Owned

Seem to be getting owned by everything at the minute...mountain bike trails, road riding and my sinuses being the main ones. At least the latter explains the motivation dip recently as I fight off about of sinusitis, deep joy.

Got owned by the Whinlatter red route on the last weekend of October, off camber slippy rocks I can do, roots not so much. I realise now during the duathlon I must have ran over most of the technical stuff due to the traffic on the route. Had a couple of quality spud moments and once getting stuck behind my saddle on a techy, slippy rocky chute whilst avoiding someone else and ending up on a stupid line.

I have swapped my road bike and Titus saddles round as I just couldn't get comfy on it on the roadie, its fine on the Titus as I'm more upright. Its narrower, which is great for getting off the back but its one of the modern Flite designs with the handy hook for racking your bike in transition....or getting hooked on your shorts and digging in (nice bruise) and preventing you getting up again when making a dogs dinner of a trail obstacle. How I managed not to clatter into that rapidly approaching tree whilst sitting on my crud catcher so much I could hear it rubbing on the back wheel and having absolutely no control over the bike I'll never know but I'm pleased I didn't.

My technical riding needs some serious work and it's all basics like not looking far enough ahead. We did the blue which was fun but I died a death after that and jsut wanted to lie at the side of the trail and shake, though realised I'd had quite silly amounts of coffee which is never a good idea for me. I'm very susceptible to caffeine (which is why I like it) but it does tend to cause me to go off at warp speed then have a blood sugar crash if I have too much. A bit like blowing up a balloon and letting it go...that's me on 4 large mugs of good coffee.

A night on the beer in Ambleside meant I was a touch fragile and wobbly when we set off on the Grizedale red (no way I or anyone else for that matter was up for doing any of the natural stuff). Having done the trail a few times I knew the most dangerous thing on it was likely to be me in my slightly befuddled state and it somehow wasn't me that got owned by the boards.

I've never had much of a problem on the Grizedale boards, I've never had anyone stop in front of me on them either. They were like ice and seemed to be causing carnage and stoppages. Once stopped it was almost impossible to get going again it was so slippy, I tried to jog off the end of one and could barely stand up on it, was safer riding. When I was unimpeded I was actually riding them fine.

There were a few offs in our group with no damage until:








Watched a lad come round that section of board when we were faffing with the disk and he landed on his chest on the boards, ouch. Some of the gouge marks on the sides are impressive. They couldn't straighten the disk out so he had to ride the last section without a front brake.

We were round quite quickly then into the cafe, I've not been there since it was rebuilt and the food was superb.

Motivation has not been up to much since then, a few turbo sessions but had a low grade headache for a while, took me a while to realise it was sinusitis as it normally comes on after a cold.

Headed out on a road ride with Jez on Sunday just past which was a bit of a disaster for me, totally owned. It was only 45 miles with about 1700ft of climbing, pretty much all in the first 10 miles and my legs were not having any of it. No power, eventually realised saddle was probably too low, saddle swap with Titus. I am totally and utterly "princess and the pea" with saddle stuff, I'm sure I've mentioned it before. I'd probably notice a mm adjustment and I knew the saddle change would open a can of worms...

After the climbing its quite flat and I just could not keep up with Jez and I was trying quite hard. There is nothing worse that flogging yourself to death to stay with someone when you know they aren't even bloody trying. He had it in the big ring the bugger - we have triples on our road bikes so he was right up at the top of the gear range and I just couldn't/can't muster that kind of power, certainly not for any length of time. Pest!

We had a brief stop whilst he chatted to his sad puppy rc model mates and I do some more saddle tinkering. A stop for some food then home. About two miles from home the inevitable happened, his legs started to go into meltdown and mine started to remember what to do. The answer to this of course is a long hilly ride to induce cramp in his quads then I can ride off leaving him upside down in a hedge...Waddington Fell and the Trough here we come...or offroad in West Yorkshire..hmm.

However on Tuesday I suddenly had motivation and energy in spades and have got a couple of runs in so fingers crossed. Hope this wind bogs off over the weekend but will be heading up for a run on Darwen moor tomorrow to see the damage to the tower and the state of the trails.

Just want to hibernate....

Where have I been...I gave blood on the 8th of this month and spent about 10 days feeling a little oxygen deprived so took it easy (i.e.got lazy). It all went well this time though so will be doing it again in a few months, I will be wary around any big events I'm doing.

The cold temperature and the dark mornings have made me want to hibernate, the running mileage is climbing back up nicely this month but the cycling most definitely is not. It still feels a little, "unnatural" as my legs want to pedal but it will come back I'm sure. So after the third attempt at getting out of my pit to cycle to work in the last week failed and I forgot to take one of my running shoes with me today (d'oh)...the punishment is ready for tomorrow.

Lets see how long it takes me to crack and get riding outside again:

Nearly hit a cyclist with my car yesterday...

...I'm not sure who got the bigger fright, me or her. It wasn't fun that's for sure.

I was passing by a load of cars turning right (as were a couple of cars in front of me) and she just appeared from the junction on the right and I nearly t-boned her. I'm not sure why she thought it was a good idea to do that, maybe the guy at the front of the line turning right beckoned her out (that's happened to me) and she went for it without really checking the traffic going straight down the road but whatever she nearly got sprawled over the bonnet of a large bus of an Audi.

Fortunately I had been going nice and slow and was only just picking some speed up again so easily stopped in time but the wide eyed panic on her face just reminded me so much of the time I once did exactly the same stupid thing. She tried to take her hand off the bar to apologise whilst turning pale and mouthing sorry and almost lost control of the bike.

I slowed right down to check she was ok and riding, caught her eye and gave her a bit of a wave, which she returned as she cycled along so I think she was ok. She didn't look like an experienced cyclist so hopefully it won't put her off cycling, though my "incident" was earlier this year so not sure if experience is a total defence against stupidity anyway. I'd just about stopped hyperventilating by the time I parked up at work. It was a reminder of how quickly things could go wrong.

It's a particularly crap, busy junction so people do do silly things. On the way home I practically skidded to a halt as a car pulled right out in front of me as I was passing and the driver seemed to forget which pedal was the accelerator (it's the one on the right love!).

Scottish C2C Days 1 & 2

On the Saturday of the 11th September (was it really that long ago) we were picked up from my parents house, yes really, door to door service! It helps that my parents live between Glasgow and Edinburgh about five minutes off the M8. The guys had already picked up Mac and Lori in Glasgow, an American couple with an amusing amount of luggage as they were coming over for more than just the week of riding.

A goodly amount of packing tetris with bags and bikes went on before we got in the van...(duct tape was employed) Due to the fact that we were heading off for a week of riding in Scotland where the weather could be doing anything and everything neither Jez or I could be accused of travelling light either with two very stuffed dead body bags.

Off to the centre of Edinburgh to pick up Mickey and Joy, another American couple who actually had perfected the art of travelling light, thankfully as the van was totally rammed. A long and tedious drive up to Aberdeen followed..as did the rain but then the sun came out as we neared the Granite City, thankfully as Aberdeen looks utterly miserable when it's overcast, all those grey buildings.

We parked up at the beach there then ensued a goodly amount of faff whilst bikes were built etc, then we set off for an easy 20 mile spin out towards Banchory. All that time faffing and this was the only photo I took around the auspicious start (totally crap I know)!



We had to ride through the city, mostly quiet roads and cycle paths but we did have to negotiate one very busy, narrow and congested road where I decided to get a puncture after not even one mile of riding. I had to pick the bit of road where there wasn't even a proper verge to move to, I had to carry the bike hanging onto a railing for a bit whilst inching along a kerb.

Wasn't long before we were out on some easy cycle paths and a nice 20 miles to Banchory were done. We arrived at the first B & B of the trip to find our bags had already been taken up to the rooms, yay! This was particularly welcome on some of the less easy days. A couple of beers and some great food rounded off a good day.


From Banchory the next destination was Braemar, via the Royal Lochnagar distillery. Unfortunately the Balmoral estate was closed to the public so there was a bit more road work than ideal. Normally this would be fast but day 2 was the first day of "the raging headwind from hell" 44 miles of it and it didn't seem to let up for the rest of the week. I know it's a risk when travelling west but jeez, one day without it would have been nice, at least the sun was still shining. It meant the day was suprisingly hard work. It's never, ever fun or fair having to pedal downhill to keep moving. The only picture I took all day but I really can't remember if it was before or after the distillery:



The distillery tour was very interesting, after the evil b*st*rd hill to get up to it, there was no real view of Lochanagar itself which was a bit disappointing but the whisky was actually ok, it's very light on peat so that's probably why I liked it. I'm glad it was pretty much downhill to Braemar from there as I had the usual problem of the alcohol going straight to my legs and turning them into wet noodles if I have any whilst riding. They did come back to me which is just at well as we were taking turns riding into the wind...downhill. By the time we rolled into Braemar I had a headache from the cold wind.

The hotel was large and overrun by elderly coach parties, as was Braemar in general. The food here was very cheap but probably the worst of the whole week though portions were generous and the showers were good and hot (always important). The entertainment was a little "old" for us and we escaped out of the dining room to the hotel bar when a weeble shaped man started playing guitar and singing.

We did think we were going to be crushed to death in a slow, white haired stampede though as codgers appeared from every direction and made their way there, particularly the ladies, of which there were lots, as always with the retired generation.

Two warm up days in, some proper offroad bog, heather and river crossings up next.

Scottish Coast to Coast...bit late

Confession time..I had actually written some stuff regarding this a week or so ago in a Word document that I cannot find anywhere, on any computer I come into contact with. As someone who looks after databases and other people's data for a living that is a a bit of an embarrassment, lol.

In summary, it was a great trip, some stunning scenery, some pelting rain, some sun, some clag, some bog to park bikes in, some great riding, great company and a not so great a raging permanent headwind for about 6 of the 7 days. Will get some more detail out soon.

Highlight for me were the Corrieyairick Pass (or River Corrieyairick as it was that day) and the Ardnamurchan Peninsula, I will be going back there again, definitely.

Photos are on Flickr and get noticeably more numerous the further west we travelled.