Thursday riding. . . . .finally

Yesterday's schedule allowed me to pack up the car, grab a friend, and head down to Muir to get a nice mountain bike ride in.

It seemed to start simple enough. I pulled my mtb shoes out of their little bag and noticed my inserts were gone, leaving no cushion inside the shoes at all. Ouch. Luckily we had extra socks that I craftily stuffed inside the shoes as a cushion. Problem solved.

Next, I took the bike off the roof rack, pulled the lube out of the toolbox and lubed the chain. I noticed the cranks turned kind of hard, but I didn't really pay much attention to it. . . . . .I should have.

We hopped on the bikes and headed out thoroughly enjoying all of the new stuff that's been added and/or changed lately. I noticed I seemed to be working harder than usual, but I chalked it up to the very humid weather, since I seem to have breathing issues with the humidity. At about 1:20 I took a cliff shot because I was feeling pretty drained and I didn't want to bonk. I thought that was strange. . . .but whatever. Squirt and I took a wrong turn, retraced some of the new stuff we had just ridden and laughed at how "peanut butter hill" truly deserved it's name.

As we were winding through the connector I felt my chain start to skip a bit. I shifted around to find a gear it didn't skip in and figured I'd check it out when we got to Emma. Once at Emma, I hopped off my bike, rang my helmet out (gross) and flipped my bike to inspect what might be going on. Squirt came over to look as well, turned my pedals and said "oh my gosh, why are your pedals so hard to turn??". After further inspection it appeared one of the pulleys simply decided to seize up, making it impossible to shift. Not only impossible to shift, but now impossible to ride, because the darn thing wouldn't even turn. What a great discovery when you're at the FURTHEST POINT AWAY from your start point, with no phone.

After messing with it a bit, I got it to at least spin. . . .or so I thought. After a number of intervals of coasting the downhills, cyclocrossing the flats & uphills we managed to dump out on the road where I hopped back on and crossed my fingers that the pedals would turn. They turned HARD, but they turned enough to let us ride the road back to the parking lot, where I was thoroughly exhausted feeling like I had just lifted weights for a couple hours.

I must say I was thankful to examine the bike and realize that the difficulty of the ride was NOT due to any leftover fatigue I might have had. . . . .and the fact that Squirt was riding circles around me (more than usual) WASN'T due to the fact that I had suddenly become very slow and out of shape. So at least I had that goin' for me.

A stop at the shop on the way home revealed a COMPLETELY seized up pulley full of gunk (highly technical term). After disassembling the pulley, cleaning the bushings (and getting a lesson on bushings vs bearings, what they do, where they are, etc - yes, I asked for this lesson), and greasing it back up, we were good to go again. Athena's pulleys are now in excellent shape once again.

Now today's work includes making sure all the other "spinny items" are spinning freely on her and examining her closely to make sure she's all recovered from the mud race. Something I should have done BEFORE I rode her for 2:48.

Lesson learned? Take the 5 minutes to inspect your bike after a mud race to make sure everything turns well BEFORE you head out for a 3 hour mountain bike ride with a friend. Don't assume someone else has done it. . . .or that it doesn't need to be done. Self sufficiency is something I need to continue to get better at. My "mechanics" don't have the time (or energy) to do EVERYTHING for me. And I'm pretty sure they assume I'm doing at LEAST these basic things. I guess I WILL be now. :-)