2009 Mega Dog

This 4th of July holiday weekend began with a blast. David Kegley, mastermind of both the Fugly Dog and the Double Dog, had planned something special this year - the Mega Dog. The Dog series has began a couple years ago and while each one is unique they all begin at the Dogfish Head Brewery in Gaithersburg, MD, all are mixed-surface rides, and all involve cyclo-cross bikes. As the name implies, the Mega Dog, was to push the envelope of what is fair and decent in a mixed surface ride.

A mixed surface ride means that we will be riding on pavement, gravel, double track, and singletrack. I decided to ride down to Gaithersburg from Frederick and left my house at 7:30am. Knowing that the ride was leaving DFH at 9:00am this gave me 1 1/2 hours to get to the ride. I decided to take a straight shot down 355 - no traffic, lots of rollers, and 28 miles later I rolled into Gaithersburg with time to spare. After a quick stop by the local Starbucks to refill my water bottles and grab some espresso I met the rest of the gang in the DFH parking lot at 8:58 am. Our crew was comprised of David Kegley, Jon "Baler", Jay Williams, Todd Bauer, and I. Shortly after 9 we quickly left the asphalt behind for the first of many trails. This one led us around Seneca Creek towards Schaeffer.

After burning a mostly-complete lap around Schaeffer we took some time to ride the big logs near the parking area where David snapped this nice picture of Jon on the log. We refilled our water at the MoCo Soccer complex and took some connectors/greenways up to another lake and on to Sugarloaf Mountain. At Sugarloaf we rode some technical singletrack, doubletrack, got caught in a brief thunderstorm, and again filled our water bottles. Here is Jay ripping it up near Sugarloaf.

I got the second of two punctures out on the Sugarloaf loop.

Here is our leader, David, tanking up again at Sugarloaf.

We hit Little Bennet, Hoyles Mill Connector, the Greenway, some more gravel, and a little pavement coming back into Seneca Creek. I would say that there was far more singletrack on this ride than any of us anticipated. The group ride ended up being 75 miles long and taking 9 hours and 45 minutes - adding the 28 and 1 1/2 coming down and it was a 103 mile 11 1/4 hour ride. My longest day in the saddle to date - pretty much a 12 hour solo.

Back at DFH we ran into Ernie, Joel, Tony and his wife, Jenel who were returning from a rafting/tubing excursion on the Potomac. We were pretty whipped but enjoyed the good food, friends, and refreshment.