I was in Austin this past weekend for work doing some dealer visits and working at the New Belgium Urban Assault. The Munson and I got in Friday afternoon and were greeted with 100F temps with humidity. The sick part is that I thought it felt good!
Peddlin’ grips
We banged out some work Friday afternoon and hit the town with my friends that live in Austin. Ye-yeah! In fact, Lara (center) was the first friend I ever made. We lived across the street from each other back in NM and used to play together when we were 2. Now we play together at 27, and probably have more fun!
Saturday was another shop visit filled day, but we got out early in the morning on some rentals and hit up the Greenbelt. I had never mountain biked in Austin, and I was surprised to see that the trail was kind of like Arkansas- rocky and awesome.
I also rented a 29er and rode one for the first time. It had tubes I was running at about 40-50PSI, so that definitely changed the riding experience. I normally runa bout 20 PSI and tubeless. Bouncing off rocks effects bike handling just a wee bit! Wiley, the Specialized rep, played tour guide with The Munson and myself.
Monster truck wheels!
MUNSON!
I want go back to Austin for a week or two in the winter and ride! There seems to be great road riding with a lot of short, steep climbs (from my last visit in February) and a spiderweb of trails, ~50miles worth, around town. It’s a cool city to boot!
The next morning was early. Wiley needed a partner for the Urban Assault race, so as a last minute thing I ponied up with him. He gave me his road bike to ride – a super trick Specialized road bike with Zipp wheels. I’ve never ridden such a fancy road bike, and it was ironic that it was in a putzin’ Urban Assault Race! We had a good time. I was surprised by some of the obstacles. We even had to swim in the river dragging big intertubes behind us.
Shocks, pegs… lucky! (this was actually really scary)
We saw a guy sling-shot himself in the nuts!
I got home from Austin late Sunday night, and have been trying to prepare my race this weekend – Durango Dirty Century – 100 miles, 13,000′ of elevation gain, mostly self supported, and mostly singletrack. Amen! My body is still beat up from my Bailey crash and my TSE injury, but hopefully I’ll come around.
The San Juans are my favorite mountains in the world (well, so far as I’ve seen!) It’ll also be a good CTR preview. Every day, I have to tell myself, “Yes, you can do CTR. You can do this.” I can do this.
