After spending Saturday doing more recon than riding, we were pumped to finally hit the orange trail headed out of the Wolf Gap campground on Sunday and begin the mile+ climb up to the ridge. Once at the top, views opened up to valleys east and west of us, and rode/scrambled over the rocky ridgeline to the Big Schloss split. Although my faulty map reading actually took us up the white trail to top of Big Schloss (the blue trail was not to be found up there, as I’d erroneously projected), but the view was great from the rocky ledges. Once again though, timing was forcing us to cut our ride short and head straight back down to the parking lot rather than continue theMill Mountain loop like we’d hoped. Total mileage would be under 5, but were glad just to have gotten some riding in.

But, on the descent, disaster struck. Apparently, unfamiliar trails and high speeds don’t mix though, and I found myself off the side of trail about halfway down when I went too wide on a left-hand curve. Upon reentering the trail, I hit a rut (or something) and starting bucking around a bit, and finally realized that I was no longer in control of the bike. My feet eventually lost the pedals; and, next thing I knew, I was airborne. A classic endo, with my arms extended in front of me and the bike getting ready for a bouncy ride. When the crash was over, I instantly knew something was wrong with my arm, but I wasn’t sure what. It hurt badly and I was short of breath. Lewis caught up to me pretty quickly, but hadn’t seen the crash because I was ahead of her in the turn. When she got to me, I told her that I thought my arm was broken; since, by all counts, it wasn’t hanging quite right. Without knowing exactly what the issue was, we started rigging together a sling out of an inner tube; but, before we got too far, the group of hikers showed up. And, by some stroke of good fortune, the group’s leader just happened to be an MD who had dealt with situations such as mine before. He knew that my shoulder was dislocated and quickly set to work trying to get it back in place. Initially, he tried to raise my arm over my head to get it back in place, but that wasn’t working. So his next move was to lay me on my back, put a foot into my armpit, and pull straight out on my arm until the shoulder mercifully–and audibly–popped back into place. After that, we slinged it back up, returned to the house to let my parents know what the situation was, and pack up for the trip home to the INOVA ER.

I’d been wanting to show Lewis the section of the CCT that ran from Oak Marr rec center out to the W&OD trail, so we finally got a chance this past Sunday along with Kat. The plan was to hit the W&OD, head west, do the Difficult Run loop, and return on the CCT to our house. With a brief stop at Starbucks, the ride came to 28.47 miles; which we know because Kat had her sweet, new Garmin GPS with her. I need one.

After suffering from back spasms the previous week right up until the day before the start, I was super happy to actually be able to finish this race/ride. I even beat my previous year’s time by about 20 minutes, so it was an all-around win, as far as I’m concerned.

I decided on Saturday that the only way I’d make it was if I didn’t tote a 20 pound Camelback around for 12 hours, so I grabbed an bottle cage from the Revolution Cycles tent and a water bottle from the Dirt Rag crew and stuck a seat bag on my rails with enough crud to fix a tire and make some minor trail-side repairs. I never did flat, but did manage to tweak my front rim and blow out my chain. I bummed a spoke wrench to true the rim at Aid Station 4, but was almost SOL when my chain popped shortly after leaving the final aid station. Fortunately for me, the first rider to come up to me had a SRAM Speed Link which allowed me to complete the repair quickly and finish things up.

Probably the biggest win for me is that I seem to be getting my leg cramps under control by worrying less about eating bananas and focusing more on E-tabs and keeping a light mixture of Cytomax in one of my water bottles. There was some minor cramping I needed to fight through, but the post-ride cramps were minimal, and I didn’t suffer any of the mid-night lockups that have plagued me in the past. Good news, indeed!

Although we had planned on going to the WUSS Liberty Jamboree on Saturday, a ceiling leak, courtesy of our upstairs neighbor, kept us home too late to get to the start on time. So, instead, we decided we’d head out to Elizabeth Furnace for something more challenging than the local stuff we always ride. I hadn’t been to Elizabeth Furnace in years; and, then, only once, so I didn’t really remember what to expect. I did recall the climb to Signal Knob being pretty steep and loose, but ridable. What I didn’t remember was how UN-ridable parts of the Green Mountain climb (and descent) are. Almost the entire climb is rock-strewn, so Lewis and I ended up pushing through much of it. Overall though, the ride was great, and we capped it off with margaritas and quesadillas at FGIFridays in Front Royal afterward. Yum!

Although a cloud of sadness was still settled on Lewis following Paw Paw’s passing just weeks earlier, we enjoyed some decent backcountry conditions and had a good time riding with Rachel, Ike, Maria, and Maria’s sister. Heavy snow forced us off the mountain early our last day at The Canyons.