Toby's Trail.

 Friday stayed warm all day with the occasional wet snow falling.  Once again Toby and I headed out to Sand Prairie.  I used snowshoes, still not needed, and pulled a sled filled with bricks.  First, hats off to all the athletes that do the winter races I do on foot pulling a sled.  That's not easy!

While pulling the sled was hard it made for a great trail.  It was warm so some spots were slushy.  These would later turn to ice sections.  Toby and I made laps for 3 hours.  Snowshoes, wet snow, and pulling the sled left my knees unhappy.  But we had the makings of a solid trail once it cooled off.

That afternoon I headed to the basement and the rower.  This time I hit 15,000 meters.  That took a bit over an hour.  The idea of a half marathon is somewhat intriguing.  That would be about 6000 more meters.  A full marathon still seems unimaginable. 

Saturday the temperatures did drop so it was go time!  After getting Avery to gymnastics I headed down to Sand Prairie, starting at the North entrance.

I was greeted by this.  Are you kidding me?!  I was pretty pissed.  

There is no fixing this until we get more snow or another warmup. Luckily they only

went about 1.5 miles on the trails.  It's a pretty gnarly 1.5 miles.  Studs recommended.

Overall I was pleased with how the trails rode.  We definitely would benefit from more snow to smooth things out but I'm weird and kind of like that rough and slow riding on the fat bike.

This is a new reed section.  It's the area that will benefit the most from more use and more snow.

After 3 hours of Sand Prairie I went up to the North Loop.  That is running very well right now.  But again, studded tires are recommended, or extreme caution.  

Several sections are like this. The trail was snowshoed while wet so this is the aftermath.

The prison has decided this is a good spot to push the snow from their parking lot. 

From the North Loop I took the crossover to Friedrich Park.  That was still very wet and not frozen.  I did hit it back up on Sunday and it's froze now.

The Ride.

Saturday night and even early Sunday morning I contemplated about hitting up Cuyuna.  But as I do so many times I pushed that aside for local trails.  I get hung up on the extra time required to get there and back.  So back to Sand Prairie!  Oddly it seemed to be riding a bit better.  Again I hit up all the trails, some more than others.  This time I started at the main entrance and left from the North entrance.  At hwy 10 I went straight across and bushwhacked to Friedrich Park.  There were a few groups of people walking with their dogs so I kept it short and took the now frozen crossover trail to the North Loop.  Did a mini loop and headed home.

The Ride.

That afternoon Toby, two of the girls, and I went back to Sand Prairie.  We hiked the short loop from the North entrance. 

Toby leading the way.

Brinna and Harper.

Overall it was a great 4 days out at Sand Prairie!  I'm really hoping for some more snow to improve the ride.

Last week I was down in ride time, 15 hours.  But I was up in snowshoe and rowing time giving me 25.5 hours on the week.  So far my goal of not "just" biking is working out.

Happy Week.