When we were
at the ranch store I bought some PVC pipe, traffic cones, salt lick holders and then got some screws and stakes from the lumber yard and went about building some barriers. It took no times at all and voila! Instant barriers that are portable and easy to setup/take down.If you say previous pics of the ranch you will notice a lot of scrub and bushes on the land. Instead of buying stakes and caution tape to construct corners, I will use small contractor flags to mark bushes for cornering on the course. I also planned on making a sand pit and getting some bails of hay for making a simple run up. This has all the promise of a bitchin' course!
So I laid out the first third of the course and try it out. The ground looks like hard desert soil, but is surprisingly soft and loose, like sand combined with mud. I sink in some spots which makes pedaling exhausting and the scrub plants are so hard that they just about stop me in my track
s when I hit them. You almost needed a MTB to get through it! I had another idea - Lisa bought a tiller and I went over some portions of the course to try to dig under some of the scrub and even out the land a bit. That should work, right? Wrong. I tried the course again and the smooth parts were now basically sand pits and the scrub was still unforgiving. I felt a sudden pang in my heart - this isn't going to work :( I was barely keeping up enough speed to stay upright let alone corner with any discernible speed or take any speed into barriers for jumping. I know, I know, I will probably encounter something similar during a race this season, but for practice it was terrible. Ugh.The land has won.
Luckily the dirt road was smooth enough for barrier jumping purposes and the dirt road intersections were good for some cornering so that saved me, but I'm still disappointed in my failed course :(
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