Well my first foray onto the dirt in awhile didn’t go very well. My poor neglected bike let me know that just pulling it out of the shed and slapping a bit of chain lube over the crustiness infecting the chain and sprockets just wasn’t going to cut it, oh and the brakes had a pretty marginal effect on my forward velocity and the suspension was groaning like a wounded buffalo. All in all a pretty epic failure on the equipment front.

Then there was the rider. Couple of issues here, first the legs. There’s no getting away from the fact that a single lap of a Welsh trail centre told me I’m most definitely not off road fit. The lungs and heart aren’t in bad shape after a pretty active summer on the road bike, but this sort of fitness doesn’t totally translate to hammering a mountain bike round the hills for a couple of hours. The summer on the road has left me with a pretty decent endurance base, grinding up the long fire road climb to the top of the trails was no problem whatsoever (apart from the constantly slipping gears and creaking suspension pivots), but I was soon running out of power on the short sharp climbs on the trails. These sort of climbs need a quick burst of explosive power, typically short two or three minute long high intensity efforts that my weedy little roadies quads just weren’t up to producing. Couple that with a very sore neck and shoulders from the much more physical nature of wrestling the much heavier than I’m used to MTB round the tracks and I was felling pretty sore and sorry for myself as I wolfed down my post ride bacon butty at the trailhead cafe.

The second rider based problem was residing in my head. Confidence or massive lack of it was the basic problem. They say you never forget how to ride a bike, and to a certain extent that’s true, but you can sure as hell forget how to ride one well, and I was riding like it was may first time down these trails which I actually know pretty well. Uncertain of the levels of grip available I was tentative, hesitant and generally riding like a bit of a plonker, there was as they say ‘no flow’ ….. And then I had one of those silly minor crashes which tend to happen when you’re riding like this, entering a series of tights downhill switchbacks I undercommitted to a right hand berm, tried to change my line and brake mid corner, lost the front tyre and was lying in the middle of the trail before I had any real handle on what was happening. No real harm was done apart to the dwindling threads of my self confidence, but it made me even more cautious and slow for the rest of the ride.

So to sum up, my bikes falling apart, my fitness isn’t there, and I’ve got a confidence problem but don’t worry there is a three point plan on the drawing board to address these issues🤨

The obvious first thing to do was fix the bike and that process will be the subjection my next scribbling on this subject. The fitness and confidence issues may take a little longer…….