Went for a long-ish ride on the Patriot yesterday in the White Peak. This is a route I’ve done many times before and consists of mainly tarmac climbs and rocky conveyor-belt downhills. The last time I was up here I was on a hardtail, but this time I couldn’t be bothered with finesse and high levels of skill and wanted just high speed instead.

 The hightpoint was definately the drop down Cumberland Cottage. It would have been Charity Lane if it wasn’t for those pesky kids.

Forgot about the clocks going back and ended up racing against the sunset through Macc town centre.

 The route is basically this one: http://www.singletrackworld.com/i/routeguides/issue26/Issue26WhitePeakBlue.pdf

…with an extra loop added to the start and finish. Start at Trentabank, climb through the forest and up the long drag to the Cat and Fiddle..then join this route.

Going back, drop back to the forest via the C&F again (get to about 40mph on the road) then through the forest. You can even add the section through Macc town centre to my Mum-in-Laws. Ahem.

We’ve just got back from a few days up in Scotland, staying on the coast between Mabie and Dalbeattie forests.Whilst I’m a big fan of trail centres, I thought it would be a good idea to mark up a route cross-country between the two locations, and incorporate a ride at Mabie with Michael. Back over to Dalbeattie, then drop down through the forest North to South, riding as much singletrack as possible.The plan worked. Set off early and started to climb up to the summit of Little Hard Hill. It was a hard hill, but it’s not little. I gained over 550 metres of vertical in 1 hour 20 minutes of continual climbing. The fog that had hidden pretty much everything from view for the early part of the ascent was now below me and I was climbing further from the clouds below, feeling the warmth from the sun.

So I’ve been training a fair bit recently. Quite well structured too, but I’ve found that I’m just not spending enough time at home with Deb, Rach and Syd for my liking.

So….I’ve got a new plan. This involves loads of riding and loads of running, but a lot of it in the early morning or on the turbo trainer. It does mean though that I turn into even more of a hermit but at least I’ve a plan I can stick to that’s flexible enough to accommodate those whacky random things that sometimes just happen.

The whole focus at work seems to be moving towards a triathlon event in summer next year. Now, I’ve seen many people over the years boast how they’re going to beat so and so in such and such a race, but I’ve learned that the best policy is one of dignified restraint. You can talk a good race all day long, but that’s time I’d rather be thinking about my next training ride/run or what food I need to be eating right now.
There’s a lot of pretenders in this world who’ll rather try to push the psychological to the limits even if you’re just not listening.

Quietly (or as quiet as I can be when publishing this on the Internet), I’m pretty confident. I’ll do the bike leg (cos I reckon I’m pretty good), Rob will do the run (cos he’s a pretty handy half marathoner) and Wendy – cos she’s done a bit of swimming and her confidence will build.
More updates on that one over the next 8 months.

Another singlespeed ride in the dark. Even though my local loop isn’t blessed with great big hills all over the place (not devoid of climbs though), running a 34:16 makes it sufficiently challenging to make my legs feel like they’ve been out to play for a bit.

The mud wasn’t too bad considering this week’s rain, so I rode over the Nob End and the lovely singletrack and dirt jumps (to roll over) in the nature reserve.

There’s been a huge amount of tree felling recently, so I stopped in a clearing that last week was dense woodland. Someone’s been busy.

It didn’t rain either, despite some evil-looking clouds knocking around all threatening-like.

This Kona’s starting to creak a bit now and the chain tensioner’s starting to be problematic. It’s not really tensioning the chain any more and the adjustment bolt has rounded. I’ll add it to the “smack with hammer” list for this weekend along with the pesky Patriot bearings and that bloody white van that a bloke in the next street keeps leaving outside the house.

Time to sell the frame I reckon. It’s a shame really, cos this ancient, slightly-too-small-for-me  Kona has been my introduction to singlespeeding and frankly, I’ve loved every single frantic mile of it. Really. You should try it.

With a rigid fork.

Started running again this morning cos I’m just not getting out on the bike as much as I’d like to. My first run for several weeks, in fact. I need to do this for the fitness it provides, but that’s not to say I enjoy it too much.