bit out of place - super well-maintained parts among a bunch of washed up old fire roads. Sort of unsatisfying.

The really so-not-worth it: Adventure Sports Center, McHenry, MD (above Wisp).

Newer trails - a hand-drawn map at the trailhead should've been our first clue. Mostly used as a place to teach climbing, there is one small singletrack loop (think 1-2 miles, max) with a fun little downhill, but not much else.

The also not-worth-it: New Germany State Park, Grantsville, MD.

Beautiful park for camping, hiking with family, and swimming/fishing in the reservoir. No dogs allowed. Only a few miles of narrow trail, probably lots of flat, untechnical double track based on the map.

Fun times in the mountains...

R^3

Shea and I went to a favorite place of mine this past weekend - Deep Creek Lake, Maryland, for a much needed long weekend of R&R&R. That's not a typo - Rest, Relaxing, and Riding! As a kid, my family had a cottage and ski boats there (yes, I was a competitive waterskier long before I slid on frozen water) and my institute maintains a secluded lodge there for use of all of its employees and fellows (that's me!).

Riding - we went away for 5 days and rode 5 days of it. We hadn't exactly planned on a lot of trail time, but the weather was perfect, my bike has new pieces of drive train (thanks to Gettysburg Bikes, you guys continue to rock!), and Western Maryland is remote enough to bring the four-legged friends Allie and Gideon along for a few of the rides. As I'm currently in catching up at work and laundry^3 mode, the details and photo uploads will have to wait. But by the end of the weekend, I'll share my thoughts on the briar patches Garrett County, awesome riding in Davis, WV ("honey, wait up, we dropped the dogs!"), and a less than favorite loop a few miles off the path toward home. Look forward to a few trail reviews (if I put 'em here, I won't lose them myself!).

Rest - yes, now that I'm 30, I can in fact still sleep more than 10 hours a night several nights in a row.

Relaxing - I highly recommend the little fire starter logs that you can buy at Lowe's instead of paper if you're starting a wood fire on a warm evening in a finicky fireplace with wetter-than-it-should-be wood. By round 4 on the fires, we had this nugget figured out. I also recommend steering away from "The Silver Tree" restaurant - a place that holds fond childhood memories of lasagna, whipped butter in fancy dishes, and 15cent ice cream parfaits for dessert. They reopened under new ownership this week and it's the first time in a long time that I actually sent my food back. It was that bad. The ice cream, brownies, and other assorted goodies (gotta love Candyland in Oakland) and oh yeah, wine and beer that we devoured over the weekend somehow haven't yet made it to my waistline - perhaps it was all the riding?

Recovering from R^3 with science - eh, how about some margaritas instead?

A whole day of cross practice = sore and bruised

A few months ago, I bit the bullet and signed up for a cross skills clinic. Saturday, under imminent threat of thunderstorms, about 40 of us showed up at Lake Reston to generally confuse the birthday picnickers by riding in circles on the grass doing silly things.

The clinic, organized by a couple of Mid-Atlantic area coaches (Chris Mayhew and Dan Tille), featured American pro Jeremy Powers - well fueled with all the sugar he can handle by Jelly Belly sport beans. I want his bike. With the carbon zipp wheels. It would be a little big, but I think I could manage.

They asked us at the beginning - what is your goal for today? I said something about getting rid of my stutter step on a remount. I had signed up as a "beginner" despite the fact that I'm not nearly as green as some of the others there. This was because really I wanted someone to force me to do the technical work very slowly and perfectly. I'm hoping to perfect my mounts, dismounts, carries and barriers this year - I can learn off-side dismounts etc later.

At first, I was a bit anxious about whether I'd get enough good coaching. The beginners started with FatMarc Vettori - a guy I knew some from when he talked me through a pretty big bonk in the pit at my first MTB enduro race, but not one of the coaches named on the clinic announcement. Turns out, this was great. JPow, Chris, and Dan are great, but they clearly often work with more experienced racers. I think JPow is so good he forgets that we mere mortals have to run-up things he'd fly up without downshifting. FatMarc had the good sense to take us slowly through remounts - not getting close to a barrier for nearly 3 hours. Exactly what I was hoping for. And he yells louder encouraging things than anyone. When we got to "keep" Marc for the entire day, I was pretty happy to keep building on the rapport that we'd had going as a group.

A few notes:
-My friend Jess, who crashed a bit on a dismount slicing up her knee on her chainring (ouch!), managed to get a private lesson from JPow himself. Then had 3 good lookin' skinny men with doctoring experience surrounding her to patch up the knee. Her boyfriend Zeke, being the good man that he is, let her enjoy the moment.

-Funny kids there. A couple of guys I'd say were about 10... attention span for a whole day or even 10 minutes of talking is a lot, as are clipless pedals. The theme on the day was anytime someone talked too long, one or more of the younger folk would lean on the side of their bike they had clipped in and promptly fall over. No one was hurt and they had a ton of perserverence throughout the day. Best part for us - they begged JPow to bunny hop some barriers. First he said nah, he hadn't practiced yet. Then he looked at the line a little harder and saw an easier line and showed off a bit. Smooooth like butter. Did I mention the kids had an unlimited supply of caffeinated energy jelly beans all day?

-I got more mud on me than anyone. Maybe I did more circles through the muddy spots? And I've got hugely black and blue bruises on my elbow and shoulder from mistakes throwing the bike up there. I thought about posting pics of my elbow, but decided better of it.

-Not much work on cornering. I was okay with that - we do a lot at Nystrom's practice during the season and I'm a mountain biker at heart, so that's not my weakest technical area. I imagine a few of the roadies were disappointed.

-My right quad and calf are sorer than the left. Since I can't think of a way I generated this asymmetry at a mountain bike race where I barely rode a few miles, I attribute it to mounting and dismounting more times in a day than I probably will all year in all the races... combined.

-Good schwag for a clinic. JPow brought crank brothers hats (yay, I got one!), sport beans, t shirts, etc. I came home with a hat, stickers, a new pump (thanks Cannondale), and some sports balm samples. And a pair of highly coveted Tufo Tubular Clincher tires - FatMarc being the awesome guy he is brought all his old cross tires that he doesn't love for whomever to take. I snagged a new blue one and a slightly used red one. And I don't care if they don't match - those are the tires I'm planning to run this year on most dry races and they are way hard to find.

-I got a mention on FatMarc's blog even. Thanks. I definitely owe him a beer - tires and awesome coaching!

I definitely learned stuff I didn't know. Like what, you ask? There will probably be a specific post at some point soon. I've got to let a bit of it settle before the really important points become obvious.

DNF or DFL... I chose DNF.

About 5 miles into the Quantico Cranky Monkey race today, I was presented with a situation - to DNF (did not finish) or work my bum off from DFL (dead frickin' last) to whereever I could get to. On a converted singlespeed. I chose DNF. It was my first DNF, actually, and I was pretty bummed, but there wasn't a good way around it.

Apparently when we put my chain back together this week, something was amiss, and this mean phantom shifting and chain dropping for the first few miles. After all the women had passed me while I was fixing said dropped chain (about 6 times - this should have been a clue), I thought I had the derailleur cables adjusted and went for it. Stood up a climb and boom - shattering noises from the back of the bike... uh oh. The inevitable chain break was here. Oh, except it took with it my Sram XO derailleur, which got pulled into the rear wheel. As they say, when carbon fails, it fails catastrophically.


I successfully had my bike part way apart to convert it to single speed by the time the sweeps came through. With no quick link, it wasn't going to be fast to do this, and I was already far back from where I needed to be. Having won the previous two races in the series, I needed 3rd today to take the series and had little chance of dropping below 2nd in the series regardless of what I did. 15 miles of hilly-ness with a converted single speed (yeah, I've never done that before and it was an okay conversion, but not perfect - chain tension was a little loose). So I DNF'd - telling the sweeps with the radios to be sure that they knew it was a mechanical not an injury time out. Shea was sure to be confused and worried when I didn't come through on the first lap.

I finished the chain break/repair and went backwards on the course to get to the nearest fireroad outta there. Got a good clue who was doing well and saw the woman's leader (Simona) who would take the series with a strong finish. She was surprised and seemed genuinely disappointed about my bad luck.

Back to the car and no Shea to be found. I texted him - "At the car. Mechanical dnf" - not one I want to have to send often. Chatted with a few teammates on the way in, finding out that the only other LSVer in the sport race had crashed out with a bent front wheel (I had seen him fixing the flat).

It's too bad that I had to learn this one the hard way... when your bike isn't shifting right, it could be the derailleurs (checked those, a lot) or the chain (yeah, waited till it broke all the expensive parts to figure that one out). Weird to be at the race without having really raced - had my body and brain all set up for the pain and I'm still feeling a bit antsy. I'm also tired from yesterday's cyclocross clinic (watch for my thoughts on that this week), so recovering with beer and couch time instead of a good cyclocross-specific run sprints work out or something productive like that.

As for the series, Shea won today, taking the beginner under 34 series. I wound up 2nd overall and scored a nice gift certificate, then a consolation prize of winning an iPod in a raffle. Doesn't quite make up for the pricey bike parts...