Training Log Archive: Fanatic

I hadn't been on the real twisty, hard-to-follow bike trail to the north of Reservoir Road for some time, like perhaps a couple of years. I found a map of the trail on Trailforks.com, so I downloaded their app, hoping it might help with navigation.

Well, the app was doing pretty good at showing the tricky turns, but eventually I missed one and then found myself retracing my route--not a good option since I had already done about seven miles. And, my cell battery was dying, so there wasn't much time left. I put the phone on power save and shut the Trailforks app down (although it continued to run in the background) and opened up my compass on the phone and just headed south/southeast since I knew it would intersect the trail close to where I had parked.

On my way out, I met a couple of bikers, whom I had seen where I parked on Reservoir Road. They were out cutting up some of the bigger trees that had fallen across the trail. Chatted with them for a while, then conintued, only to find them back at their cars when I arrived.

So we talked for some time about the trail; in fact the trail that I used to run as an 8-mile loop has now been expanded to 14 miles! Little did I know. LOL

Turns out they do maintenance every Monday, so I offered to do whatever I could, albeit without a mountain bike to get me out there. There's still plenty of small stuff that could be cut back.

The trail even has a name now: The Finger Trail. I was told that they couldn't decide whether the finger was a thumbs-up, a #1 with the index finger, or a f*cking beast with the middle finger. Let's just say I'd vote for the middle finger option. It is listed as a Double Black Diamond, the toughest ranking on Trailforks, so someone might agree with me.

Next time I'll go counter-clockwise so I can learn the newer section better.