So I went for my 4 hour ride this morning. I accidentally left one of my favorite water bottles at the Shelby Forest General Store. Luckily, Ryan gave me one of his when I ran out of water about an hour from home.
Once we got home, I grabbed a snack and headed back out to ride more at Stanky Creek. I wanted to ride a solid two hours in preparation for Dirt Sweat & Gears in a couple of weeks. Other than my legs feeling a bit sluggish in the first few minutes, I warmed up and actually felt pretty damn good. I really wanted to focus on not using my brakes as much, looking ahead instead of down, and generally carrying more speed into tricky spots where I usually tend to slow down.

I was doing this well.

Then I rolled over some leftover branches from a downed tree that had been cleared from the trail. I heard a stick hit my spokes, and a fraction of a second later, I felt as if someone had ripped my bike out from under me as something jammed into my rear wheel (maybe a stick between the spoke/frame?) Though the bike stopped abruptly, I kept moving, and ended up falling onto the handlebars and jamming a bar end into the meaty part of my thigh. It hurt too much for me to curse, so I just sat on the trail for a minute looking at my bike and trying to figure out WTF just happened. I’m not sure, because once I did get back on, the chain started skipping between gear and being generally noisy. I’m hoping it’s not a bent derailleur hanger, but the way my luck has been with those lately, it probably is. Whatever it was, it cut my afternoon ride time short by an hour.

So I’m officially labeling this weekend as a “fail” (though since the first part of yesterday was pretty good, I’ll reserve the label of “epic” fail).