TJ Woodruff ONLINE

avoid the pointy stuff!

Desert trails are awesome. When it’s 45 and drizzling they’re even better. Nothing like the flow of the trail to keep you feeling warm inside.  Sunday I got out for 45+ miles on the knobbies, making the most of the ‘nasty’ weather.  Rainy and windy days make the best opportunities to get on the trails and I was fortunate enough to have planned for trail riding anyways. Most of the locals have adopted the weather.com plan and miss out on such fine opportunites.

Saturday marked the return to the infamous Shootout ride, my first time back since last spring. It was plenty fast and a handful of us fought the huge wind all the way up into Madera Canyon.  It actually got easier when it got steeper since the trees protected us from the winds. We easily rode at 30 mph the whole way backon old Nogie thanks to the tailwind. 95 miles and a solid day on the bike. A little bit of suffering can be a lot of fun.

Sunday’s trail ride was the perfect follow up and the trails were quiet for the most part. Tucson Mountain Park has some great stuff and I rode most all of the trails there before calling it a day.  These pictures are a taste, but do little justice to the clarity that can be found while on the trails. Good stuff and it gets better everytime I go back.

-TJ

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 at 4:32 pm and is filed under Training Report. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.