Last week was a big mileage week for me, as I prepared for the Mohican 100 this coming weekend . In total I did 18.5 hours of riding. The highlight of the week and actually the last ride I did was on Saturday at North Park. I grew up at the edge of North Park and as a teenager rode the horse trials there long before mountain bikes were even invented on my MCS Magnum 26" BMX Cruiser in the early 1980s. In many ways that old bike was not much different than my current single speed mtn bike. But, it was not my bike that made this ride special.
The old horse trails of Allegheny County's North Park were okay to ride back in the day, as long as you did not ride them on a muddy day after a group of horses were there. The trails now, however, are absolutely amazing. I ended up doing about 4 hours and 20 minutes of riding on Saturday, with about 3 of those hours on the new single track cut all over North Park. The trails were so much fun that I barely noticed how long I was on the bike. There were so many new trails to choose from that I was glad to have Andy along with me as a trail guide, since this is home training turf and he is very familiar with the new trail network.
Anyway, I need to say thank you to PTAG for the hard work they did on the North Park Trails. It is volunteers from PTAG that made riding at North Park a completely new experience for me. One of our team's sponsors from the Law Firm of SPK, Brian DelVecchio, is a PTAG member and a big contributor to this trail work at the park and so he deserves a big thank you also.
I must say that if you haven't been out to the North Park Trails lately, you do need to get there and ride. And when you do ride the trails, think about how much work went into them and then thank Brian or any other PTAG Member that you know for what they did and continue to do to improve the mtb riding at the park.
On another note, only four more days until the Mohican 100, so this is an easy training week for me. The weather for race day now looks like it should be pretty good. Additionally, I am feeling good and everything else seems to be ready to go, so hopefully, with some good luck, I can ride to another NUE Series 100 mile single speed win on Saturday. Happy Trails - Gerry
2 comments:
Gerry - thanks for the praise. PTAG-North Park has been working very hard to bring the collective desires of all kinds of riders into one sound, sustainable, and fun trail design. We really hope to get more people involved over time and eventually get IMBA interested in what we are doing. They are watching us, and if we can somehow land big funding we can get a lot more done with the trails in NP. And way to represent for North Park too buddy! We are all behind you!
-Deluxe
As I say in my post..Thanks to you guys that do the work in the park. It is priceless and definitely worthy of praise. If I lived closer, I would be there all the time. The trails rock!
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