An old client of ours wandered into the office at the end of the spring to drop off a package and asked me if I’d been riding. In the early days I would tag along with my boss and his pals for weekly mountain bike rides, but then for one reason or another I kinda dropped out. Actually, I think they dropped out and I just sort of kept riding by myself or maybe sometimes with a friend. Then my bike started to need a rear wheel, and maybe some brakes, and suddenly the sidewall on the rear tire let go one day and I hung the bike up in the garage. This was just about the time I picked up a road bike so I happily transitioned to the tarmac. No more mud, no more bugs, no more scrapes and bruises.

But yea, so this client comes in and asks me if I’d been riding, and I said no. I gave him my card and told him to fold me in when the season started and automatically assumed he would loose the card under the seat of his car or even more likely – the trash can out on the curb – and forget about me. But he actually sent me an email about a month later with a link to a Google group of riders. So I fixed up the bike and hit the trails again, which leads me to this weekend.

I got asked to help supervise this local offroad tri by one of the group organizers. Saturday afternoon I rode clean-up for the baby tri, where I made sure no one was left on the course do to injury or malfunction. I was a little anxious about being out on the course with the competitors but I quickly caught up to the last place rider and basically just let them do their thing while I did a little housecleaning and enjoyed the 10k crawl through the woods. At one point I saw a woman on another trail but assumed she was on a return leg since I didn’t know the course at all. But maybe 30 minutes later I heard a yelp behind us and I went back to investigate and it was the same woman. She had gotten lost. So I added her to my flock and we finished up the ride.

Today I was general patrol out on the course for the big daddy event, which was twice the distance as yesterday. Again I watched everyone jump into Storrs Pond but then went out ahead of the racers with two other guys to position ourselves at tricky spots. It did rain last night and this morning so the trail was wet but everyone did well. I spied someone up ahead during one of my repositionings who appeared to be limping, and I was able to get him situated while I radioed down for the evac. Fortunately he had just spilled and we were at an easily accessible part of the course. It was only luck that I happened to be there, but it felt like I was doing my duty and he was happy.

Here’s a map of the area. The racers swam up Storrs Pond and back, then came southeast to the clearing and got on their bikes to ride into green expanse in the center of the map. You can see the trails winding around in the trees. Typically this site is used for skiing but there is some nice single track being developed lately. After the bikes, they ran around the pond twice. There’s a real course map here.

View Larger Map

I’m in no way thinking about doing an event like that myself but it was nice to have an excuse to get out on my bike and work up a sweat both days this weekend. I’m happy to say that there’s been quite a bit of trail development in the area since I last cruised the woods.