2hr Mtn Bike Ride - Bent Creek

The Workout:

mtn biking 2hrs

Yesterday I met Paul, Rob, Pete and Jack at Bent Creek for a quick ride after work.

I had suspicions that I'd be in a little better shape than these guys so I hatched a plan to work on my nav skills and map awareness. On my lunch break I printed a topo/trail map of the area and identified around 20 points (trail intersections, saddles, road junctions...etc) that we'd likely hit. I gave each point an orienteering style two letter code and wrote them on the back of the map with a brief description. Lastly, I jotted down the elevation for each point as best as I could determine from the map.

We met at the parking lot on the right just past the Hard Times trail head. I was a few minutes late as I had to run home to pickup my bike shoes but was ready to roll in less than 5 minutes. Before taking off, I jotted down the parking lot elevation from my higear watch. As we rode and passed the various points on my map, I would stop and record their elevation. Since I didn't know where exactly we'd be riding, I really had to stay connected with the map and be looking ahead for the next possible point. This task was quite a bit more difficult than I would have thought. I found it impossible to write anything while riding and on all but the smoothest single track it was hard to read the map. The exercise was definitely worth it and much needed.

The second half of the ride took us West down old Hickory Top and SideHill into territory I hadn't planned on riding. I was actually pretty relieved since it made focusing on riding a lot easier. All in all a great loop.