Ironcross Primer

Back on Independence Day The Dingo, Liz, ChrisD, and DBO did an epic cross ride that made several of us that couldn't go jealous. See blog entry HERE.

So when the opportunity for a follow up ride presented itself there was no shortage of those willing to spend their Sunday exploring the back roads of James City County.

I'll admit that going into the ride I was pretty nervous. I had good reason to be in part because I'm still trying to get base miles in and because everyone else that said they were "IN" were local hammerheads. The roster read like this: Crazy, K-Dawg, Tim S, Bill G, Young Mark (who just finished 8th at Junior Nationals!), and the newest member of Tri-Power, The Manimal. In addition some fast dude named Josh and Robert Sawyer joined the mix.

This ride had all the makings of a major bonk! I was hoping to a) not get dropped, b) not get lost and c) make it back alive.

After a quick ride through York River State Park and a brief section of paved road we hit the first gravel/fire road we had our first casualty. Steveo (aka The Manimal) suffered a flat. After a quick fix he was off and running again...but not for long. At the end of the fire road he suffered another flat and instead of getting further out and having more problems he turned back. Then it was Crazy's turn to have an issue when he broke a spoke. I offered to escort him back but he declined, giving the order to press on. So we did! We cruised through some beautiful country side, seeing the occasional JRVS rider and enjoying the cool weather.

Then Young Mark took a wrong turn and went into time trial mode. Crazy, with a broken spoke, had to chase the dude down and get him back on course. This set us back on time and forced us to finish the last of the gravel road sections before we took a shortened route back to York. Still, DBO saved the best fire road section for last and it left us all chomping at the bit for more. A quit trip down route 60 had us back at our cars and home to our HH6's before any of us got into trouble.

In the end we managed about 55 miles of back country/gravel roads...perfect warm up for Ironcross. We were all talking about doing it again real soon so keep your eyes on the blogs to find out when we'll be doing it all over again.