Funning

Here in the Wasatch we are blessed with excellent proximity to great mountains, and one of our favorite outing styles is that of "ride to the trailhead and do a hike or a run".  Depending on our mood and/or goals we call it a "rike" (ride/hike) or "bun" (bike/run).  And my favorite is when I ride my fixy up to a trail and go for a run, then it becomes..... a "Fun!" 

Fundamentally, the concept of a Rike/Bun/Fun is to put your running shoes and shorts (and a bit of extra food) in your Camelbak, hop on your road steed, (Riking has been officially designated as an activity that approves of the wearing of a Camelbak on a road bike) ride up one of the canyons to a trailhead, stash your bike, change your shorts and shoes, march up into the mountains on the trails, then ride home.  Pretty simple, and addresses the sort-of annoying concept of driving our car past good recreation to go do some good recreating (and provides a good warmup before charging straight uphill on cold/tight hamstrings/calves/Achilles).  

A significant issue associated with Riking is what to do with your bike while you hike?  Given that trailheads are usually in/near thickly wooded areas, it’s generally possible to stash them in nearby woods with the rationale that “no one would think to look for $5000 worth of carbon bikes and shoes in that thicket” or bringing a cable lock.  Locking it along with your helmet to a gate/tree/signpost and stashing shoes nearby generally works fine.  However, I went out for a Fun yesterday and forgot my lock, so I reverted to one of the tried and true Riking techniques employed by veterans:  drape the cycling shorts over the handlebars to dry with the chamois-side out: 

It has proven to be a very effective anti-theft technique. 

Yesterday I did a new (to me) Fun that was only 8 miles from the house, and is both very accessible and sorta wild and wooly feeling.  Here's the view from on (sorta) high:

Quite nice, and will likely become a bit of a staple of my future Fun outings.