Sunday Ride

The perfect day: A lovely frosty start with blue skies and sunshine in abundance.

Today was to be my first ride on the mighty beast Specialized Enduro, and I was going to meet up with the big boys - Gary, Jase, Frank and company. For some lessons in hooligan riding on bike bikes in preparation for the Megavalanche :-)

JD turned up at ten and we set out in glorious sunshine. I was immediately off the back on the hills. The enduro weighs around 35lbs and has 150mm of squishy suspension. within 10km I was exhausted :-)

It was fun to hoon it around the rooty singletrack, chasing the guys. It's quite a bit too much bike for the Surrey Hills and is tiring accelerating out of bends in the typical twisty rooty stuff we have here. But, point it down straight bumpy and rocky stuff and it surfs over everything.

Gary was looking fit and says his cojones are growing steadily :-)

Cross training

This weekend we went to Wales for some hiking and running as training for the Three Peaks Trial.

We hiked over Bal Mawr from Llanthony Priory and back, a tough 11.5 km. It was very cold on the top of the mountain and some scattered snow on the paths.

Sunday we ran six km over the lanes. My calves hurt!

We are going to do the platinum route again. Last year with the very good weather we managed 05.15 for the 30km and Juanita was third person home(she outsmarted me in the sprint) I think we could probably equal that this year and maybe take a few minutes off if we're lucky.

Leadville 100

Looks like this is on for 2009! Leadville 100

The mighty Dinsdale has been pestering me about this race for a looooong time, and the LCO wants to do an American road trip. So, we're combining the two, by doing a couple of weeks in the 'states next August

Floyd is riding the series this year. Floyd Landis leadville Hopefully he'll be there next year too!

Now the problem is where to train at altitude in Surrey. I may have to buy a hyperbaric tent!

ramón

Marin winter series round three

The forecast was for lots of rain, but lining up on the start line at 15'C it seemed more like summer. I gambled on wearing arm warmers and leg warmers, short sleeved shirt and no gilet.




Suddenly, without warning, the klaxon sounded and everyone moved forward.......... and into the tape and loads of confusion. To the right of us, in haze of perfume ;-), the four hour ladies had been sent off first. We, the four hour men were to follow ten minutes later.


The klaxon sounded and we set off on a wide fire road in to a fierce headwind for about 500m then a sharp left and into the first singletrack, which was very slippery. I was fighting for control here as my rear wheel went sideways on every bend.(I was using a quite worn Bontrager revolt, which has minimal tread to start with.) Back out onto 100m of fire road and a sharp right into the bombhole, more of a steep drop in and a low exit really. The next singletrack was the best of the whole course, it was slightly uphill, very smooth, bermed with a tailwind!! It was so fast that it was difficult not to brake into the bends :-). As I leave the first section of singletrack, I realise how hot I am! My shirt is open to the waist, I've rolled down my armwarmers, but my legs are hot! I never get hot legs, must remember to shave them for the summer ;-0




Out onto another fire road and into more singletrack and so on, á la Thetford. Most of the fire roads are into head winds and the singletrack is very hard going and boggy. The last section of singletrack is spectacularly muddy and it's deep. A couple of guys in front stall and have to run, I find a way through the trees, but this always risks a puncture. Then onto the last fire road into the arena, the tailwind instantly lets me shove the chain fully to the right! As I pass through the timing area I look back and see Paul on the opposite side of the arena about 30s behind. I'm sticking to my plan of keeping it steady for the few laps after blowing up in the previous Thetford race. In fact my horoscope this morning said. "Your energy levels are high dear Sagitarius, but don't burn yourself out!"





Back into the bomb hole and into the fantastic singletrack I'm riding at the back in a group of four. They are three big guys and they are holding me up in the singletrack, onto the fire road and the guy on the front hammers away. I struggle to stay on and we're back into the next singletrack and they're holding me up again. On the next fire road, I hear Russell Grant's camp voice full of admonishment in my head " your energy levels are high dear sagitarius, but.........." So I let them go and get back to keeping it steady and at the same time reassuring myself with the old " I get you later when you blow up" line :-)




Next time through the timing area Paul is only just entering the arena, so more than a minute adrift. So, I keep lap three steady too and this time at the end, I don't see him in the arena at all.

This startles me a little and I think that he must have had a problem. Maybe he's punctured or broken his chain? So, I decide to start pushing hard, the reason is that: Paul is three points below me in the overall as we go into this race. The points for the series are taken as a best of three from four races. The problem is I forgot to enter the next race in the series and it's full. Paul is entered though! So this is my last chance to get a lead on him. :-) By pushing hard now I hope to get as many people between me and him to 'soak up the points'. The course is drying out quite a bit now and a lot of the singletrack is getting faster, some parts especially the very muddy one is much worse. This time through on the fourth lap lots of people are walking it, some are just standing staring wondering where to go. Luckily I managed to skim across the edge on some slimy roots without dropping in to the quagmire. I continue pushing hard for the next two laps and manage six laps 66km in 04.09. Paul finished in 04.18. I was 7th vets and he was 10th. The big boys managed seven laps.


Another great Thetford race :-)

Megavalanche

I've fancied this race for a little while, and so after being badgered by Gary and reading Stratobiker's excellent blog. I entered yesterday, along with Gary and Barrie of Moosecycles.


Gary in the shades, looking like megavalanche mega-man :-)



The race starts up in the snow line on Alpe duez and is 40km downish, with a few kicks up in places. Some ride out and out downhill bikes and others anything from 4" cross country machines to hardtails.

I think I'll be using the Blur, and Gary is busy building his mega - bike at the moment.


A full face helmet and elbow guards are compulsory.


I think for this race, I need a french downhill name and got it down to two favourites: Didier or René. Although Serge has a certain gallic something going for it :-)

Grand Traversée du Limousin

Grand Traversée du Limousin



Me and Jane have entered and start training on Saturday with a big road ride to Balcombe ;-)


we're in! here

Ibiza riding at Xmas

After a bit easy riding for the first week, because of a cold, we did some nice big sunny rides around the island.

We rode with Santa Eulária CC based at Kandani cycle shop. This was a nice steady club ride, with a group of 25 or so. They kept it together but put in a couple of digs near the end. I managed to get across to the front group on the last hard dig for the food stop and felt quite pleased with myself. I looked back to see where Jane was, only to see her tucked in behind me :-)

Ibiza has a few big lumps and so we put in some longish climbs, and explored some new trails. There are some great rocky trails in the northwest and centre of the island.

The picture is at my favourite coffee stop in Santa Gertrudis.

Sunday ride

sunday ride.

today was to be a Sundayriders steady Sunday ride. But...

The Mighty Dinsdale - had to work.

Greg - contracted the man flu.

Paul - a garbled phone message about some complaint that only hurt if he touched it!.......a broken finger perhaps?

so it was just me and Juanita.

Weather: stunning blue skies and frost at 2'C

Terrain: hard and fast, soft where the sun had reached.

Distance: a steady 38 km in 2.32

Interesting things of the day:
1.lots of horse riders orienteering in fancy dress(juanita's favourite was batman on horse back)
2. a friendly llama who liked torq energy bars.

Mechanical of the day: ramon finally found the answer to the strange knocking sound coming from the fork/headset. It was the brake caliper, the bolts were loose and partly out!!

ramon: "a steady wind down to start training over xmas in Ibiza".

juanita: "a hard ride to get ready for training over xmas in Ibiza".

We go to Ibiza next Saturday for two weeks riding in the sun.

The Cardiff Santa 5km

lco, the Sunday Riders and Skidmarks pitbabe, ran her first race at the weekend. The santa run is a 5km road race around Cardiff dressed as Santa Claus!

Along with lco and juanita, a further 800 people turned up dressed accordingly.

The marathon de sable next, maybe?

Marin winter series round two

Sunday was the second round of the winter series at Thetford. Once again it was a sell out and 500 had signed up to race. However, the weather forecast although dry all week showed a torrential downpour at 9.00 am., an hour and half before the start. This led to a rush of....'anyone want my place? I've got a sore throat, I have to work.....etc' posts on the website :-)

I had rested well since the last round and felt stronger, pretty good in fact. So I decided to change that! The night before the race was Paul's birthday so Jane made cake,but Paul couldn't make it. So I ate cake, loads of it. So much that my stomach was like a balloon when I went to bed. It was still like that, and very sore, when I got up at six the next morning. I couldn't face breakfast and hoped to eat some torq bars on the way.

It was chucking it down when we arived at Thetford, I went for a quick warm up and got absolutely soaked fom the standing water and was shaking from the cold, so we sat in the car to keep warm. At the start the queues were already five deep. I queued on the left, because the tight left turn a 100m after the start had a huge puddle also on the left, but just out of sight. I figured that most would swing right on seeing the puddle and I would go straight through it.

The klaxon sounded and everyone sprinted into the first corner. I got ready for the veer to the right at the puddle, so I could take the left line through it. Instead the front runners stopped dead, so I flicked right and through the centre clipping a couple of bars in the process!

This track was 500m of big ring very wet fire road descending at 40kph into a wall of spray from the standing water into a 90deg off camber left. This caused a few problems and people were overshooting it. Then into the first singletrack, which though wet was very fast. a few fast bermy turns and back onto the fire road to the first bombhole: this was very deep but, quite straight in and out. I've raced this part of the course before and the next bit is great fun, the locals call it the beast! It's a singletrack descent through the woods made up of a series of rollercoaster whoops and berms. The most fun way to ride this is roadie style lined out tucked in, inches from each others wheel :-))) This spits you out across a fire road and straight up a singletrack climb. I can hear people behind me whooping as they came down the beast.
This section is always quite tough because coupled with the ascent is a claggyness in the surface. Here the heavier riders tend to suffer and it's easy to pass riders, particularly later in the race as people tire.

The rest of the lap followed in true Thetford style ie hard fire road sections(for some reason always into the wind!) and fast jiggly, rooty singletrack.

I had decided to eat at the end of the second lap, I tried to eat half a torq bar, even though I could barely swallow it. I had a couple of bottles of energy drink by the course at the start/finish area, so I grabbed them as I went through.

By the end of the third lap my legs were getting a bit wobbly, and I still couldn't eat.

The sixth lap is where I met my maker and everything went a bit Lewis Caroll. Suddenly gravity increased tenfold, my bike seemed three sizes too big and the world narrowed to a small fuzzy circle in front of me. The little man with the big hammer had arrived and.....bonk, he hit me hard!!! I had to walk a couple of the short sharp climbs and freewheel down the other side :-)

At about halfway through this lap Alan Parkinson's friend from the London Pheonix caught me; he was blowing fairly hard. I guess he must have seen me and put in an effort. We rode together while he got his breath back and I introduced myself as Alan's other friend. He then slowly pulled away. Paul came through sometime later and slowly but inexorably moved ahead. Meanwhile I died a little bit more:-)

Towards the end of the lap, I realised that I might beat the four hour cut-off and be 'allowed' to do another lap. Another lap was out of the question! Now I was faced with a quandary; do I deliberately ease even more, miss the cut and have the decision not to do another lap made for me or do I press on and deliberately 'pull out'. I passed through the start/finish and the guy shouted 'go on you'll get another lap' . I pressed the stop button on my gps and it read 03:59:58. Their official time was 03:59:25.

It was frustrating as I been going so well and no one in the latter part of the race passed me with any pace. Still, I'm pleased that my strength has returned and I managed to get tenth in the vets without eating :-)

Paul managed another lap and took 9th place vets.