If you know someone who doesn’t own a bike, but you think they should, send them to Rich. Bike hire (good ones too), skills training and guiding in the lovely Peak District.
Good luck with the venture Rich (and all the best with the constant maintenance schedule!)
Contrary to the BBC forecast, the weather today was brilliant. Warm and sunny. Yes. WARM AND SUNNY. Maybe the BBC are just taking the piss. They’ve said it’s going to rain tomorrow now. Bet it doesn’t.
Another impressively large group of mountain bikers assembled in the car park up the road and off we went to do a lap of the course. It dries out so quickly that there was hardly any mud anywhere and the normally super-sketchy-in-the-wet downhill section through the campsite woods was rideable (at speed) and lined with bluebells and wild garlic. Heaven.
One of our number crashed in the bombhole and cracked her helmet. We’ve decided on a perfect alternative route around it now, good job too as the potential for carnage on the day is a worry.
Michael came out with me on the ride. I was really pleased about that as he’s not ridden for a while and we should just ride together more often. So we will. I’ve got him a new frame. It’s a bit of a brute.
84 miles, plenty of climbing and rain. Loads of rain. I arrived to find a car park full of faffing roadies and expensive carbon machinery…leg warmers on…legwarmers off. You know what I mean. I had fun at the start playing “spot the mountain biker” – easy to spot though with the Camelbaks and peaked helmets 😉
Apart from one guy at the bottom of the first descent slamming into a barrier and literally flying over it, nothing much happened apart from pedalling and hurtin’. Only got passed once, on the way up Holme Moss a young slim, fast-looking lad on a Bianchi asked me if I wanted to grab onto his back wheel. I did – and that worked for about half a mile until I could cope no longer and got dropped. I caught him up on the next hill though and dropped him back. Didn’t see the cheeky bugger again after that.
I need to take more gels when I do the Fred Whitton in 2 weeks. The last 10 miles were a bit of a haze…
finished in 4:45, putting me in 10th overall out of 296 (I think), 10 mins or so behind the lead rider. Chuffed!
A shortish ride on the cross bike yesterday, only about 30 miles in total. I got some early 3 Peaks training in by running* up the side of Holcombe Hill whilst shouldering the bike. That hurt.
On the way back I stopped to take a photo of the damaged caused to the derelict nightclub next to the canal in Radcliffe. There had been machine gun fire reported to the police a few weeks ago…sure enough, when the police arrived to investigate, someone had shot the wall with an Uzi or something.
*not really running. Fast walking and grimacing.
Jase 