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Sunday 29 March 2009

How Windy was Saturday?

On the look out for a new local trail, in readiness for the longer nights, I managed to pick the windiest weekend for ages!

Local trails are sometimes a bit too obvious to find, sometimes just right under your nose and so you look past them, well that's my theory anyway because I managed to do 10 miles without really going anywhere.

Although I did come across some random tent pitched across a path/bridleway which was rather strange, followed 100 metres further on by kids burning whatever they could find in a small wood, didn't hang about there for long as you could imagine. An interesting Saturday morning.

I did find myself in Horbury though, and for some reason I've never really noticed what Horbury was like before. It was clearly larger than the small town I'd giving it credit for, not really noticed the church or historic buildings (an old hospital building marked by stone masonry, for example). The houses in some parts were also large and hidden away, it just looked like a place of reasonable wealth in yesteryear, but still had a village type appeal.

Back to riding and although I didn't really hit too many hills, the ride was a good work out, need to now inspect the map and try to find more off-road sections in the same area to connect the sections, but I did manage to puncture both front and rear tyres which was annoying, both from thorns off bushes.

Next week: Towbar fitted to car + ride local to towbar garage, followed by day at Dalby Forest.

Monday 23 March 2009

How to get Fit?

From Ride On
- Put yourself up against the clock!

After riding now regularly for some weeks, with many rides going past the two hour mark, I might have considered the 2 hour Novice Trail Quest route to have been something relatively easy to accomplish.


Instead, the clock really does increase the intensity and the effort goes up 2 fold. Our time was clocked at 2hours 11minutes, which was without penalties as we'd opted for the Novice option, being our first Trail Quest. We covered around 20 miles in those 2 hours, which is fantastic considering some of the long leg burning steady inclines. Plus the stop-start nature of using the SportIdent electronic checkpoints, which are much improved to the Lane Quest hand written (pen and paper) option. The distance covered just highlights the decent pace we were able to keep up.

The TrailGuru iPhone application wasn't able to keep up again, I'll be turning to a Garmin device soon for GPS mapping and dropping that into TrailGuru instead, the iPhone battery is not up to 2 hours constant GPS usage. Here is the TrailGuru part that actually recorded.

Towards the end, concentration on the uphill sections was all about rhythm and just keeping the cadence set and steady. Fitness wise - this has had a large impact and lungs and legs have improved because of it.

Photos of our ride are kept here.

On the fun factor - there was less of it than expected. We did get a few downhill sections worth the uphil section getting there, but the clock really ups the intensity even on the flat and it's always there in the back of your mind. It did feel like this was a mission than a fun event, which still included quite a few road sections that can drag.

Our scores might not be high, we scored around 100 points, but we certainly improved fitness and so the effort was well worth it. The NYMBO website is where the scores are kept, I thought the entire event was very well run, marshalls were very helpful and all things explained to us 'novice' guys in an informative manner.

Not sure how many more Trail Quests we'll do but this was a good way to keep the fitness high, however less road and more 'trail' would have been preferred.

Two weeks to the Dalby Trail Centre day out. Next week: back to local.


Sunday 15 March 2009

The Starting Post

This is the start, the first one, the beginning. Blogging the rides and routes we take through the year.

Today, we managed to get about 16 miles under our belts (or wheels) with a definite turn of Spring in the air. After the initial upwards climb, all of 50 metres into the ride, we followed the route we had found the week before and it seemed to flow a little faster this time. We all found a little disappointment in the fact the cafe was closed when we got there. Too early for them, which confused us a little as we were here last week. Today must have been just that little bit faster and we knew where we were going for a start.

I think we're all getting fitter too, back riding since late December and it's starting to pay off.

The route starts at Newmillerdam and travels out to Windsetter Reservoir and back. Basic parts of the ride can be found on Bike Radar web site.

I tracked where we were riding on the GPS on iPhone, but it's really sketchy sometimes and the TrailGuru iPhone application seems to have a mind of it's own. I have no clue what causes it to stop but it just does. More on that as time goes by.

Crash reports were a minimum, just one off, myself, in the woodland section after taking a tractor-tyre track incorrectly, it pointed me at the trees and a wheelie back online ended up with me on my side. I was off. But it was soft underfoot and if ever there is a time to come off, then this was it. No air in anyone's lungs at the time reduced the comedy moment this time round.

Next week: Trail Quest - our first time at a Trail Quest event. Looking forward to a new competition.