{"id":2506,"date":"2021-02-05T11:48:23","date_gmt":"2021-02-05T19:48:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mountainbikebill.com\/blog\/?p=2506"},"modified":"2021-02-05T11:48:32","modified_gmt":"2021-02-05T19:48:32","slug":"back-in-the-saddle-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mountainbikebill.com\/blog\/?p=2506","title":{"rendered":"Back in the Saddle!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This has been a pretty awesome week. Sunday I did my first MTB ride since my heart valve replacement surgery in November. The big litmus test was having enough upper body strength to lift the bike up onto my over the bed truck rack on my truck. I had also been doing some tooling around on the bike on the street and curbs and not being jostled so it was time to give the sternum (along with its titanium wire reinforcements) some mild strength tests. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Orosco Ridge and Pamo Valley<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Lower Santa Ysabel Truck Trail Area<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The climb up onto the ridge was good and it was so nice to be doing some huffing and puffing on a real bike out in the sunshine. I also checked out the Lower San Ysabel truck trail. All of which was in good shape. My sternum felt pretty good but there was mild discomfort over some of the chatterish stuff. None of the discomfort rose to the level of a sneeze! All together about I did 15 miles and change with about 1,400 feet of climbing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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South side of Lake Hodges<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Wednesday, I went out to South Lake Hodges. Well I actually parked on the North Side and took the bridge over. My tenure at riding this place predates the bridge so I still refer to them as two separate places. But I did the typical Southside stuff and then made my way over to the Highland Valley trail. At this point it was pretty obvious that most of my workouts have been no longer than 60 minutes so I took bit of a break. After that I was back at it and the Highland Valley trail was a fun as I remembered it. I decided to do a touch of road connection and made my way over to Raptor Ridge. I was pretty tired after climbing Raptor Ridge and I was going to close out day with a return back via Mule Hill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The bottom of Raptor Ridge. I ran out of gears shortly after those rocks \ud83d\ude42<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I was almost back to the kiosk area of Mule Hill when I was stopped by an SDGE crew who had the trail closed for some pipeline work. There was no detour so I had to backtrack about 2 miles to get back onto Highland Valley road to get then work my way back around. The trail should have been close at the last trail junction where people could divert around. While this was inconvenience for my tired legs. There was a hiker who got turned around that was really bummed. I did make them aware of this and hopefully they apply some common sense on where they close at for the remainder of their workdays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All together I got in about 25miles and 1,200 feet of climbing. It was more than I had planned and I was well whooped. It is so good to be back on the dirt and certainly better to be on the dirt than in the dirt!<\/p>\n

More Stuff Like This<\/h3><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
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<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Hockey in San Jose<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n<\/div>