BKL Mountain Biking at Burke's Kingdom Trails

The gang about halfway through the day

I had the privilege of celebrating Memorial Day with a great trail ride yesterday among the BKL kids at East Burke's Kingdom Trails. We had seven kids along with Hannah, Susan, myself and John Gillott and were briefly joined by Craftsbury member John Madigan who we ran into in the parking lot by coincidence.While we've suffered a lot of wet weather, thanks to helpful geology and great  building and maintenance, the trails at the Kingdom Trails were on the whole quite dry. That's not to say we didn't find some mud; Lauren Gillott led the "brown jersey" competition with her trip over the bars into a particularly swampy bit. We zigged and zagged our way up and over Darling Hill for nearly three hours and capped the days' adventures with ice cream. All in all a pretty fun way to get in some over-distance for the kids in an exciting new way.Thanks to all the kids for coming out, parents for your support, and big thanks to Kingdom Trails for the great trails, helpful info and generosity. Hopefully this will just be the first of many mountain bike rides this summer. Best of all for me was the great reminder that training doesn't have to be planned to the last watt, bpm or mmol of lactate to be effective. Thanks for the lesson BKLers! What other adventures can we have this summer?