August 150

Posted on 3rd August 2010 in August 150, Natural Trails, Ride Reviews, Targets & Objectives

I am, despite my better judgement, taking part in @phillconnell’s August 150 target for miles ridden in a month. I must confess, the canal ride will form the body of my 150 miles and I am slightly ashamed of that, but riding that distance in 3-4 days will mean, hopefully, that next month I can do 150 easily just at weekends.

The rules can be found over at Phill Connells Blog (the link is to the description of the June 100 but the rules remain the same, only the distance has increased). Commuter miles don’t count which is what has stopped me entering before – I’ll be riding 30 miles this week meaning legs left to do leisure miles will probably be zero – so it all has to come from weekend riding and I’m just not fit enough yet to rack those kinds of miles up in a normal month.

So, because Every Trail threw a fit every time I tried to insert a camera picture, my only proof of the miles I’ve done today is a pic from the odometer of my new Strada which I used for the first time today. It strikes me as quite fitting that I opened it on Saturday evening, thus meaning all miles on that odometer until the end of the month contribute to the challenge. It seems…..appropriate.

Yep, it says 10.2 miles. Not 6 months ago, there is no way on earth I could have done what I did today. I got to 5 miles and was still talking about going around again. The only reason we didn’t go around again was a pressure headache due to impending clouds and possibly storm which can be rather beautifully illustrated in the shot below.

The 17% climb which preceded this view did nothing for my head either. However, the descent down the other side, once I’d brave the herd of cows (yes, I know) was a wonderful reward. Steepest I’ve ridden down, slightly loose and shaley, nice exposure to reward those who take their eye of the ball with a broken something and a fabulous babbling brook at the bottom for those with no pads left to crash into. Bottle, reacquired. All the damage to confidence of Llandegla a distant memory. Reminder of why I do this received and understood.

The walkers were all surprisingly chirpy too. We went from Rivington Barn, past Yarrow (easiest hill ever thanks to the surface, my bike seems to eat those little rocks for breakfast), down across a damn, around the corner along another lane, off onto another bridleway than runs under the new trails at Healey Nab. Looked at Healey Nab. Decided not to ruin confidence building day with Healey Nab. On down the other side, across another damn, up the hill of doom (I pushed some of it, I don’t care what you think of me), past the bloke in the United Utilities van looking at me like I was a loon, through the herd of cows, down the permissive bridleway (what does the permissive mean?), give the brakes a work out, along the stream to the right, pop out somewhere I can’t remember, somehow end up going back down the lovely easy ascent past Yarrow which has now turned into a gorgeous descent, endless wriggles through little rocks where the rain has eroded the sandy path, through a gate, past the walkers who can see my grin from 5 miles away and return it (I think they must have been temporarily bike removed people, because they really did give me the biggest grin), off the brakes, in to the land of ‘I know what I’m doing, I do, I do!’, popping back out onto the tarmac and down into Rivington village back along past the Go Ape.

Arrive at the Barn to bemused glances from the bikers with engines. Don’t care any more, don’t care about being mud splattered, don’t care that I’m fat and eating flapjack, don’t care that my hair is a mess, don’t care that my bike is no longer white but brown.

Hi, my name is Louise. I’m 18.5 stone. Or leastways I was 6 months ago. I ride my bike. I like exploring. 6 months ago, my blood pressure was right on the edge of high. 6 months ago, I couldn’t ride up even the smallest of hills without needing to stop for a breather at the top. 6 months ago, I was not the person I am now. I’m probably still 18.5 stone, but you know what? I.just.don’t.care.

Catch me if you can :O)

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Sneaky trails

Posted on 3rd August 2010 in I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike, Ride Reviews, Trail Centres

I’ve finally found the local trails. Looping figure of eights to get lost in 800ft slog up the hill outside the door. It’s a tarmac slog but not so bad at 7:30am. Left the rode and the curious horses staring at the panting girl, found a cat, lost the cat, found the cat again, dinged the cat to save it. Rode left, turned left again, somehow ended up coming back down the first left I’d taken. Round the other side up the side of the stone wall, turn left, miss a turning that looked interesting, take the 2nd turning, come out down the 1st turning that looked interesting. Growing suspicion that someone else has been here before me, many times, by the berms developing in the ruts in the corners of the mud. Sticky gloopy mud stuck to tyres, back down the road, ding ding ding as the bits of stone and tree hit my spokes then my rims then the road and me.

Arrive back at the house dripping, covered in mud from my tyres and with a bloody big grin on my face. Arrive back just in time to see boyfriend off to work. Laughter as he looks at my bike ‘found the mud again then’.

Always find the mud. Doing that again.

Next time I might even remember my bottle.

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And this isn’t going to win me any friends either…..

Posted on 11th July 2010 in Ouch, that hurt, Ride Reviews, Skills, Trail Centres

I hate Gisburn.

There. I’ve said it. I’ve tried and tried, and I’ve fallen off more on their blue than I have anywhere else. It’s destroyed my confidence, left me hating mountain biking and generally I wish I’d never stepped out of the house this morning.

I appreciate trail grading is a subjective art. I appreciate Gisburn wouldn’t exist at all without the love, hard work and attention of a very small and dedicated group of people and I have thanked them repeatedly for that – hell, at least they’ve bothered with a blue, many trails centres don’t even grace us beginners with a nod, instead assuming we’re all useless and at best providing us with a green route which involves nothing but fireroads.

Great for families, but not what I’d actually call ‘mountain biking’.

Unfortunately, what I think is an appropriate trail to send someone down whose taste of ‘mountain biking’ has hitherto been nothing but fire roads and what other people feel is appropriate do not match. Or, rather they do not match when wet. And here, right here, we arrive at the fundamental problem with Gisburn in its entirety. It’s in East Lancashire. It might be in the Forest of Bowland, that might make it sound quite upper class and fabulous, but frankly mate, it’s East Lancs. Lets not get any airs and graces here. Actually, that’s another thing but we’ll get to that later.

It rains in East Lancs. It rains really rather a lot. So tell me, please do tell me why, we have a trail centre which is slippy as all hell and twice as treacherous, which is disintegrated a little more every time I ride it, in which erosion seems to be providing a never ending challenge to the trail builder, and which rain and wet seem to be the arch enemy both of the trail builders and the riders, in East Lancs?

I’ve read a lot of threads today on forums, discussing the relative merits or not of Gisburn. Wrong kind of soil, apparently. No flow. Some love it with a complete devotion but others call in on the way from the South to Scotland and end up coming away disappointed and frustrated. In the process of reading these posts, the penny dropped. It’s me. It’s not the trails. Okay, so the trails really are becoming looser and more eroded every time I ride across them, and in the wet I fall off at a different bit every time – there’s no one hotspot, no one nemesis, my focus wanders off and 1/2 inch misjudgement turns into a painful slam into the most unforgiving mixture of sand and rock I’ve found yet. The mix of tight berms, little humps that as a blue route rider, I’m really not going to attempt jumping, the small rocks which are jutting out everywhere meaning a line, whichever one you pick is full of them, the bits falling off the track at the side, the punishment for 1/2 inch of misplacement meaning sliding off the track…..it’s not somewhere to go and regain confidence. Actually it’s not somewhere to go to gain confidence. The trail is slippy, the Northshore is slippy and the point where I found a route easier to ride in the snow than in the wet is the point where I just give up and go home. It’s not fun. Mountain biking was supposed to be fun.

That’s before we’ve even got to the proportion of ‘interesting bits’ to fireroad on the blue route. So, this is where I concede defeat. Gisburn is for techheads. People with way more skill than me. People way fitter than me. It is not for me. The reason I fell in love with mountain biking was the speed. Lacks finesse, yes, I know. Lacks challenge, well yes, I know. But nothing on earth, absolutely nothing on earth is better than swooping down switchbacks on beautifully compressed, properly compressed mud, finding your lines, pumping the dips which have been artfully placed with care and precision, railing around berms because you are confident in the trail builders by that point and know you’re not going to be punished for commiting 100% to it. I can ride just about well enough to hammer down the side of Electric Blue. I don’t jump the little jumps there either but somehow, it’s less of an issue there, and it’s less of an issue because of the trail quality, the substance of it, and knowing exactly where my wheels are and relying on their footprint to carry me through. I am not good enough to deal with disintegration and crumble on the other side, nor with the tight turns thrown in for fun.

I also know, absolutely know, that I am not alone. There are two camps developing in mountain biking – hell there may well have been two camps right from the start. Actually, no, make that three. There are the people who are comfy in Calderdale. There are the people who grin at Glentress and there are the brave people who stick to the countries bridleways and footpaths, piecing together routes themselves.

I’m a Glentress girl. It’s where my heart is. It’s where I don’t have to throttle back. It’s where the magic happens and I can do anything with my bike. I have absolutely nothing against the other camps, nothing at all. As soon as I am fit enough to dig and barrow I’ll volunteer at Gisburn because it’s important to, because it’s local, because they need help, because I can help to build the beautiful shiny playgrounds for other people to play on even if I can’t ride them, and it would be ignorant not to at least offer. But somewhere along the line, maybe way way way down the line, I can still dream that one day, there will be a little piece of track with the ethos of Glentress’s blue routes built round the corner from me. Until that point, Llandegla is going to be getting an awful lot of my money because there I found a glimpse of the same ethos.

So, the next time someone asks why people love Llandegla, I’ll be explaining this – people love Llandegla because it’s the closer you can come to flying on wheels without the slog up the M6.

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Finding your own serenity

Posted on 21st April 2010 in Random Scribbles, Ride Reviews, Trail Centres

It is, perhaps, not an accident that phonetically I pronounce Coed Llandegla as Klandeathla. As previously mentioned, I am a hefty lass. I am fitter than I was at the beginning, but not as fit as I will be at the end of this journey, though I doubt there will be an end.

Perhaps if I had looked at the route profile of the blue route at Llandegla, I wouldn’t have picked it as the first trail to try at a proper trail centre. Bear in mind that only a year ago, Gisburn was not a proper trail centre by any stretch of the imagination, merely a forgotten backwater, a pale imitation of the golden trails that now reside there. Llandegla was the first place I encountered many things: bike washes, hire sheds, visitor centre replete with toilets, bacon butties replete with provenance of ingredients attached (the composition of a decent bacon butty rant is one for another day), bike racks full of more shiny, complicated and expensive kit than I had ever seen in my whole life.

In my limited experience, there are two kinds of trail. One goes up for what feels like forever, and then comes down at a rate akin to a stock market crash, the other undulates merrily with no rhyme or reason, throwing in surprise gear crunching ups, and following them with blissful but monentary downs. Llandegla falls firmly into the former camp. Somewhere between 5km and 6km is the ascent which greets you with all the harshness of a winters day. The gradient isn’t the killer. The duration is. On and on and on and on. Deceptive crests greet you around every corner, enticing you to put that last little bit of effort in, inducing a vain hope that the pain will soon be over, and over every crest is yet another muscle draining climb.

And yet. We go back. We all go back. I know we do because the privately owned operation keeps on going, because the car park is always rammed, because that damn ascent is littered with the many multi coloured hues of the modern mountain bikers livery. It’s like a sirens call. I can only speak for myself in what follows, but I suspect that perhaps I am not alone.

Going down requires focus. Absolute concentration. High speed data processing and a little bit of magic added in for good measure. But going up does not. Or, at the very least, going up fire roads does not, and that’s what the majority of the up is at Llandegla. Predictable surfaces and gentle corners. And this is where the magic happens for me, because I’ll own up right now, I’m probably the biggest geek going. I consume data in streams, multiple streams, from following over 700 people on Twitter and keeping up to 3 email accounts, 4 regular forums, untold blogs and journals and even an old antiquated Bulletin Board System. But on my bike, there is none of this. Instead there is radio silence. No input, no data, no phones, no email, no one nagging for my attention, no one asking for advice, help or a paddle to get out of the creek they’ve found themselves in. No noise, just silence.

It’s my space. Mine. No one can take it, no one can intrude on it. The odd cheery hello is returned, but I quickly and smoothly switch back into the serenity that I find. With nothing else to focus on but the smooth turning of my pedals and the occasioinal twitter of a bird, there is nothing. It’s where I write. It’s where I remember how to breath. It’s the reset button on every bit of stress accrued during the week and it’s the place where I find myself. It’s a place where I am totally in control, but where I don’t actually need to be. I can merrily daydream away, and my legs will keep on pushing. And pushing. And pushing.

Sometimes, when I get to the top, I find other people there. Sometimes I see on their faces, the ones who are not in a group, the same serenity I know is inside me. I don’t smile, or nod, or intrude. I don’t need to, I don’t think. It is, perhaps, imagined, but I really don’t think it is. For some of us, the adrenaline is the thing, but in obtaining it, we find our serenity.

I’m on cell 3 in the comic by the way. I came around the same stupid corner and misjudged the change in gradient, lost my gears and nearly fell sideways. Thus resulted a walk. This is an improvement on the previous visits where at different places on the trail I did actually fall sideways. I give thanks on a regular basis that blue routes are so quiet that hitherto no one has witnessed these catastrophic schoolgirl errors, and live in hope that next time will be the time no error occurs at all. It’s one of the things which keeps me riding, truth be told, though there are hundreds of those reasons. But should you be riding at Llandegla in the future, and witness a fat girl doing the happy dance of joy after the Somme berm at the top of the shared blue/red ascent, it will be me, and I will be in cell 4, having just ridden 100% of that damn hill.

I suspect for most, a mountain biking nemesis will be a technical feature on the down. I make no apologies for mine being staying on my bike the whole way up a hill. Small victories, my friends, small victories.

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A long hard road

Posted on 14th April 2010 in Random Scribbles, Ride Reviews, Trail Centres
I remember the first time I road my then shiny and new GT Outpost in anger. It was March 2008. I rode it along a canal, I think, right at the beginning, but it wasn’t very exciting and it didn’t make my heart sing. I wanted something more, and it involved adrenaline, mainly. We then road it around a country park near Preston, but it was only a 2 mile hack and that didn’t quite float my boat either.
Then we went to Gisburn. Right now, most of the mountain biking world knows where and what Gisburn is. A year ago (oh how things change, thank you Adrenaline Gateway, thank you nice Council people) things were very very different. Gisburn was a hidden little backwater, certainly not a trail centre, just a tiny collection of routes which a involved a 30 minute internet trawl to yield something as simple as an up to date trail map. No toilets. No signposts. No cafe. No showers. No one else there.
The red route was a 10km hack around mostly forest roads, with a little bit of singletrack thrown in. ‘The Rollercoaster’ was work in progress and as a result a er…..diversion had been put in place which involved walking mid calf deep through assorted bogs. I remember sitting on the forest road after the diversion and asking Al why I was putting myself through this. Everything hurt. I was severely unfit at this point, drenched in sweat, bright red in the face and to add insult to injury had walked into a tree branch, though it thankfully missed my eye.
And then.
Then we found the singletrack. And I fell off. And I got back on. And I rode some more. And we found the rock garden in the middle of the bit where all the felling had happened, below the barn forest road. And I had to get off and walk it. And I remember muttering under my breath about not getting off one day.
And that was how I got bitten by the singletrack bug. By the mountain biking bug. By the understanding that all the pain of the uphill will always be rewarded by the sheer glee of the down. By being reminded what my body was designed to do and relishing the feeling of bruises and aching muscles. By being absolutely covered in mud, across my face and up my back, and knowing that I’d found something which would get me up off the sofa and out into the big wide open spaces.
I rode that rock garden 4 weeks later. On a GT Outpost. But that’s another story.
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