Singletrack Staff Blog

I’m in Kaprun for a few days courtesy of Diz at Over The Edge holidays. She’s showing us (Me and Sanny) what they do over here. We got in around midnight last night and e were up at 7 ready for an early start only to be met with heavy rain and cloud. The plan was to do a ride/lift combo up to 6000 feet and then spend most of the day doing a 10km descent! Instead we are sat in the hotel waiting for the cloud to lift and the rain to stop.

Funny thing happened on the Ryan Air Cattle Flight out..
Our flight attendant ‘leader’ was clearly Dutch. We worked this out from hish accshent. He was in charge of the flight ’safety’ talk and was really not happy when he didn’t get EVERYONES attention. After stopping half way through, the rest of his talk went something like this…

“Pleeesh! I need everyonesh attenshun. Thish is important and you ALL HAVE to lishun. Itsh legal! However(sh), if you don’t want to Lishun if you raish your hand now a flight attendant will come and help you and your bagsh leavesh the plane and you will not be flying anywheresh today.. For shure!”

There’s a bike event happening this weekend here called Bike Infection - got to love the Europeans and their cool turn of phrase when it comes to these things. Not sure what it’s actually about yet but Ryan Leech is in town doing some exhibition stuff so we have plans to catch up with him tomorrow.

Cloud looks to be lifting a bit now so going to go get some kit on… More later

Apologeesh to any Dutch readersh

Sanny’s turn now….

Hellosh!

Breakfast was a veritable cornucopia of meat products, pastries, nuttella and cereal which closely resembled the consistency of the bottom of a bird cage. I think I may well have made myself diabetic given the volume of food shoveled in. Fair play to the twists, they know how to put on an awesome spread. The only sour (kraut?) note was the couple of twists at the table across the room who snaffled all the chocolate croissants. Gits! Still, with the rain lashing down, they probably felt the need to demonstrate their efficiency in hoovering up the breakfast bar what with it being too wet to leave their towels by the pool……….Der Shanny

I’m back from a few days holiday with my family in the hills near Annecy in France. I had a great time, didn’t ride any bikes and had a great amount of cheese (mainly Reblochon). I’m now back and packing tonight for my 11th Mountain Mayhem. I had decided to ‘retire’ last year, but I got caught up in the fuss again and find myself with a team. Besides, I have some spiffy new test bikes to try out. Plus the Yeti ARC, which was made for days like these. I may not be in tip-top condition and the weather looks like being the usual damp-fest, but I’m excited to be out there again. It’s all good…

Well that’s what I’ve been having, mostly. I’ve felt rather run-down and on the edge of illness, but with nothing to show for it apart from a slower-than-usual cycling speed. So I decided to take it easy over Easter, I kept off the bikes and I’m not riding until this coming weekend, when we’ll be doing a women’s bike test for the next issue. (Well I won’t, but I will be photographing it…)

I did also photograph Sim and Emily being taught ‘Advanced Cornering’ by Nigel Page. Now that was a fun day… Here’s Sim hanging it all out. Well, within reason…

Sim tries to look professional under Nigel Page’s expert gaze.

Despite the reasonably crap weather, it’s good to see the evenings lengthen - and this weekend we gain another hour of daylight. Soon there’ll be no excuse for not riding. And to add to that anticipation, I just heard that my long term test bike for this spring is on the way - a Yeti ARC… Woohoo!
And the new issue’s just come out too. Great stuff…

What a busy weekend. Managed to play guitar every evening and ride bikes every day. ‘Jazzy’ Brian, Barney and I went out for a ‘2pm until dark’ ride on Saturday, then played bad Pink Floyd covers for most of the evening. Sunday was another ‘late til dark’ ride followed by more strumming. I now have sore legs and sore fingertips. Got a load more test-riding that needs doing this week too, so an early night tonight I reckon followed by a week of riding (and writing) madness.

A surprise pothole pinchflatted my Steamroller on the wet ride home on Saturday night - the first mechanical of any kind it’s given me in over two years. Think I’ll treat it to some chunkier tyres.

Tomorrow is my favourite event of the year - the Marin Dusk Til Dawn in Thetford Forest, Suffolk. For somewhere that’s supposedly ‘flat’, it’s always a hugely fun and testing course. Thetford is where I did much of my early mountain biking for fun back in ‘91 and ‘92, so perhaps that’s why I have such a fondness for the place. The course is twisty, whoopy and flat-out fun, which is probably why it’s so hard; there’s nowhere to freewheel or go easy.

I’ll be racing Mixed Pairs with Emily, my girlfriend. After what seems like a couple of months of colds, travelling and inactivity, it’ll be a shocking way to end the race season, but hopefully the fun of riding round the woods all night will keep me going. If you’re down there, come and say ‘Hi’.

I’m looking forward to actually riding bikes soon - the silly show season is currently upon us - and as well as the Eurobike/SSWC/Fort William fortnight, I’ve just done Trek, a wedding, an off road duathlon (for fun apparently) and a view of the 2008 Saracen bikes. On Saturday Mark and I are off to Las Vegas for a solid week of Interbike. Once back we’ve got a fortnight to get the next issue finished (with the welcome distraction of the Marin Dusk Til Dawn race) and, with the exception of the Cycle Show in London, we can start winding down the travelling a little and ramping up the riding… As for the duathlon - doing a 5k run/20k mountain bike/5k run with the minimum of running practice now means that I’m walking around like someone just lopped a couple of inches from my hamstrings… All good fun though…

The Singlespeed Worlds ride-out

Matt and I are back from our two weeks of planes, trains and automobiles (and ferries). After doing Eurobike into the Singlespeed World Champs in Aviemore and then Fort William, I was quite glad to get back and spread out in my own bed - no tents, no hostels, no kitchen floors. We now need to work out what’s going in the next issue, plus the next year of magazines, this week. I’m away again on Thursday to go to a product launch in Milton Keynes on Friday and another one in Banbury on the Monday. Then it’s four days in the office before Mark and I fly to Las Vegas for Interbike for a week. I have a week off booked for November (my next spare weekend) and it’s looking mighty tempting.

Some of the vocal crowd at Fort William.

Our office-moving party was a resounding success, with such disparate ingredients as local beer, heavy dub through Matt’s huge speakers, the Tandem of Doom, a Thai curry and heaps of sushi. I’m not entirely sure what went on as, in the best traditions, I was in the kitchen for most of the night. But judging by the fragility of some folk on Saturday morning, a good time was had by all.

Now it’s back to normal as we plunge with increasing speed and inevitability toward our next magazine deadline. No more fun for us, eh? Must remind ourselves that the good bits of this job are actually quite good. This is a shot of one of the local trails we rode on Saturday… Not too shabby.

Well, I’m back after a week away. Mostly holiday, though my initial plan of road riding in Yorkshire for the week was derailed by a) not having a road bike and b) getting a last minute invitation to the Lapierre Bikes launch in Alpe D’Huez. So, I decided to go to France for the week instead and take a few days off at the end of the bike launch to ride with my pal Graeme/MacPuppy in the Vercors area of France.

The Lapierre bikes are great and there’ll be a report on the website shortly, but here’s a quick sneaky peek at their 140mm travel fun bike.

The rest of my week was spent spanking myself up and down some big French hills in the sunshine, both on and off road. An ideal antidote to the stupid weather here. Here’s the view from the scary road on the wonderfully named 1000m ‘Col de La Machine’.

The doorbell just went and a bike box turned up with the nice TNT man. It was Sim’s Commencal Meta5, shipped back from the Shimano XT launch in France. Sim got the bike out of the box and it was covered in summer dust. I was taken aback with how odd it was to see a dusty bike. Thinking about it, though, I can remember one dusty weekend of riding since April. I know that I go on about the weather sucking so much, but I’d forgotten how great it is to ride on dry, dusty trails. Mmmm… Yum.