Terrace Oaks
Monday, June 12th, 2006I got a chance to ride Terrace Oaks for the first time tonight due to my biking week’s crappy start. Normally, when I know it’s going to be a biking day, I’ll avoid drinking pop or eating fast food. Well, because of the rain, I did both today. Who would have thought that the sky would clear for a glorious night of 60-degree weather?
Those of you who are atheletes know how bad pop (soda for you non-midwesterners) and fast food are for you. If energy and endurance on a clean day are 100%, then about the best you can do on a junk food day is 60%. One might turn around and ask, “Hey..if you bike 30 miles a week, why the heck are you beating up your body that way!?” Turns out that I drink a lot of pop when I write code, and I write a lot of code in a week.
So, I got in a medium lap at lebanon tonight, which is 4.4 miles, according to my spedometer. After that, I just felt sore and depleted, so I didn’t bother to do another lap. However, about halfway home, I passed Terrace Oaks and decided to see if I could get second wind.
Terrace Oaks was very similar to Lebanon Hills in a lot of ways. There’s a really nice singletrack that winds through the woods and up and down the hills. The major difference I noticed on the intermediate part was that Terrace Oaks is more geared toward technical ability and climbing in contrast to Lebanon Hill’s being geared toward endurance and speed.
TO’s expert section was very challenging… on par with the XX (double expert) section at LH. The reason I say that is that the climbs were rediculously hard and involved a lot of obstacles like logs and tight turns around close trees. Another new thing I encountered was tight downhills around trees, which I just hadn’t encountered before and considered to be more of a nuisance than fun. Needless to say, I’ll probably skip the X section of TO next time I ride it.
TO also has a lot of ski trails near the end of it, which are fun for seeing just how fast you can go in the woods. The only bad part is that they’re gravel, so don’t make any sudden moves.
All in all, it was a fun trail to ride with minimal energy, and it’s within reasonable biking distance of my apartment. I’ll definitely be going back soon. Check out the links to Terrace Oaks and Lebanon Hills on the left-hand side for pictures and other peoples’ reviews.