It’s been a few weeks since I had a proper rest, but this coming week is a “proper” rest week. I’m needing it too – the last week I’ve been off work, working on the house, running more and riding more. The ride with Simon the other day and the hill intervals session the day after pretty much finished me off. Still, I went for my customary ride this morning. I wasn’t feeling like going far so I went for an hour’s spin on the singlespeed.

 This weekend I’ve also been catching up on a fettling backlog. Maintaining several bikes is pretty time consuming, especially when you’ve decided to strip and grease 4 rear hubs and 5 headsets on top of bleeding a pair of hydraulic brakes, nipping up 4 pairs of crank bolts (Simon take note), putting anti-puncture strips in a pair of wheels and a few other grease monkey jobs. Anyway, it’s all done now for a few more months. What’s more, I’ve pretty much finished the cyclocross bike! All it needs now is a shorter stem (expected this week) and some bar tape once I’m happy with the bar and STI positions. Looks fast eh?

I’m looking forward to putting in some SERIOUS miles on this one…

Simon and I tackled one of my regular routes today, but this time at a “faster pace”. Well, a bloody really quick pace in fact. Simon’s geared bike was in a bad way so he singlespeeded (singlesped?) – meaning he had no choice but to ride with a certain degree of committment up the climbs….

 The bloody rain did not stop until we got back to the car and were well on the way back.

What a glorious morning! I did a quick loop this morning early on, then back to the house to collect Michael who was then joining me on another ride. It was warm, dry and there’s definately a change of season in the air.

I’m off work all next week. As well as a load of DIY I’m planning to get a load of early morning and evening running and riding in. The CX bike should be ready to roll today too. Woohoo!

We had a walk up to Rivington Pike this afternoon. The weather was brilliant for February – no wind, no rain and not freezing cold. We took the steep way down, and Rachael enjoyed the hardcore dirt action 😉

GRR!

caption competition…

In an attempt to settle the “which way is best?” debate on the Garburn Pass, 8 riders set off from the Staveley car park after an unplanned brake replacement (good job there was a shop mechanic in our group for making a really fast job of it). Up the first climb east to west, then down the other side (WOOOT!), quick loop at the Troutbeck end then up the pass again the other way around. Then the superb descent back to the start.

You can see one of our group in this photo (clicky) – follow the trail down and to the right…there’s a small black dot….

What an awesome ride. This one’s definately going to form part of the Cristalp training – a few hours repeating this climb is going to be a proper test of stamina and climbing technique.

 And which way is best? Well, opinion was divided between the smooth-but-steep speed merchants and the incredibly rocky-and-steep speed merchants. I’m on the fence.

More guff from this ride and an actual photo with me actually in it at Industrial Fell Biking.