My Own Private Biathelon

I'm finally getting back to mountain biking which has been a passion of mine

I had stopped for a while partially because my bike got stolen out of my locked shed (grrr - new bike lives in the house now), but also because the braking was hurting my hands and wrists.
Well during my time off my wrists healed and the technology of the brakes has improved dramatically with the invention of disc brakes for bikes. So I got a newer version of my bike (a Fischer Hoo Koo E Koo - it's not just the name I like I swear - it's a really cool bike too.) but I haven't done a whole lot with it this year because of the weather.

ANYway back to what I was going to write about. When I'm on a ride I'm frequently on my own and though I'm working to change that, it does have some interesting benefits. The best of which is that I'm not constantly comparing myself to someone else. I can feel good about what I've accomplished without the "what if"s and "if only"s of: what if I could keep up with person X or if only I climb as well as person Y.

My ride was 10 miles at Mt. Diablo in Mitchell Canyon. 1 of those miles I pushed the bike up 800' of elevation. The cool thing was that I wasn't trying to keep up with someone else and I found myself mentally embracing the bike pushing because it's exercising different muscles (hamstrings in particular) that don't usually get as worked out when biking. So in a way I was doing a bike/walk biathelon of sorts if you will and what's intriguing me is that I'm wondering if this is a good workout for climbing training since you are working out more of your leg that you would if you're just biking which is very quad intensive.

May be I should ask Courtenay of Body Results for her opinion about this though I'm not a client right now.

Anyway the best part of all that bike pushing was that I got to go down on the bike. Wheeee! I love this as I hate walking down steep, gravely hills.