Singletrack Staff Blog

For many people, this time of year is when we catch up with old friends, family and places as we return to our roots for the festive holidays. I always enjoy Christmas as I get to catch up with friends and family. This year, as always, I went riding around Alfred’s Tower, near my mum’s house in Somerset. Just me and my bike, riding round tracks I’ve ridden every year for the last 18 years. I was riding a state of the art carbon Ibis with loads of travel, disc brakes and other fancy gadgets, but I still got as wet and sideways as when I first rode there on my Pacific 7-Comp back in 1989…

There’s something gratifying about returning to your origins, though, and seeing the obstacles that once challenged (and defeated) your younger self. They’re now ridden over with ease and the epic drops of yesteryear hardly register underneath the wheels of the new behemoth I’m piloting. I wonder, then, if in another few years time if the 6ft drops and enormous gaps that now astound me will be passed by so casually by the future me…

Hey, I can always hope…
Happy Christmas all and best wishes for a fantastic 2007!

Chipps

racing, it’s fast, there’s blatant cheating and a lap must be all of three minutes tops.
The scene is Heptonstall Bowling Club, right on our doorstep. It’s somewhere around the third lap that I finally get past the two nuns on the tandem and chase down Batman and Robin. I’ve just been overtaken by Mr Incredible and Spiderman who’s on his wheel, in a strange mix of fancy dress, anaerobic exercise, real northern cold and an overwhelming sense of community spirit.

30 minutes later it’s all over, pie and peas in the Bowling Club bar and prizes for everyone. I’m hooked.

Spent yesterday riding in the Yorkshire Dales (from Kettlewell to be precise). It was a proper ‘old skool’ type of ride eerily like I used to do about 10 years ago. It was very much a climber’s ride as well with hills that just ‘took the piss’ - which I loved. It was great to realise that I still really like a challenging climb… or seven. And the final ‘limestone river bed’ descent was great too.

Apparently it was about 45km in total - which explains my legs this morning! The ride was being led by Stu and I think he was ever-so-slightly relishing being able to put the pain on us (and himself).

I’m off to the Lakes tomorrow to revisit another old haunt of mine (Claiffe Heights). After yesterday’s inspiration from Stu I think my riding buddy TimK is in for a bit of an ‘old skool’ battering tomorrow. I have a nice ‘no short cuts’ route planned

Finally, some cold, crisp, sunny weather. Even though some of the roads we were riding on were more like rivers, the trails around here weren’t too bad. Just a bit splashy, but no soul-destroying muddiness.

Our ride from Oxenhope went up and over to Ogden Reservoir over a couple of bridleways that haven’t been used by us much until this year - and we’ve suddenly rediscovered just how great they are. It’s funny how trails can go in and out of favour with a group. Perhaps the ‘regular’ ride gets to be too predictable, so you start riding elsewhere. Then you come back and ride it again and realise why it used to be your regular ride…

There were many photos taken by Steve Makin, which’ll be on his Flickr site from the day, but here’s a couple of snaps I took - one of Chris riding the ‘Trail of a thousand wrong lines’ and the other of a plane over the windmills…

Ahh, good times…

Tonight has been a night of vicious winds and heaving rain. However, one of those ‘mustn’t be the one to wuss out’ nights and yet another evening where I was glad I made the effort to get out and ride off-road on yet another stupid night.
It seems that, as long as you have a good jacket, good tights (Sugoi Firewall tonight) and a stash of dry gloves to ride home in, you’ll be fine.
And fine I am… Riding bikes is great. The new issue of Singletrack is back and we’re already looking forward to the next issue with gusto…

As for our training… Well, we’ve all been a bit busy, but it seems that some folk are keeping to the programme, which’ll get the rest of, er, us, busy and working hard on the million pushups currently missing from the training sheet…

Not ours though.
After Singletrack Dirt is the magazine I most look forward to seeing through the letterbox. Actually that’s not true, I prefer Dirt, purely because I haven’t spent the best part of 3 weeks staring at every single page of it (although I will) and I don’t know what’s going to be in it and everything is fresh to me.
I’ve always been a magazine kid, MBUK, WMTB, MTB Pro, MBI, Maximum… I used to buy them all but Dirt has always been the magazine I’ve picked up again and again and kept on my bookshelf. The combination of good articles, the ability to capture the glamourous side of our sport and the presentation always got my riding and artistic juices flowing. I partly blame Dirt for getting me into graphic design and for making me try to jump flights of steps and build jumps.
And now Dirt is 10 years old, so I’d just like to say ‘Happy Birthday Dirt’, and thanks for all you’ve done for the sport and for the inspiration you’ve given me and countless others. Here’s to another 10 years.
Sim

Just built up my new Long Termer for next season. An Ibis Mojo, carbon suspension bike…
It’ll be my first ever carbon bike and probably the longest rear travel bike I’ve had for any length of time, apart from borrows of the office Heckler. It’ll certainly be interesting.
We reckon the colour is ‘bone’, though it looked very ‘pistachio’ under the office lights… Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see how the lovely paint and very, very shiny suspension bits fare over a UK winter… It’s all very well designing a bike in 70 degree California. Saying that, though, the mud room looks great (Scot’s ridden in Scotland before…) - very exciting…

I’m not quite sure what’s come over me… Sim and I were up until 3am this morning getting the issue finished and, already I know the clock starts ticking on the next issue. But I’m really happy how this issue was looking - normally I can’t even bear to look at the thing for a couple of months… And I know that the NEXT issue is going to be a corker too - and we haven’t even started working on it yet…
    Despite the awful weather outside (it’s been lashing it down here most of the day) and knowing we’re going to lose at least a week over Christmas, I feel that we’re finally starting to gain some momentum.
    The character of the magazine is pretty established, now, in people’s minds. Folk know if it’s for them or not and we’re happy with the readers we have - they’re people we’d all happily spend a ride, or a pubby evening with, talking bikes - or not talking bikes.
    We’re no longer the scruffy ‘alternative’ magazine - we’ve come to embrace the majority of UK bike riders who are actually out there on the trails. And I loves it. Let’s get this mountain biking Zeppelin headed for the hills - we’ve got some riding to do…

The last few pages of the mag are now on their way to the printers, and I’m ready for my bed.
Still, it does look quite good, and when we get the mag back from Warners it’ll all be worth it.

This weekend sees the third Wuthering Bikes going off, an irregularly occuring meeting of the extended STW clan (it was meant to be a Calderfest but seeing as we’re staying in Oxenhope I’m claiming it).

• Bunkhouse booked - tick
• rough idea of numbers coming - erm tick’ish
• rough idea of two days worth of routes - not planned but I’m sure it’ll all drop into place
• rough plans of group meals - menu’s organised for saturday night takeaway does that count?

The great thing about these weekends is the way they give some motivation and something to look forward to when the weather turns grim. It definitely seems more worthwhile organising one in winter than when the weather is good and because people are travelling here to try out our local trails we’re committed to riding and having fun whatever happens. Of course there’s the apres riding too and a chance to catch up with friends we’ve not see since the race season ended. Perfect huh?
So all that remains is to get the beer to stash somewhere on the moors for the mid ride drink and I’m ready to relax and ride some bikes