But I'm going to. Or try anyway.
We have some really good singletrack riding up in these parts - about an hour car ride away. Problem is I can step out the front door swing a leg over my top tube and ride. So despite that good singletrack being not-too-far away I haven't ridden it since I've been living up here. The vast majority of the riding I've done in the last 7 years has been forest roads and rail trail.
In the wee hours of 2018 I signed up for the Chequamegon 100. I have no business doing that bike race. It's nearly all singletrack. Actually for me it won't really be a bike "race" it'll be more of a bike "hope-I-can-finish-before-dark-and-before-the-mosquitos-suck-me-dry."
Anyway, yesterday I went for a ride with the Cheq 100 in the back of my mind.
Near the town of Ashland, WI are a lovely set of trails, I've ridden on them a few times before, once in the winter (they're groomed for fat bikes) and once in the summer. These trails are about 10 miles from our place. Even when the Tri-County Corridor is in good shape (as it was yesterday) it takes me over an hour to get there. (an aside: if I average 10 mph [which I fell short of on this flat, straightforward ride], which is quite quick for singletrack (at least for me), I'll still be out in the Chequamegon 100 for 10 hours. One can start to see why 1) I have no business doing this race and 2) why I hope-I-can-finish-before-dark-and-before-the-mosquitos-suck-me-dry.)
So I had been riding well over an hour before I even started to ride the Farm Road Trails singletrack. But the trails were in beautiful shape, I remembered once more how much I love singletrack, and soon forgot about the miles I had already ridden and was just there riding my bike.
I came to about an hour later and decided my legs were feeling the miles a bit (and I still had to get myself home) and decided to hang it up. I rode in to the Black Cat Coffeehouse and got myself some sort of gooey roll thing that was really good to fuel the ride home.
When I got home it was a little more than 5 hours since I'd left that morning.
I made a quick video of the ride.
