Mountain Bike Rides

Usually I am prepared well in advance for any weekend away on my bike especially if it's an organised event or race. However for a variety of reasons, but mostly just laziness, it was a case of just bunging everything together on Friday evening ready for an early start on Saturday morning. Shakey and I were heading up to Innerleithen for the first round of this year's Gravity Enduro series.

When we arrived the car park was full and the fog we had endured on the 5 hour drive was just beginning to lift. We got ready and headed out for a practice lap without really studying the route map. Half way up the first climb I stopped to remove a layer. T-shirt and shorts in Scotland in March! Amazing!

I was doing my ride report for the Trans Hajar but frankly the report below pisses all over mine.

I was a complete mess on day 3. A 120 km stage where I completely blew. Horrible. Just Horrible. I lost about 40 mins to Youceff (the report writer). Some of this can be put down to the heat compared to last year. I did the Yitti Stage on Day 2 almost an hour quicker than last year! Day 3 was about 20 mins quicker. In hindsight I can be pretty pleased with my effort. I suspect what happened is that I put too much in on Day 2 (after Day 2 I was so tired I fell asleep as soon as I got home (after eating)) leaving me with no energy for Day 3.

Well that's it! I've managed to record every ride I did for a year. I won't lie to you - I didn't think I would and it was a chore at times. I hope it wasn't too much of a chore for you to read it? If indeed you did? I'm no journalist but I think my main problems were finding the time to do it and my aging brain recalling what had happened!

The last ride of the year, the last ride of this blog, the last day of the year!

It used to be a tradition that we did a ride up in The Peak District every New Year's Eve but due to work etc this hasn't happened for a couple of years. This year it fell on a Saturday so I sent round the email and five of us met up at Peak Forest.