Photo: A picture of the trails in Shawnee Mission Park I found on Flickr (thanks, felixtcat). Today, Chris and I were seriously considering crashing the Discover ride. Not in a bad way. In a commuter way. Later on in the day, we'd decided it would be much more interesting to break out our mountain bikes and do some honest-to-God single track.
See, I haven't actually been on a formal mountain bike trail. I've used deer trails. I've made my own first tracks. I've even ridden on 4x4 trails. Although I can tell the stuff I was riding on really isn't that technical, it was the roughest stuff I've ever subjected any bicycle to, and it was also the longest time I've spent bludgeoning a bicycle in these kinds of conditions.
Was it fun? You bet! We probably only put 6 or 7 miles on, but I'd bet I worked twice as hard as if I'd ridden 20 miles with the roadies this evening.
Chris might have more photos later. If so, I'll link to them.
let me know when you want to hit up SMP off-road. i love those trails.
ReplyDeletehttp://jasonpreu.com/blog/?p=207
I am really a mountain biker at heart. I'm glad you tried some singletrack. The more you ride, the more addictive it becomes, especially as you start getting better at it.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, it takes at least twice the effort of road biking, but it the amount of fun increases proportionally. I also really enjoy being out enjoying nature. I hope you'll hit some more singletrack in your area.