A Little Faster at Southridge- Cody

Today I had a great ride at the Southridge Park course. The weather was a great with the temperature hovering in the upper 60's or low 70's. The sun was out, the smog wasn't too noticeable. I went directly after work, as was evident by my wearing brown dress socks during my ride since I forgot regular socks.

I had 2 goals in mind on this ride:
1. Ride faster than my last Southridge ride
2. Capture as much video as possible with my new helmet cam mount for my digital camera.

I was successful on both counts. I cut my ride time by 4 minutes while riding a little bit farther due to a course change. At the same time, I cut my total ride duration (including breaks) by about 20 minutes. I felt much better during this ride compared to Slowpoke at Southridge. I compared my results with the race results for those in the final race in March of this year; I would have placed 20th in my heat (beginners), and 5th in my age and class (27-34 beginners).

I was also able to capture quite a bit of video with the helmet camera. It stayed very secure during the entire ride, always pointing in the right direction. An interesting note: to capture video I have to reach up and hit the shutter button every 30 seconds or so. My camera only takes 30 seconds of video at a time. Dad's will take up to 3 minutes. Dad reported that he got seven 3 minute shots during his last ride. I got about the same but had to take 42 shots.

One unfortunate mishap with the helmet cam was that I accidentally zoomed in slightly during the final third of the course. Zooming in caused the video to be jittery and pretty difficult to make out. It was a good lesson learned, even though I lost some great footage of the beautiful green trails strewn with wild flowers I'm enjoying right now (don't worry, they'll turn brown this summer).

Stats-
Distance: 6.9 miles
Average Speed: 7.7 mph
Top speed: 26.4 mph
Trip time: 53:30 minutes
Total ascent: 1028 ft