Mountain Biking, etc.

Went out mountain biking on Sunday afternoon. I have neglected the mountain biking, as road biking goals have taken the place of the 2-3 mtb rides per week. I have been riding the mtb maybe once per month lately. I decided to go ahead and put the Garmin 705 on the mtb for the ride. I've wanted to do this for quite awhile, but was always concerned with losing one of the sensors or worse, crashing and killing the unit itself. What the heck, I really wanted to see the stats on one of my mtb rides that I've been doing for over 15 years now. I rode over to the trail head, 10 minutes each way, then hit the lap on the garmin and rode one loop the normal way and one loop reverse, which is pretty harsh. I didn't do any record pace, just wanted to set a baseline and get it on the computer. When I got home and downloaded the ride I was pretty shocked. These trails have many climbs that are 19% + and one part at 24%. It was 2245 feet of climbing in 12.1 miles. Now we know why mountain bikes have the third chainring. On my road bike I usually do somewhere between a 2:1 and 1:1 ratio for miles of climbing vs thousands of feet of climbing, so this mtb ride data was quite shocking. This ride is very challenging today and has been over the years on different bikes including a Bridgestone MB-S and a GT Zaskar. My current mountain bike is a Turner Flux that weighs right around 25#s. So now that I have the data, I put the Garmin back on the Trek and went out for 61 miles this morning. Just some low intensity miles keeping the hr below 160, most of the time. I'm going to start back into my intervals tomorrow, as I've been slacking off without a cadence sensor. I got a new battery for the cadence sensor and hr strape and all is well now. Looking forward to another 60 tomorrow, Christmas Eve, and another 60 with the group on Saturday. Ranchos or NCCC? Not sure yet, we'll see how the pain meter wants to be tickled Friday evening. Happy Holidays.