My arms are incredibly sunburnt from yesterday. I didn’t know it was possible to be so red. I wore a shirt that goes above the line as a badge of honor. I love being a cyclist. But the burn hurts.

If anyone has any good tips aside from Alo and burn cream, send them my way!

Because of my intense burn, I opted to do a sunset ride today to avoid the strong powerful sun. And with temps reaching the high 70’s today, I figured it be a good first sunset ride of the season. They always bring good energy, and I think it was the right choice.

I rolled out of my apt at around 6:30, and thanks to a good tailwind and light timing, I was on single track in about 20 minutes in the mouth of Provo Canyon. I hopped on at the Mount Timpanogos park and did a lap on the short flow trail at the bottom before climbing up towards the trail above the cliffs. I don’t actually know what it’s called, but the Strava segment is called The Cliffs of Insanity. It’s a fun, short trail that goes above some decent cliffs, and there’s a few off camber rocky sections to spice things up. It’s not difficult, but it’s fun! It was also the only part of the ride that was at all muddy. Trails are drying out surprisingly quickly.

From there I popped down and around the front of the mountains on the dirt road and then onto the Bonneville Shoreline trail heading North.

I rode through the dry creek trail head, and then just a few hundred yards in there’s a trail that splits to your left that is locally called crop circles (I think). It winds down with a lot of fairly flat, tight turns, that are perfect to practice cornering on. It’s about a 5 minute descent due to it’s pedally nature, but it’s probably the best trail I know of to practice cornering.

When you try to ride it fast it really forces you to weight your front tire to keep traction, and to have good bike body separation as you roll through the corner. It also tests your braking skills as you time the correct speed going in and out of the corner.

Exit speed is the most important part of a corner, so you want to come out with speed, even if that means you need to slow down a lot before it.

To practice these skills, since it’s been like 6 months since I’ve ridden consistently, I rode the trail twice. At this point it was getting dark so I hopped on the road and spun the 30 minutes home.

I’m happy with the feeling on the bike and looking forward to shocking the system tomorrow with a little local racing at Eagle Mountain!