we went to sits and it was great

or, how working an event can be lots of fun when you squeeze plenty of riding in, too.

start by making the most of the journey. some people do this by listening to audio books; learning a foreign language; etc. i did it by getting up at 05.00, catching the first train to manchester, and then riding 75 miles to catton park.


the joy of riding at stupid times of day is being able to use major arterial routes which are easy to navigate but usually hellish. this is the a6 out of central manchester and i am pretending to be a bus. it's alright, nobody saw.


it rained a bit. then it rained a lot..


second breakfast whist drying out in leek. bad coffee and two dime bars are sometimes all it takes. also mostly thinking about shaggy and his succesful ctr. go shaggy!


you have no idea how exciting this place is.

one note: if you are planning to ride to catton park, be prepared for the last hour and a half after rocester to be the most boring road riding you've ever done. end psa.

so, the sun came out and some people ran and then we raced bikes for a bit.


there were lots of people being very enthusiastic about the racing bit (and with good reason; it was fun)...


but the general vibe was so laid back that our team decided we'd be stopping at midnight for a kip. what?! i don't think so. particularly after it poured with rain on my first lap.


shoes of dread. cold, wet. don't make me put them on.


the effective pre-lap routine has been completely different at every race i've ever been to. this time: sweet tea/85% chocolate/smart gel/warm thoughts.


very few things better on the second day of a race weekend than waking up in a sun-warmed tent.


checking lap times. amy won solo in an extremely convincing fashion; elsewhere the gritty kitties team of new mums came happy second whilst stopping to breastfeed between laps (making them absolutely the toughest team on the field) and the formidable big rob/competitive grace combo won mixed pairs too, despite me nearly riding over competitive grace's head in the middle of one of the night laps. sorry grace. our team got in a respectable 25 laps in between the odd bit of 'work stuff', which was enough to give our two 24 hour racing virgins a good intro to the love/hate experience that is 24 hour racing and enough for the rest of us to enjoy the super-fast, super-singletracky and (mostly) super-dry course, whilst all the time hoping those big black clouds would stay safely out of the way over there, please.


although the joy of the work bit means that we've still got to clean and dry most of the stuff in this picture. and none of it's my socks.

j.

is it OK to cry now?

I have been a very bad blogger indeed this summer, in as much as I haven't... Not sadly because I've been living a high life that's far too important to interrupt, but because I fell off my bike the day after THE wedding and ripped the ligament off my thumb. The short version is that I needed surgery, (a quick aside and major thank you to Salisbury hospital who made sure it was done fast and seems to be populated with unfailingly cheery staff), and had to spend six weeks in plaster - which added to the three weeks before the op. and another week after the op. but before the proper cast made it around ten weeks of comedy typing and remarkable inactivity.

It's very uncool, but I don't do 'perky injured girl'. It's more whiny depressive - I couldn't ride, or even run. And yes I know I should have been dragging the turbo into position and firing up a Sufferfest, but I really (and I mean really), didn't want to. If anyone ever wants to carry out research into whether or not eating your way to wellness works, well let me save you the time and report that no, it does not. I'm prepared to concede that the odd bowl of Cherry Garcia might be a mood enhancer, but as recovery food it doesn't really cut it and you find yourself newly out of plaster, a stone (and a bit) above your fighting weight and wondering why you can't get up those hills or into your favourite shorts.

But I'm back on the bike- my Jones with its sweepy bars and provision for constant changes of hand position is most comfortable (I can't manage the dropped bars on my 'cross bike yet), so I've swapped to flat pedals (can't risk any fail-to-unclip moments) and taken to the trails. Having no expectation of speed or fitness it's been just lovely. There's joy to be taken too in the hugely improved balance and core stability that comes from weeks of yoga practice in a cast. And not a little fun to be had matching nail varnish to the bright pink velcro on the block I wear when carrying out my physio exercises.

The 'bugger' moment came yesterday when new x-rays revealed some collateral damage. Damage that can't just be fixed with more surgery. It's going to be a lot of (probably increasingly brutal) physio and a chunk more patience.

So lock up the Cherry Garcia folks, and does anyone have any suggestions for what bars I can put on my Surly?

Minx

no fuss endurance downhill

even less happening on the racing front for me this summer, mostly brought about by a collision of apathy regarding done-it-all-before events/faces, lingering illness/slowness/weakness and a utterly crushing work year, which has crippled any intention i might have had of doing anything about the lingering illness/slowness/weakness. i did do a running race, though, which was fun.

thankfully someone with more sense than i managed to talk me back into the annual pilgrimage to fort william last weekend for a brief interlude of downhilliness.



the format is simple: you have six hours to cram in as many runs of the world cup downhill course (thankfully sans massive gap jump) as you can. up in the gondola, down on the track; up on the gondola, down on the track; and so on. it starts with a le mans sprint (and if you thought they were bad at 24 hour races, then try doing it on a narrow track wearing a full face helmet and armour, shoulder to shoulder with 150 pushing, shoving, giggling blokes), then 1.5 miles uphill on fireroad to join the course (again, hard work on a downhill bike but more fun if you discover that actually you're not as unfit as you thought you were and pass a lot of people), a similarly nose to tail ride down the lower section and then it begins in earnest.

the course is... interesting. fast and swoopy, rough and rocky, tight and rooty, smooth and jumpy by turns. there are high penalties for failure, not least because speed is your friend and the course is hewn out of the side of britain's biggest mountain; hitting it when speed ceases to be your friend and instead is just propulsion, is painful. it's scary enough to cause uncontrollable nervous giggling on both sides of the car when first glimpsed on the drive in but it's just rideable enough that there were still folk there racing on hardtails. impressive. you have to love the british...



needless to say we had a huge amount of fun. the no fuss team excelled themselves once again with the most chilled out atmosphere and even secured the services of the sunshine; the top of the ben was visible almost all weekend, thus dispelling the myth that it's a figment of the tourist board's imagination, and even the midge had the decency to only swarm twice daily. there was spirited heckling, airhorn and trackside flashing by a group who'd travelled all the way from devon to support their riders, good natured jibing in the lifts, and a lovely hour spent red-flagged on top of the mountain (hope the chap they were retrieving is okay), chatting and chilling and soaking up the view. ten runs was enough to fetch second place two minutes behind super smooth angela coates; i was mostly pleased to notice a gradual embravening of the jumping reflex as the day wore on though.



we topped and tailed the racing with a decent amount of warm beer, charred meat products and needless burning of stuff ("to keep the midge away"), and we will of course be back next year for more because if you can actually ride, rather than just pedal your bike around in circles, it's one of, if not the best event in the country.

things to remember for next time:

try and do a little bit more practising of the gnar in the intervening 364 days. simply hopping on a big bike once a year and hoping you'll remember how it works is not good enough, no matter how good the bike is (and it was very good; big thanks to upgrade for the loan of the pivot phoenix skill enabler).

gnocchi is great pre-race brunch food; all races should start at tea time.

buy more armour.



j.

Cross Country Racing, eh?

Although I've been having a bash at racing for a few years now, I've never actually done a proper cross country race...until today that is.

Today was round 5 of the Scottish Cross Country Series in Perth, which is local (ish) so after some peer pressure from Katie, I decided to give it a bash.

I learned some important stuff....

1. Print out the map and don't try to wing it from memory and using the larger scale AA road map. Taking almost 2 hours to get to a race which is only an hour away isn't good race prep!

2. Don't ever ride to registration with a water bottle carrier slung over the right hand side of your bars. When you turn, the bottle carrier will shimmy along your bars, trap your brake lever, lock on the front brake and cause you to go over the bars in an instant, in front of all the other folks faffing and getting ready by their cars. It's not great to start a race with a bloody elbow and covered in dust from the fire road!

3. Singlespeeds don't always work on very hilly courses when you're racing with whippets. Yes, I can make time up on the descents, but there's only so much time you can get away with losing on the climbs because they're just that wee bit too steep to ride.

4. Trying to race after 2 weeks of gastroenteritis and not eating isn't a good idea...I don't need to tell you that your body needs a wee bit of food in there to be able to function properly.

5. Yes, recovery drinks are good, but ever better are Perthshire Burgers! Eat them after a race and they will help you feel better!

So, not my best ever race, but for my first XC race, it was a good learning experience. It was an Edinburgh podium in the slightly older than the whippets category and there's a new piece of silverware (well, slate-ware really) on the shelf.

I'm not sure if I'm an XC convert, but the SXC champs are at the start of September at Drumlanrig which is one of my favourite places to ride, so I might give it a bash again soon.

Jac
x

Back in the saddle

Vikki's post about taking the scenic route home reminded me of what I first liked about cycling : being able to travel under my own steam to new places, to explore the countryside and ooh and aah at cute villages. So when the boyf announced he had a race today in deepest darkest Kent, I decided I would ride down to spectate and cheer. New countryside, new villages in glorious sunshine - the perfect antidote to my recent motivational slump.


Kent was beautiful, filled with orchards bursting with apples, fields of strawberries which wafted their mouth-watering aroma across the road. Oast houses, villages of half-timbered and wooden houses. I loved it.

Whilst I loved the scenery and loved the sunshine, I did not love the headwind. And I most certainly did not love my Garmin which decided to only alert me to some of the turns that were required. And when I accidentally went on the wrong route, it then spent 10 mins re-calculating the route whilst I either pedalled in a random direction or whilst I tapped my heels impatiently by the side of the road. Most frustrating.

And to add insult to injury, the combination of start faffage + wind + garmin wait + detours meant that I finally arrived at the race only to see the race marshalls packing up. Fail! Fortunately I still had enough brownie points in the account to get a lift home...

Hometime

Taking the scenic route, a photo by jumbly on Flickr.

Commute.
Summer.
Scenic route.
Perfect.

Vikki

Motivational Slump

After six months of being utterly focused on training towards the Marmotte, I'm feeling demotivated and struggling to get properly back into training. I feel bored with cycling. I'm also bored of rain. Bored of squelchy shoes. Bored of grey skies. Bored of laps of Richmond Park. Bored bored bored.


Clearly I need a new challenge. However I have used up all my holiday chips so it'll have to be a London-based cycling challenge and all suggestions would be very welcome. There are a few Surrey / Kent Hills sportives in the forthcoming months but that all feels like simply a continuation of my Marmotte training, riding up the same old hills in the same old rain. I don't fancy racing as I have the reaction-times of a tired slug and fear that I would connect with tarmac rather too often. Maybe time trials? The boyf dismissed them, saying they're dull and start at O'Dark O'Clock, but I feel sure this cannot be a universal truth. I know I need a target and I suspect I need training buddies. There's only so much masochism a girl can do.

While I work out what I'm training towards, I still need do to some sport, so that I can eat cake and still fit into my jeans, of course. So some swimming, perhaps, and some spinning classes. And let's hope that inspiration strikes.

Learning : heat & hills

I've learnt : How to manage heat.

I live in England where summer is a notional period in the diary rather than an actual indicator of hot weather, so learning to manage the proper heat of summer that you get elsewhere is kinda tricky. Some friends suggest doing all your training rides whilst wearing far too many layers. Another turbo trains in front of his fan oven. I, however, am a fan of less masochistic methods: wicking clothes and cunning hair solutions.

I have a huge amount of thick hair and find that a pony tail just sits in a hot clump on the neck, making you feel hotter by the minute. Instead, the Heidi look solves this problem. Wind goes down the back of your helmet and creates a wonderful draught of chilly breeze down your neck and back. If additional cooling is required, a quick dip of the head in the nearest horse trough and you've got a moving coolbox on your head. Genius.

I need to learn : How to descend.

I have always been crap at descending, but with my recent fall still fresh in my memory, I am now at whatever the polar opposite of warp speed is. I descend like a Granny with a cup of tea in her hand. And whilst in theory this doesn't really matter, (cycling not being my day job and all) I was pretty hacked off in the Marmotte to get overtaken by at least 50 people on each descent that I'd laboured past on the ascent. So cruel to lose those places just by being a scaredy cat. The boyf tells me that girls are often crap at it. So does anyone know of a course with hints & tips to teach us girls how to do this going fast down hill thing? Chalk lines on road showing lines to take and stuff?

Last weekend was the Black Mountains 3 Day race and it was a fabulous weekend. We were lucky with the weather and spent 2 long days riding gorgeous natural trails in the Brecon Beacons, plus a cheeky time trial on the Friday night. It was a great first-time event and I really hope they run it again. It was also good to be back pushing hard and feeling strong and able to give it some beans without being scared I was going to end up in bed with fatigue afterwards.

A massive thank you must go to the organisers. I hope they run it again...

Fi

Marmotte Madness

As the big day approached I started to get more and more apprehensive about the task ahead of me. Tears were shed. Kit was organised. Re-organised. And then organised again.

The night before I woke up every half an hour and panicked some more, which helped a lot, as I'm sure you can imagine. But then, at last, 5am was there and we got up and on with the day. The pre-race organisation was a little, umn, Gallic, (ie no instructions and entirely up to you to ask people / work it out) but I found myself in the right pen and next to a lovely English woman to whom I could chatter to take my mind off the wait and the freezing cold (6oC in race kit isn't really the most fun thing).

And then finally our pen of 5000 - 9000 start numbers set off with a chorus of clicking cleats and swear words as various people proved, not for the last time that day, that they don't know how to ride in a straight line or at an even speed. The sun was up, the mountains were glorious and various lovely lovely people were lining the road at this unfriendly hour to cheer us off.

The first few hours were pretty stressful given the volume of cyclists, with people swerving, stopping, speeding up, shoulder barging and generally behaving like drunk people at a disco, but I stuck with a few French Velo club guys and tried to keep safe and keep ticking off the miles.

The feed stations were complete bedlam (see pic below of the queue at the first Col for the feed station) and unless you brought specially sharpened elbows you'd have no luck. I gave up and stuck to rural fountains and the food I'd brought with me.
As the Marmotte is a very long, hilly, sportive (174km with 5000m of climb), it was always going to take me A Very Long Time, so to take my mind off it all I resorted to my usual sportive games :

• Guess the nationality (by the kit, the bike, the size of the rider and their tan)
  If the kit's pre 1984 and looks like an explosion in a kid's crayon box, they're French.
  If they've got a Eddy Merckx bike AND a tan, they're Belgian. If pale, they're English.
  If they're very tall and have a tan, they're Dutch. If v tall and no tan, they're Norwegian.
  If wearing Rapha, they're English and so on.
  Every time I got it right I got a point, if I got it wrong, deduct a point. The aim is to get to the top of the hill in plus numbers.
  
• Bike Bingo
  spot a hybrid, a MTB, a hand-made bike, an old-school racer and someone with a pannier
• Mental arithmatic
  eg ok so there's 17km to the summit. Divide by 8, multiply by 5, that's about 11 and a bit miles so at 6mph that's going to take me 2 hours etc etc
  

And that got me as far as Valloire and up much of the Galibier. And there I made my schoolgirl error of using untested foodstuffs. EPIC FAIL. I had forgotten to buy enough gels to take with me, assuming that I'd be able to buy the necessary out in France. Mais non. So I ended up with a different brand that, it transpired, my stomach he did not like. At all. So with many a lurchy UGH I'M GOING TO VOMIT I made my way up the Galibier. Very. Very. Slowly. Dolly Parton was called into service.

At the top I ate my last remaining energy bar that was pre tested and thought that as no mad efforts would be required on the descent, my stomach might settle down. I underestimated both the stubbornness of my stomach and the windy nature (both twisty and gusty) of the road. So at the bottom of Alpe D'Huez I was still feeling decidedly queasy. And yet I took the bizarre decision to have another of the stomach-churning gels (the logic was that calories = good, I think) before setting off. The 21 virages seemed to last for an eternity, with shouty rock music urging me on as I sobbed and churned the gears. I was utterly miserable and I don't think I looked at the view once! But I got there. And my official time is 9h45*. Getting round in under 10 hours with no tears was my target and I managed 50% of that, so I'm pretty chuffed.

The boyf (who'd finished 4 hours earlier) met me at the end with coke and crisps and a bouquet of victory flowers and despite being rather shocked by the sobbing and the lack of speaking (I am normally the chattiest person in any given situation) for "the longest time" he gently nurtured me back to good humour and laughter and even got me talking about ideas for my next challenge! It's amazing how quickly you forget pain...


*Official time excludes the descent of the Glandon. In theory to make people descend in a rational, safe, fashion, as the time it takes doesn't count. It didn't quite work like that in reality. Anyway, total Garmin time was 10h30.

Bad Karma

I think I've been suffering from some bad bike karma after selling the Jooly.

Firstly, the Spot's been getting mysterious flats...fine when I'm riding, but each time I take her out of the hut, hey presto, there's another flat.

Then, at Puffer Lite last weekend, just after I'd got over my usual dark thoughts, my brakes packed in, on a nice, fast little descent! (Quite sketchy but maybe secretly a little bit exhilarating!) And ended up having to pull out of the race because they couldn't be fixed.

So either it's some sort of bad voodoo from the Jooly for selling her, or the Spot's pining for the Jooly and giving me a hard time.

Bikes, eh!

Fingers crossed it doesn't last!

Jac
x

Farewell Old Friend

It's been a long time coming (almost 2 years in fact), but I was finally persuaded to sell my Jooly Superlight at the weekend and I feel like I felt when I was 14 and got dumped by some boy from school.

After much arm twisting and badgering, I was persuaded that it was time to try to sell the Jooly with a view to replacing it with something newer and shinier, so I finally started asking around to see if anyone would be interested in giving her a good home.

As soon as I'd asked, I wished I hadn't, but it was to late.

Money changed hands on Friday and she went off to her new home with a fresh sprig of lavender tucked into the bars for good luck.

So she's gone. I know her new owner will have lots of fun with her, but she's going to be a hard act to follow. So rather than rush into anything new, I'm going to spend the rest of the summer with the singlespeed trying to generate some more fun memories on bikes starting with Puffer Lite this weekend (you can create quite a few memories in 12 hours!).

Jac
x

Close Encounter

OUCH. I have road rash, whiplash and a bashed helmet.

On my last long ride yesterday I came a cropper in the rain, with an unexpected car move (did he indicate and I just not see it? torrential rain certainly didn't help) and my high speed avoidance resulting in an abrupt close encounter with tarmac.


Obviously I am very glad that actually the above injuries are all that I do have. And the bike is fine too. So I shouldn't complain. But a sore neck and lots of ouchy bits of me is not what I was hoping for at this point in my marmotte preparation. Any MTB hardy souls who get these injuries on a regular basis have my utmost admiration. And do please send your handy hints for a speedy recovery.

PS no photos as it's bits of me that I'd really rather not share with the internet that are the best-shredded...

Tour de Mont Blanc May 2011 by Fi

Pain au chocolate in Chamonix, France; pizza and icecream in Cormayeur, Italy and muesli in Champex-Lac, Switzerland. A delicious 4 days of riding on the Tour de Mont Blanc. Gorgeous scenery, tough climbs and teeth-gritting descents. Perfect mind-laundry. Read more soon in the new regular feature on www.cyclistno1.co.uk - The Epic Ride. We're inviting readers to submit their own epic rides, adventures and stories about their two wheeled trips.

You got a story to tell?

So for the last six months I've been mostly on my bike. Or stretching. Or yawning and complaining about how tired I am. You see I've been training for the Marmotte, which is a fairly chunky challenge even for a decent cyclist - and for a slightly chubby recreational cyclist who'd only once done 100 miles and never climbed anything more than 2500m in a day, it's a serious, daunting, OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE I SIGNED UP FOR? kind of challenge.

So what is the Marmotte (other than a cute Alpine animal?) It's a sportive of 190km (118 miles) with 5000m of climbing.

Say it really quickly and it doesn't sound so bad does it? Hmmmm. Well I'm scared. Really scared. Whilst I'm a lot fitter than I was (smug moment at the doctor when she said I had a very low pulse), and have managed to lose some of the lard, I'm still slow. And so it's going to take me a LONG time. Probably ten hours or so. So if anyone has any good musical suggestions, do please send them my way. Even though I'm a huge fan of Dolly, I suspect even she might wane on the third repeat.

Livvy

30 second update

I've been very quiet on this blog since I got back from racing the Patagonian Expedition Race in February. Well that's because a combination of the arduousness of that race (a word?), going out there with a virus and training very hard for it for a very long time, has left me with chronic fatigue syndrome. Rest is good, people. Rest up and rest well!

It has 3 months of grim days when I couldn't lift my head, good days when I thought it was all in my head and mediocre days when I would get overtaken by the old granny on her shopper on the way to work.

Then gradually things started to change. I have been eating well thanks to my nutritionist Jamie Richards, exercising well thanks to yoga, my new-found obsession, given up racing (other than for tea and cake) and don't train any more. Ever. I ride a bit, run a bit, kayak a bit and do a lot of yoga.

And now I feel good. I managed a 5 hour adventure race on Angelsey with my boyfriend on Saturday (www.openadventure.com) and my first Ocean Kayak Race yesterday in our beautiful double sea kayak. And on Thursdsday I'm off to mountain bike around Mont Blanc. 40k a day. A proper holiday. None of this flogging-yourself-til-it-hurts business. Those days are over.

I celebrate the return of my health. Every day that I can pedal, can smile, can put energy and vigour into my life is a good day. Long may it last.

Fi

Jumps and Drops (Scary Skills Day)

Friday saw 7 girls turn up at Gisburn Forest for the scary skills day, sorry, Jumps and Drops day, with Ed from Great Rock.

I was a bag of nerves on Thursday night - how gnarr will the day be? What if I'm the most chicken? What if everyone else is really good? Would I be able to commit or would my hands involuntarily grab my brakes like they usually do? It wasn't helped by Ed's e-mail telling us all that if we want to do the 4 foot drop on the DH course, we should bring a full face helmet. Eek! 4 foot drops are way beyond anything I've even considered trying to ride, so this was going to be way beyond me.

By the time I arrived on Friday morning, I'd convinced myself that I'd be happy just to listen, take it all in and watch. I'd just never be able to do any of it, but I could still learn stuff. So I was more than a little bit relieved to hear the other girls say they were nervous too.

After some nervous laughter, we set off to learn scary stuff.

We started off with manuals (controlled wheelies for those of us who don't do techy speak). I think it's fair to say that none of us were particularly stylish or controlled when we started, but after some practice, Ed had us all doing manuals.

Maybe I can do this then, I thought.

Then we moved on to rear end lifts (endo's without pulling the breaks) which proved to be a bit more of a challenge, but again, Ed managed to have us all doing it in no time at all.

Next, we had to try to combine the manual and the rear end lift to do a bunny hop. I've only ever managed bunny hops by yanking the bike up with my pedals before, so this was a bit of a revelation for me.

After stopping for lunch to dry off a bit and warm up (the weather had been pretty grim all morning), we set off to put together all the skills we'd learned in the morning and try manualling and jumping off drops. I'm always being told to lift my front wheel when I'm dropping off stuff, but never been able to do it, so I didn't have much confidence that, after just a few hours, I'd be able to "get air" off a drop like the boys do when we go riding.

We started will a drop I'd usually roll off, so it didn't seem too scary and after just a few attempts, we were all managing to manual off the lip of the drop and some of us were even managing to jump off the drop. This was a massive step forward for me and I already felt that I had achieved loads (no more being told to lift my front wheel!).

Next, Ed persuaded some of us move on to the next drop. This one was a lot bigger. I'm sure it wasn't quite as big as it looked, but it looked like it was about 3 foot tall, built from stone with a concrete slab on the top.

Jenn, Cat, Ros and I spent several minutes walking round the drop, looking at it from the top, then from the bottom, then further back up the trail, then back to the top of the drop, but all we were doing was making ourselves more nervous. So, Jenn decided just to go for it. Unfortunately, because it was quite a short run up, she didn't manage to get quite enough speed, tried to stop at the top, and somehow managed to roll off the drop.

Then it was Cat's turn. She managed to get speed up, got off the drop really nicely, but then when she landed, her forks compressed and it all went a bit wrong. By the time I rushed over to the top of the drop, she was lying in a heap on the trail looking pretty beat up. Luckily, she got off relatively lightly with a grazed and bruised chin and a bashed shoulder.

After that, Ros and I decided that the drop wasn't for us, so we suggested to Ed that we move on to something else.

Ed's choice of taking us to the quarry didn't seem like an easier option to me! Then, when he pointed to a big rocky drop, I really though he was kidding, but he was serious!

I could swear the drop was about as tall as me (although I'm sure it wasn't really) and it was narrow with a really short run out, so I really couldn't see how it could be possible for me to ride this.

As I stood at the top I couldn't figure out how I could possibly ride down it, but Ed was confident we could all do it, so I decided to at least try riding up to it to see what it was like. Jenn and I took our bikes further up the quarry and took a few deep breaths. Jenn decided to go first and rode it like a pro!

Then I rode at it, all the time, the little voice in my head was screaming "Don't touch the brakes! Hold on to the bars like your life depends on it! COMMIT!", whilst I kept muttering under my breath "Come on! You can do this!". Then I rode off the drop and found myself riding away from the bottom, in one piece!

I made it!

Just a few hours earlier, I wouldn't even have considered riding to the top of something like that to have a look, but I'd just managed to ride the biggest drop in the world (well, it seemed that way to me).

Just to prove to myself that I really had done it, I went back to have another try and again, found myself riding away from the bottom in one piece. If I could do a backflip, I think I would have!

So, maybe I hadn't managed to ride that first big drop, but I did manage to ride something I would never have dreamed of riding before and that's a huge step forward in my book!

I'm not sure I'm a gnarr rider yet, but if nothing else, I've found a new way of looking at trails and have a bit more confidence. I'm already thinking about my local trails and how I can ride them differently, better and maybe smoother. I can't wait to go out for my next ride and play!

Can we go out for a ride now?

Jac
x

saturdays are for riding

Just a quick reminder that this coming Saturday (21st May), we're hosting a ride from Hebden Bridge.

If we end up with a very large group of ladies then we'll possibly split into an easy and harder ride but nobody will be left behind. We have all sorts of trails here - not all straight up - and the only requirements are a working mountain bike, helmet/gloves, a spare tube and food/drink to keep yourself going. And yes, there will be cake.

Coffee Cali, Hebden Bridge. 10.30am to ride at 11am.

(Blazing Saddles are just around the corner if you need to shop but as there are likely to be a fair few of us, a larger meeting point was needed - the fact that it's a coffee shop is purely coincidental, ahem...)

Fingers crossed for less of this...



And plenty of this...!



j.

24 Solo (and more short stories)

This weekend was the European and UK 24 and 12 hour solo champs. It was the same venue as last year, Newcastleton, Scotland (just down the road for me), but with some upgrades to facilities and slight changes to the course. The weather conditions, though, couldn't have been more different from last year - blazing sunshine and dry dusty trails last year v biblical rain and wet muddy trails this year. So it was quite a different race from last year.

I had entered the 24 almost as soon as the entries opened, but then did nothing about it. No training, no real thought to how I was going to do it, I just put it to the back of my mind until a month ago I realised it was almost time and I was not ready by a long shot!

So, as you can imagine, it didn't really go quite as I hoped, and the biblical rain and horrible mud, didn't really help my cause.

From my very first lap I was battling with my usual dark thoughts of throwing in the towel, but because my towel was already covered in mud and soaking wet, that wasn't an option (our tent had a huge puddle in it when I woke up on Saturday morning and a bunch of my things were lying in the puddle, including my towel and some of my riding kit!).

For the first few laps, the course was really busy because of the combination of 12 and 24 hour riders, but as time went on, it got quieter - the bad weather was taking it's toll on riders and bikes and several riders decided to call it quits early. My lap times weren't great, but I was managing to keep consistent times and was starting to enjoy the trails, but then I had a bit of a mishap....one of the fun, if a bit sketchy, muddy descents had got a bit muddier since my last lap, so I decided to try a different line...bad idea. Wobble, don't touch the brakes, oh, avoid that tree, thump. Bike flew over the top of me and I was in a very muddy heap on the ground with my bike on top of me. Luckily a marshal was at the top of the hill and came rushing down to get my bike off me and off the trail. I stood up and checked the bike, which was fine, but I realised that I had ripped a huge hole in the bum of my shorts and an equally huge hole in my bum cheek! I didn't really want to lose a lap, so I decided just to finish the lap with my bum hanging out the back of my shorts. Not very lady-like I know, but it was dark by this time and not many people on the course, so I figured nobody would notice (and if they did, they'd be in an equally bad state, so probably wouldn't pay too much attention).

Then the rains came, and I mean proper rain. So after my next lap, I know I shouldn't have, but I decided to take refuge in my tent until the rain eased off a bit. The next thing I knew, the sun was up... I'd managed to doze off and sleep for several hours and I was more than a little bit cross with myself!

So, having missed the dawn lap, my favourite, and now being several laps down on where I should have been, I went back out on to the, now almost deserted, course. I managed to ride a few more laps, but by the finish, I was quite a few laps down on where I'd hoped to be (as well as being another pair of shorts down!).

Despite all of that, it was another great event and the support and encouragement from my shared pit crew, other riders and other support crews managed to keep a smile on my face even when I really should have been crying.

Now that I'm home, clean, dry, rested and the sun's out, I'm taking stock of the weekend.

1. The massive black bruise on my right bum cheek has reminded me that I must remember to take arnica to events.
2. I must take a waterproof with me if I think there's even a remote chance that it'll rain (so that I can't use being soaked through as an excuse for stopping for a bit).
3. I need to find the time to train. My next big event is a month from now, so just enough time...maybe, if I really, really try.

Jac
x

P.S. I'll try to find some pics of the epic muddiness and pop them up.

Short Stories

How do you know when it's finally time to say goodbye to your favourite old shorts?

Is it when the stitching frays a bit along the seems? No. They're still hanging together. It'll be fine.

Is it when the chamois starts to get a bit lumpy? Nah. It's just molded to the shape of your bottom. It's not chaffing, so it's still fine.

Is it when you notice a slightly thinning patch on your inner thigh where your thigh rubs against the saddle? Oh no. That's just aero-dynamics...less resistance at your inner thigh.

Is it when you make a speedy dismount, desperately trying not to go pelting into the stream, but manage to catch that slightly thinning patch on your saddle, wobble and tumble a bit and hear that unmistakable sound of ripping lycra? Yes. It's probably time now.

Jac
x