Monday 30 January 2012

Clean heels

Well if nothing else yesterday proved to me that no matter how fast you are and how well you think you’re going there is always someone just around the corner that will show you a clean pair of heels if given half a chance.  After last weeks theft related nightmare it was purely by luck that local racer (Niner/Ergon/Stans) Scott Cornish had a Trek hanging around in my size, never one to turn down a chance to get off the tarmac a plan was hatched to do a big ride.
Heading over to his for 9.30 realistically meant a 10 start, heading out through the local trails and (Very quickly) on to those less well known we sped past riders out for a Sunday morning ride playing on the newly opened trails at Lee woods.  Heading out towards the coast and with mentions of cheddar and Mendip being banded about the day had all the hallmarks of an epic, it became clear that the large bowl of porridge consumed that morning was going to make its worth known…

As we sped along the strawberry line between Pill and Cheddar it became clear that we were still in the big ring, not only that but we had been in it long enough for the other two to become clogged up and almost slick, wondering how long I could maintain this pace we continued as the clouds grew closer and the ice cold rain that had been threatening became less threat and more hale.

The answer to this question became obvious climbing up the cheddar gorge (Remember the big climb in the cheddar challenge?) as Scott pulled away from me again I dropped down a cog and came to the conclusion that if I continued chasing it would put the return leg at risk – as it was now getting really cold and quite miserable it was decided with the bulk of the off road done we would ride the rest of the route at our own pace, in the aim of keeping warm.

7 hours and the think end of 110km later we rolled back into Bristol, ironically through Ashton court again and back for a well deserved Bath. Someone much wiser than me once said you have to play with people better than you to improve. There was a lot of improving done on Sunday…

Now all I need to so is sort out a bike of my own.

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