Silly big ride on Sunday with terrahawk, dubbed the MTLPBW. There are no prizes for guessing the route. It’s big enough to warrant it’s own weatherwatch© so here we are:
The start of the route:
BBC
MetOffice
UKWeather
The other end of the route:
BBC
MetOffice
UKWeather
The general theme at the moment is for it to be nice weather. Hurrah. Presumably whoever is in charge of the weather has forgotten it’s a bank holiday weekend!
Got out on the bike every evening last week (well, not monday, but every other evening). It was chuffing lovely every time. Didn’t really have time for big rides, so I just tried to go fast instead, which was interesting. I seemed to be moving faster than anyone else I met out in the hills, but obviously I don’t know who was out so that may not mean anything.
Felt good though 
Didn’t have much time today for a proper ride- don’t worry though, I’ve got 8hrs in the rain planned for tomorrow to make up for it – and wasn’t in the mood to battle my way through the throngs of people who would undooubtedly be out on all the hills so I just went and played out in the woods behind Abbey Village, amongst the bluebells, in the trees, on the swoopy singletrack.
It was ace.
All dusty dry, super swoopy, rooty but not slippy, by no means nu-school calderdale tech, but it did have little tech sections to break up the zoomy fast bits
It was juuuust right…and made even better by rarely being more than a few yards away from groups of walkers and roads without anyone even realising i was there
I also rediscovered the difficulty of taking a pic of yourself…i gave up after a couple of attempts as it was eating into my riding time…
piccie by richpips
I think I’d missed the butterflies in my stomache. I wasn’t sure. Stood on the start line, going through the pre-race mental checklist in my head as the sun beat down and little plumes of dust were kicked up off the gravel fire road by the wind, I’m pretty sure I was happy to be getting ready to flail about on top of a bike anyway.
The mixture of adrenaline in my blood and energy drink in my gut was a combination I’d not had for well over a year. 24hr races just aren’t the same – they’re damn exciting on the start line yes, but the knowledge of what’s about to happen to me in a short, super intense xc race is very different, just like the race itself everything feels much more explosive.
I definately loved the way everyone dropped into silence as ears pricked up to hear the starting gun (or megaphone warble in this case), the way a plethora of tendons tightened and twitched in anticpation and hands shuffled over grips in search of the perfect hold…
‘bang’ (ok, ‘warble’)
tyres rip, lungs roar, wide eyes dart, muscles explode and the pack is almost instantly transformed into a huge ball of dust thundering up the climb.
Everything hurts and everything feels good all at once, buried in the middle of all that fury. This is it for the next hour and a half. Race on.
Once the dust had settled, stories had ben swopped and left over drink poured down gasping throats it turned out I finished 2nd. Quite a shock as I’d not really done any sort of “fast” preperation at all – all my training being aimed more at the summers 24hr races still to come – but delightfully welcome nontheless.
Thought I’d nip out after work for between 3 and 4 hours, you know, to enjoy the evening sun out in the countryside after yet another dull day at work. Put up with the stupidly stupid headwind for 25 miles because it was warm, sunny and the lambs were getting more lively the further away from home I got.
Dropped the chain down to the granny ring to climb up over the trough of bowland, span up the slope, got to the top and thought “right, lets have some fun on the descent”. Flicked the shifter and
snap!
All of a sudden the mech is no worky 
I’ve never seen a mech shear off like that before and do you know what I blame?
I blame the socks I was wearing.
The Limited Edition singletrack socks I won for coming 2nd at the Strathpuffer24 back in 2007 and have hardly worn since because EVERY time i wear them something goes horribly wrong – I wore them to race at Bontrager 24/12 and ended up chucking my guts up (the first 24hr race i ever dropped out of), I put them on for the last couple of laps at last year’s CLIC24 and discovered that the frame of the on-one cabal I was riding had unbonded itself and I wore them tonight. If something doesn’t go horribly wrong with either me or the bike then I’m pretty sure they can affect the weather…in fact I’m putting the blame for the past 2 crappy summers we’ve had soley (pun intended) with those damn socks.
I am going to research sock exorcisms.
The sun decided to do a bit of shining today, so we nipped round manchester at warp speed to the Peaks for a bit of good ol’ british tourism.
First up, some light refreshment
Followed by a little snackage
Then, suitably fuelled, a cruise round the reservoirs – complete with dambusters theme tune played in my head as we rode past the reservoir walls.
The sun shone, it was nice and warm…warm enough to sit outside the pub and warm enough to not shiver every time a puddle was ridden through. Nice, definately.
Still to come this weekend; road rides. Lots of them. Big ones. Theoretically in the sun again, but who knows!
