D2D Training

I went out to Lake Perry for some training and to reacquaint myself with the terrain and trails prior to the Dusk to Dawn race on the 19th the other day. I have the week off and have been bumming around the house and decided to get in a few miles instead. I picked the hottest day of the year and there was absolutely NO wind to help cool me down in my mid-day ride. I expected the worst as most trails suffer from overgrown brush and grass during the summer months around Missouri. I slathered on the bug spray and hoped for the best.

I started out biking on the State Park trails with plans to ride all of them. I did the Wild West and the Great White Loop and then headed up the shore on Logans run before I was overcome with the heat. I popped out on the service road and and road pavement back to parking lot. I got eight miles on bike. Seemed like 30.

I was pleasantly surprised that the trails were mowed back and trimmed to immaculate condition. Props to the trail managers. If there was poison ivy out there, it never made it near the trails.

The ticks were another story. They were thick enough to carry me away and they tried on several attempts. A large one actually tried to steal the keys to my car. I stopped regularly to pull them off. They seemed to have grown resistant to DEET.

I juiced back up and decided to go back out on foot to map out the remainder of the trails near the trail head. I hit the Skyline, Willow and the Mad Mile and had racked up another 5 miles before calling it a day.

I've done the D2D twice before and this had to be the first time I've ridden these trails during the day. I can't say that I look forward to crashing through all the spider webs while picking my way in this maze of trails in the dark later this month...but training sure was fun, even in the heat.