New shoes!

I’ve been looking for a pair of nice trail running shoes for awhile now.  Mostly for racing some of the Western NH Trail Series and then so I can change up some of my normal road routes around the neighborhood.
I ended up with a pair of Saucony Peregrine.  Very nice shoes.  They label them as “minimalist” shoes, but they feel similar in heel height to my Mizuno Wave Rider 14 shoes.

The first run on these shoes was a short loop (here is the GPS data) behind Beaver Meadow Golf Course and the Seawalls Falls Trail.

The Spring weather continues to baffle us here in NH.  One day we are riding in shorts and arm warmers, the next day it full leg warmers, vest, hat, etc.  I’m really looking forward to something even close to the 70’s and sunny.  We had 3 nice days Wednesday – Friday this week, but of course once the weekend hit it’s rain and clouds for at least the next 5-6 days.  Oh Joy.

Mia and I did manage to get out on Monday for a nice ride together.

And finally, I got in the full blown loop of the End Of Days Ride on Saturday 5/14/2011.  It’s in pretty good condition.  Currently there are two sections that are a little nasty.  I almost ripped my derailleur off the Fargo on the old roads behind Blackwater Dam.  I was cursing up a storm and thinking that my ride had ended before even getting 1 hour into the loop.  With a little bit of luck and a lot of anger I bent the hanger back so that I had use of everything but the 12 tooth cog.  I had to be careful too, becuase in the 34 tooth, it wanted to shift into the spokes if I wasn’t careful.
Paul happens to have a park derailleur hanger tool.   So after I got home from the loop we managed to get the thing back in functioning order.  I currently have my doubts about how well it will take another mishap.  It became more than readily apparent why Salsa Cycles put a replaceable hanger on the 2011 Fargo frameset.  I’ll ride this 1st generation frame until I break it beyond repair and then replace it with the updated frameset.
The other part of the loop that is pretty rough is the railbed after Stirrup Iron Road.  It leads from the NH State Nursery back in to Boscawen and at times you are riding over 2-3″ gravel that after 3 hours of riding was almost my undoing.  I was doing my best to not come undone.  The big teaser is that the gravel lasts about 10 minutes, then you get a nice long reprieve and then it comes back for a short section, another reprieve and one final section that had me wishing for my 2.2″ tires instead of the 1.5″ tires I tested out today.
Here is the data for the full loop.  I really hope it is more than me doing this next weekend.

Thanks for reading!

-Pete