Singletrack Staff Blog

Strange night ride last night with a diminishing number of riders as more mechanicals hit. First a shredded sidewall left Matt walking home from the furthest point of the ride (Universal 1st rule of mechanicals).

Mark was hit next when his Lumi HID refused to work just as we’d completed all the climbing on the revised route.

And to top it all I’ve managed to kill the left hand crank of my Middleburn Uno’s

But it was still great to be out riding with good friends and nice to see that Lame Lamb, a local favourite trail, was running with water again after an unusually long dry spell for that particular descent.

Mark was convinced that one further mechanical nightmare awaited us in the form of a pump failure on the Landlord, but luckily he was wrong.

My Giant VT has just been stolen from outside our office. In broad daylight in front of a busy car park. I could see it from our office window. It was there this morning then gone by lunch.

I took it for granted. It was my bike and I’d spent a long time making it just right. It was my comfy armchair I returned to after riding ‘other’ bikes. It was the only bike I could ride without having to think about how various bits of it were performing compared to other bikes. It wasn’t on test or anything it was just ‘My Bike’.

Now it’s gone and suddenly I appreciate what it meant to me. I’m gutted. I feel bereaved and now I’m in mourning. I wish they’d taken the car, the contents, anything else that I had around of value rather than my Bike.
Of course no one saw anything and the CCTV camera overlooking my car from down the road is a dummy. Our web cam that often points at where we park was pointed inwards at an empty sofa. Whoever took it would have looked perfectly normal, standing outside the office of the local office of a mtb mag taking a bike off a Thule roof rack.

Angry, sad, stupid, depressed, bitter, upset… tick all that apply.

So, if you are in or around Todmorden, West Yorkshire and see a Blue Giant VT with Mavic XC wheels, Carbon bar, Formula discs and no seatpost (That was in the car) give us a call.

It’s not been a good few months so far for bike thefts around here.

Hmm… well I missed the New World Disorder film premiere because I was eating dinner. It’s now 11pm. Do I go and check out the band at the NWD party anyway? Do I go and sit in the downstairs bar at my hotel or do I hop in a cab and head off to the Double Down Saloon for a beer where I know a bunch of friends will be?
I know, I’ll stay in and write photo captions.

… after two weeks. I had a “proper” holiday (one without bikes and lots of snorkeling) last week. The week before my back felt like it was going to snap.

Now don’t get me wrong I had a lovely holiday, but by the end of it I was itching to ride. Last night I went out on a fairly techy, slippery ride around Calderdale. Ahhhh…. it’s like itching a scratch that won’t go away

I’m also trying out some new forks on my trusty Chameleon - the new RockShox Lyriks. They seem very good straight out of the box. Will let you know more once they’ve been abused some more!

Yep, it’s not only deadline time at the magazine, but it’s also time for Interbike - the biggest collection of what’s-going-to-be-new in the bicycle world. The Dirt Demo started today, but because I was on a plane, I don’t have any stories to post just yet. That’s tomorrow’s job.

The view out the window…

In the meantime, at 2.59am in the UK, so my laptop tells me, I’d better finish getting the last words of the magazine off to Sim having just got off my post-Three Peaks flight. No rest for the wicked and all that. And Vegas is a fine place for the wicked…

Yep, just been writing stuff for the new magazine issue on a tiny PalmPilot on a Trans-Atlantic flight. Technology lets me do that. However, in the past, technology wouldn’t have allowed our hundreds of thousands of readers to demand Interbike show stories before they even happen…

We’ve got a Santa Cruz Heckler frame to use for testing long travel XC or ‘All Mountain’ type stuff on. It’s previous incarnation was a lightweight build (sub 28lbs) and I didn’t really like how it handled. It had the lack of bulk to make road climbs easier and it accelerated pretty quick on straight line pedally flat stuff but it just felt a bit too easily bullied by rough trails and was too slack for twisty singletrack.

Last week I decided to change the build kit to try to make the bike ‘make sense’. On went: beefier and more tweak-able suspension bits (a rarely seen Spinner Cargo fork and X-Fusion 02 PVA DC shock), wider rimmed front wheel (Bontrager), bigger tyres (2.6 Schwalbe Al Mighty up front, Bontrager Big Earl Wet 2.5 rear), higher and wider bars (Syncros Bulk bars). Off came the big ring, on went a bash guard.

It weighs more (34lbs) but it rides a million times better. Gone is the feeling of it being an confused mess of inefficient XC wannabe and malnourished skittery freerider. It feels like a genuine All Mountain bike now (if I have to categorise it into a marketing pigeonhole). It still climbs surprisingly well belying its heft (I was quite prepared to sacrifice a bit of uphill performance but needn’t have worried really) but it’s on the descents that it is sooo much better. Whether it’s slo-mo, nadgery, hairpinny, stuttery stuff or hooning down at speed over wider, jumpier, rockier stuff it’s now very, very capable. And just a top laugh

It’s still not 100% there yet (needs better brakes and non-flippy shifters and the front tyre is a tad OTT) but now it’s a bike I want to ride again.

The Tod Beer Festival ride was well attended as usual and short enough that everyone got to the beer fest in plenty of time for a few pints of Ginger Marble or, appropriately Whernside Ale. Appropriately because tomorrow (Sunday) many folks from this parish will be racing the Three Peaks Cyclocross http://www.3peakscyclocross.org.uk/
But before that, I have to get all of my chunks of the magazine written and edited, and sub the rest of the magazine. That’s because on Monday I’m off to Interbike first thing… Woohoo. Lots of work, but should be fun. The magazine so far is looking great - it’s our photo special too.

Todmorden Beer Festival begins this evening. Time for the thursday night ride irregulars to assemble, do a (very) brief token ride and get into the Fest ASAP. This year’s Fest coincides with the final day of magazine deadline. Oh dear. Here’s hoping we survive the usual ‘interesting’ ride home back from the Fest

Well I did it. 75 miles in just over 9 hours, which kind of sounds a bit rubbish when you work it out but we (Steve and myself) decided that we were going to enjoy ourselves, and so we made it our mission to avoid riding past any cafe’s without stopping. We nearly did it too. It’s surprising though just how many cafes there are in any given 75 miles. That 9 hours, according to my computer, comprised of only 56% riding time. The rest was stops!
I think I took the principal of snacking little and often to new lengths.. Here’s my dietary list for the day. I’ll leave it up to you to guesstimate the calories…

Breakfast
3 x Weetabx + spoon of sugar and semi skimmed milk
Coffee

6 miles in
1/2 flapjack

12 miles in
Slice (big slice) of chocolate cake and a bottle of lucozade sport orange.

28 miles in
Coffee & 1/2 snickers at my Mum and Dad’s house (It’s on the route and it would have been rude not to stop)

37 miles in
Bacon butty, Coffee, thick slice of warm apple pie with double cream

45 miles in
2 ibuprofen capsules

63 miles in
Glass oforange juice, large waffle cone with two scoops of full cream chocolate swirl ice-cream with chocolate chips.

75 miles (finish)
Mug of vegetable soup with noodles, coffee, cheese bap, slice of malt loaf with butter, twix.

Home
3 x weetabix + spoon of sugar and semi skimmed milk

The bike riding part was quite fun too. Oddly Steve and I both reckoned that the outward half of the ride seemed much harder than the ride home, even though the toughest climbs were on the way back. Must have been that coming home psychology (or the Ibuprofen).

Funniest part of the day (we just got more giddy and giggly the more exhausted we got) was riding into to the village of Chipping. Long straight, flat bit of road and up ahead were 5 kids. Youngest was about 7 and the eldest 10-ish. All on massive rusty mountain bikes.. and wellies! It took us a staggering amount of effort to catch them. Not because they were fast or anything but just becasue we were so ‘f…ing knackered. As we passed them the youngest swerves and shouts, ‘F…ing hell!’. They then chased us down and damn near caught us. I was doing that pushing down on your knee with one hand thing, cos my legs were buggered

I discovered another sign of impending middle age on this ride too. Every time I reached the top of a climb I’d let out an involuntary sigh like what old people do as they lower themselves into their comfy chair. Even once aware of it I couldn’t prevent it from happening at the top of each climb. Jeez! I feel old right now. 35. Is that old? Well the thing about Audax riding is that it isn’t. We were tailed all along the route, and passed at several cafes, by a guy who must have been in his 70’s. He came in just 10 minutes behind us at the end and that was after we kept glancing over our shoulders every two minutes in the final 10 miles to check he wasn’t there. But it’s NOT a race. No sireeee.. Audax is not a race. It’s all about the participation and satisfaction of pushing your own limits.

Bollocks it is!