I did my best to recharge this weekend. Friday ended on a bit of a sour note, so all I wanted to do was put it behind me as much as possible.
I took Younger to the rock gym Saturday. I took Elder last week, and wanted to give little sister the same attention the first time. I still can’t wait to go back next weekend. I didn’t exhaust myself, but did a lot better on the runs I did. I also watched Free Solo, about the guy that climbed El Capitan without a rope. So I’m going through a bit of rock climbing excitement.
Today I went mountain biking. Alone. There’s a reservoir about twenty minutes away, and they’ve got a lot of open land out there. It’s multipurpose, so people bring their horses out there, and they have a trio of bike paths as well. I hit them all, and rode over the rest of the area, about eight miles total.
I don’t assume that these trails were too hard, I do live in coastal flat, but there was enough elevation change around the river that I had a few oh shit moments. The last time I was out at the place was in my twenties, when I was in college. I’m pretty proud of myself that I made it through.
According to my fitness tracker, today’s ride was actually more strenuous than any other activity that I’ve been doing, whether running, climbing, or whatever. It was very fun, but my bike is so old that I thought it was going to fall apart. I was living on the edge also in that I didn’t have any spare parts for my bike. The brakes held up though, even though I thought the tires were going to fall off half the trip.
There were a couple of places that stood out. A lot of the trail was exposed roots, and was very rough, and at one point I came up to a heavily forested area that had a mass of pine needles, making the ground very smooth and soft. It was flat too, and I remember it as a bit of a respite after coming up through a particularly harrowing section. There was another area that had these waist high plants poking up through the ground. I don’t know what they were, but the greenery was striking against the rest of the undergrowth.
I think I caught the area during a very beautiful part of spring. It was Easter, after all.