I had the good luck to become very good friends with two people whose parents recently purchased an RV. For the past 2 or 3 years Randy and I have talked about doing a hiking trip to Palo Duro Canyon. I'm a backpack and tent kind of guy while he and Julie are more shower and air conditioning types. Due to the recent recreational vehicle purchase our trip is now in motion. We're going to spend a couple days mountain biking and the rest hiking or trail running. I've always loved ridding but haven't found friends that found bombing down some trails near as appealing as I did. Since I have two bikes Randy looked into renting Julie a bike for the trip. Instead of paying $45/ day to rent a good bike or $25 a day for some huffy that we would surly destroy I searched Craig's List high and low. I found a early to mid 2000's Rockhopper for $250. It was a great deal and now Palo Duro is approaching fast.
During my scouring of YouTube for footage of the trails I saw the same boring, un-creative videos posted. Every video was POV from the handlebars or helmet cam with a one track laid over the footage. Watching ANYTHING unedited is usually horrible. In the case of flat mountain bike trails it turns into a fight to stay awake. When I looked at some videos from the other trails like Moab, anything in Colorado, or the Northwest the video's were light years ahead. Maybe it's from spending a years watching wakeboard or MX videos but even the homemade from that sport looked great. I started thinking... The folks that make these videos are either very dense or think 5 straight minutes of POV flat riding is exciting. I could do better. 9 years ago I messed around with Pinnacle on non-digital tapes and the effects and editing weren't complicated if you had a vision for what you wanted or knew how to chose the tracks tempo with the flow of the video. Knowing how advanced video editing has come in 9 years I'm sure the ability to manipulate the layering, add effects, and play with the acoustics have increased ten fold. With that in mind I've bought a Camera for the trip and once back I'll spend some time editing the footage and then post it. If its unwatchable you can rip me.
With this first exercise like vacation coming I had an idea while I was talking to TO. I should do a triathlon. I love to bike, running kind of bores me after 4 miles but I've done much further before, which would leave swimming as my hurdle. I hoped on a few beginner sites for training and they each say it takes about 13- 16 weeks to complete the program. Considering I did the hotter than hell 102 mile bike ride on 4 weeks notice I think I can mange 10 weeks. There is a sprint tri in McKinney on April 15th, so I've marked my calendar and now have a goal. I'm planning a tentative Olympic distance tri for June..I've been ridding my mountain bike a lot recently but I haven't touched the roadie in about a year. The Northshore trail on Grapevine has been my Saturday morning home for every weekend where the rain hasn't closed it down. In my previous less fat life I realized the transition from Mountain to road is so much easier than the opposite. I'm going to keep to the MTB until after Palo and then its on to the roadie to get the feel again for climbing and stability. My running is... well, it sucks. I'm up to 2.7 miles in 30 minutes. Transitioning to the treadmill has done wonders to increase that time as I was doing 2 miles in about 25 minutes. Anther thing that has helped is playing indoor soccer on Sundays and then outdoor on Monday's. The indoor field we went too is a little larger than your standard indoor field which allows us to have more touches but also has increased the sprints. I'm not going to lie, the first game we played there after taking a month and a half off I thought a lung exploded. Notice I didn't mention training for the swim? I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to train for that. It looks like I will end up getting a membership at 24hr close to here and then using their pool. I'll have to swim 3 days a week since that will be the Achilles heel.... And the it starts now!
During my scouring of YouTube for footage of the trails I saw the same boring, un-creative videos posted. Every video was POV from the handlebars or helmet cam with a one track laid over the footage. Watching ANYTHING unedited is usually horrible. In the case of flat mountain bike trails it turns into a fight to stay awake. When I looked at some videos from the other trails like Moab, anything in Colorado, or the Northwest the video's were light years ahead. Maybe it's from spending a years watching wakeboard or MX videos but even the homemade from that sport looked great. I started thinking... The folks that make these videos are either very dense or think 5 straight minutes of POV flat riding is exciting. I could do better. 9 years ago I messed around with Pinnacle on non-digital tapes and the effects and editing weren't complicated if you had a vision for what you wanted or knew how to chose the tracks tempo with the flow of the video. Knowing how advanced video editing has come in 9 years I'm sure the ability to manipulate the layering, add effects, and play with the acoustics have increased ten fold. With that in mind I've bought a Camera for the trip and once back I'll spend some time editing the footage and then post it. If its unwatchable you can rip me.
With this first exercise like vacation coming I had an idea while I was talking to TO. I should do a triathlon. I love to bike, running kind of bores me after 4 miles but I've done much further before, which would leave swimming as my hurdle. I hoped on a few beginner sites for training and they each say it takes about 13- 16 weeks to complete the program. Considering I did the hotter than hell 102 mile bike ride on 4 weeks notice I think I can mange 10 weeks. There is a sprint tri in McKinney on April 15th, so I've marked my calendar and now have a goal. I'm planning a tentative Olympic distance tri for June..I've been ridding my mountain bike a lot recently but I haven't touched the roadie in about a year. The Northshore trail on Grapevine has been my Saturday morning home for every weekend where the rain hasn't closed it down. In my previous less fat life I realized the transition from Mountain to road is so much easier than the opposite. I'm going to keep to the MTB until after Palo and then its on to the roadie to get the feel again for climbing and stability. My running is... well, it sucks. I'm up to 2.7 miles in 30 minutes. Transitioning to the treadmill has done wonders to increase that time as I was doing 2 miles in about 25 minutes. Anther thing that has helped is playing indoor soccer on Sundays and then outdoor on Monday's. The indoor field we went too is a little larger than your standard indoor field which allows us to have more touches but also has increased the sprints. I'm not going to lie, the first game we played there after taking a month and a half off I thought a lung exploded. Notice I didn't mention training for the swim? I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to train for that. It looks like I will end up getting a membership at 24hr close to here and then using their pool. I'll have to swim 3 days a week since that will be the Achilles heel.... And the it starts now!
