Singletrack Staff Blog

I’m a great one for whingeing about how little we get to ride and how many consecutive days I spent stuck in the office, working on last issue. This week, though, has been full of riding so far. On Monday, I got to catch up with John Pitchers, of the New Inn, Appletreewick for an interview and for a ‘quick ride’ - which turned into 18 miles over the Yorkshire Dales. Pitch showed me that having your leg snap at 90degrees a few years ago and working seven days a week running a pub needn’t slow you down - at all…

And today I was in Sheffield for our Route Guide (nothing like leaving things to the last minute - and this is _nothing_ like it, we’ve got three days before print deadline… ) The only trouble is, my guides for the day happened to be Simon Richardson, a UK national team rider and Nick Craig, who’s won nearly everything. The pace was steady. Steadily fast for me, but to their credit, both lads showed a love for rough and rocky trails - that they rode with aplomb (who said XC riders can’t do technical?) and they also loved a gate-side chinwag too… A top couple of days out.

The only thing now is that I’ve got to write about it all… Tough, life eh?

I’m just writing some last minute ‘Grinder’ reviews for issue 31. How is it I can easily write several hundred words on a £5 spork and then find it hard to write more than two lines about some £400 wheels? :-S

Rode (half of) the Grizedale Challenge yesterday, what a nice and chilled event, over 500 folks lined up at the start for the rider briefing, which was thankfully brief !.The fast boys at the front and the rest of the pack behind meant that the start was the usual chaos of people yoyoing past each other until they realised that the first climb was going to be a long one and most settled into their natural pace, mine was slow and steady until the first crash, not sure what happened but from the back it was quite spectacular in a Tour de France style watching people plow into the melee, hopefully the poor guy on the deck was okay.

My race progressed steadily until I managed to crash into the guy who had just passed me on the descent and immediately fell off in front of me, standing up and slipping on a moss covered rock stretched some tendons in my ankle and knee and I knew that my race was done (bearing in mind the 3 peaks next weekend) so I limped back to race HQ to watch the leaders coming in not long after I arrived. It never ceases to amaze me how fast the fast boys really are, I think that the fisrt rider back was around the 2 and half hour mark, although I didnt take too much notice as I was busy queing for a sausage and marmalade butty.

4 and 5 hours after the start gun people were still coming home, all smiling, quite a lot were bloody ! and all happy to see both the finish line and the red bull girls, what was nice to see was that a lot of people hung around at the finish to cheer and clap everyone home.

 

A nice day out and a great event, I’ll be signing up for next year and will finish the whole course.

It’s amazing just how long a little bit of routine bike maintenance and building can take. It feels like I spent all of Saturday putting bikes (partly) back together. I’d realised that I don’t have a single, working personal bike apart from my Bianchi singlespeed. Even the Karate Monkey is in bits awaiting a crazy four speed conversion. (And then I’ll have to take the gears off again so that I can race it at Dusk Til Dawn in late October.
Saturday, though, was spent rebuilding the rather muddy Trek X-O cyclocross bike in anticipation of next weekend’s Three Peaks ‘Cross race - it’s all newly cabled up and clean, though I really do need some new brakepads… And I also started assembling what could be one of my ultimate bikes - the Turner Flux, tested last issue, with a full, full-on XTR groupset. What could possibly go wrong?
That’s coming along nicely, just needing someone who knows more about Shimano brake charging than me, a seatpost, some tyres and a couple of tools that are on loan somewhere. If it doesn’t rock, (sorry, “Hrrrock!”) then I’ll be most surprised.
And then Sunday was spent with a mellow ride around Oxenhope in ‘How nice is this?’ weather. But now it’s back to deadline week and an evening of subbing and writing. All good fun though…
Chipps

Tomorrow I’m doing a 75 mile Audax ride (that’s the shortest one they do) around the Forest of Bowland and skirting the Yorkshire Dales. I’ve ha d a cold or more accurately, ‘Man Flu’ over the past two days. It’s on the way out but I’m a little concerned it may not have cleared up by the morning. A friend has talked me into this and it would be lamer than a lame thing to back out now because my nose is runny. But the truth of the matter is the extent of my road training for this was a 20 mile ride over to my Mum’s house last weekend. I suspect that the odd off road ride just won’t add up to ‘appropriate’ training for this thing.

Ho hum.. 24 hours from now it will be over one way or the other. I’ll report back then

Like so many things in life you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone. The passing of any season is accompanied by a mournful feeling of regret. It’s all too easy to ruefully concentrate on those things that you should have done rather than look ahead at the opportunities that the season ahead offers.

…last night, but it was a good rain. It was the rain that shows the inevitable swing from summer - and what a great summer - to autumn. It had to happen some time and I’m glad that, for once, I feel I nearly made the most of summer. I wasn’t out every day and there were some days when I sat outside the pub drinking, or at my desk working, rather than taking in the views from the top of the hills. But, all in all, I’m happy with my summer - so winter can do its worst and I won’t complain. I’m already looking forward to pubs with log fires, chilly night rides and comedy sideways rain days…

Up before 6.30am for once. I’m in London (for once too) and about to head to the US Embassy. I need a visa to get into the States for Interbike. Only journalists (and students) need to get a visa and can’t get in under the Visa Waiver programme. Many forms filled in and lots of waiting around to come today I reckon. Ho hum. It’s all glamour, eh?

Back north tonight though and I have a couple of bikes to rebuild. One with some spanky new XTR. Woohoo!

The usual suspects and some new faces on last nights ride. Beautiful sunset and yellow full moon, and relatively dry trails still despite the recent rain.

The six weeks of not riding and the necessarily gentle reintroduction are showing though, I felt rusty on the singletrack in the dark. So I turned back early as I was aware I was holding everyone up and my elbow was reminding me it wasn’t enjoying the jarring and steppy sections of trail. So as the group headed off to shiny new trails, I headed back up and over to Oxenhope.
A quick double loop of Black Moor on the way back, to try and regain some fitness, saw my Lumi’s start to fade so the rest of my retreat was by the light of the moon.

Disappointed? Hell no. It’s good to be back on the bike and back out riding with friends. I’ve missed it a lot and the painful reintroduction to group riding is going to be worth it.