Dreaming of Dakar

I took the DRZ for it's first "proper" ride today.  In New Hampshire we have what we call "class 6" roads which means they are still public roads but are no longer maintained and have "Travel at your own risk" signs on them.  The other day I was looking at some maps and found what looked to be an interesting road.

When I got there the sign was very encouraging!

I didn't want to get too crazy since I was by myself but I decided to continue on.  I didn't get any pics of the trickier bits that I went through (too busy riding and keeping the bike on the wheels).  I really need to get a helmet cam for rides like this.  There were a few bits that I found very challenging but managed to make it through without dropping the bike.

Here is a shot looking back up the hill I came down.

This bit was just muddy, much of the rest of the road was very rocky mixed with mud, a nice challenge but I never felt like I was in real danger.  Of course I had all my off-road gear on and was prepared for a fall should it happen.

Then I got to this bit which was a bit more of a challenge than I had wanted.

There is a stream that used to cross the road here but now the stream IS the road.  Actually it is much more stream than road now.  So, I decided to turn back up the hill.  It was a little more challenging going uphill since I needed to maintain more momentum in the mud but still made it with no incidents.

From the map I knew that this was a through road so I decided to take a look from the other side.

According to my GPS I managed to get within 0.1 miles of where I stopped in the other direction.  Here is where the stream and the road split off again.

Perhaps after some more practice I will go back and try to make it through.  I don't think I want to try it solo however just in case since I don't think anybody would find me for quite some time if I was laying there injured.

The rest of the day was less eventful.  I enjoyed a lot of nice back roads and put on about 75 miles on the bike.

 

Sorry it has been so long with no updates.  I see the last update I made was a month ago now and it was just a quick note saying we were going to Costa Rica.  So time to catch everyone up.

Costa Rica was great.  Always good to go somewhere warm in February when you live in New England.  We mostly just took it easy but we did get some good exercise from hiking from the beach back to the campsite.  The road up to the rainforest preserve is about 3/4 of a mile and climbs up around 600ft.  Some parts were exceptionally steep so it was a good workout.  It was also a lot warmer than we expected.  We had looked at weather forecasts for Costa Rica ahead of time but the only forecasts we were able to find was for San Jose which is far from the coast and at a higher elevation.  Down by the beach it was upper 80's / lower 90's I would suspect.  Not horribly hot but certainly took a day or two to get adjusted coming from New Hampshire.

Spring has finally arrived in New Hampshire.  Last week most days were in the 60's and sunny.  Most of the snow and ice is gone out on the trails in the woods so I can get back into some more hiking.  Over the winter I have been focused more on strength training and not as much cardio.  I am getting back outside for some of my workouts now.  Last fall I had been doing long slow hikes but I am changing that up and trying to do shorter, more intense hikes so I can get my heart rate up.  Also, running on rocky and uneaven trails is good for agility and proprioception training as well.  It is nice that my knees are strong enough to do it now.

My weight has been hovering right around 196 pounds (17 pounds under where I started) for the last several weeks so I am not loosing much weight now but I most certainly am getting stronger.  I think now that I will be more active outside I should be able to loose some more weight.  Granted, weight is not the important thing, yes the bike will perform better if it is hauling less of me around, but the critical thing is my fitness.  Mostly weight is just an easy to measure aspect so I tend to mention it.

I have some big plans for this summer but I will leave that for another post.  I want to keep these short enough for the attention span challenged readers (like myself).

 

Jane and I are heading to Costa Rica tomorrow to escape winter for a week.  Will be nice to be in a warm climate for a few days and am looking forward to it.  I will post pics here when we get back.

 

I hit another early milestone in the plan.  One if the key things I started at the beginning of the plan was phusical therapy for my knee issues.  I had my last session today, the therapist says I am doing well and it is just a matter of keeping up with the exercises and stretches.  I am amazed at how I can do exercises that were very painful at the beginning.

Also, I weighed myself at 198 pounds this morning.  That is 15 pounds under where I started.  I have not been under 200 pounds since college.  Now, I know weight is by no means the critical thing but it is a convinient metric to follow.  The fact that I have done this almost exclusively using strength training shows how hard I have been working.  Once the snow and ice melts I plan on getting back into the hiking and dust off the old bicycle to work on my cardiovascular endurance.

Went out on a local pond on Sunday with a few guys for some riding. Mike let me have a try on his DR350. I seriously need to figure out how to get my bike to handle so well! Suddenly I felt like a much better rider. I will see about doing the same sort of tire set up next winter on my DRZ400.

A couple of pics and a short vid of me on Mike's bike: