You can never ride too much

Compared to the rest of this year (so far) my riding in April has dwarfed previous months. It's largely due to two things: warmer weather and racing. In order to train for these races I have making a double effort to get out and, whether before or after work has really paid off in increasing my ability to endure much longer rides.

My professional career seems to overlap my love for riding in that not only am I out for the pure joy of riding trails or commuting to work on my fixed gear bike, but I am also compiling data into a database for further analysis. Yes, not only am I a computer geek, I am a bike geek or data whore, too. My goal this year is to hit 1000 trail miles and after 4 months I am 1/4 of the way to hitting that goal.

Yesterday, I got some bonus miles at Huntington yesterday. I didn't have to ride but it was such nice weather out and I happen to have the bike on the car anyway so I went out after work, or what we call here in Southern New England, RAW - Ride after Work, and did a lap at Huntington but varied my route just a little bit and got an extra half mile out of it to be an 8 mile lap. The new course does a singletrack section the other way, which is harder to ride and there is one section that I have to walk. I think my training regimen will be two laps on this course each week until the race in Ware.

I will have to find another course to prepare for the Landmine Classic (one lap: 25 miles). I am thinking a 12 mile course that will encompass much more singletrack. I think the Massasoit race had the least amount of singletrack in it's course and I feel that Winding Trails had a lot more, or maybe it seems that way because you had to do three laps to the two at Hop Brook.