I was feeling quite good for once as I crested the last rise on the trail and began the loop back to the trail centre car park, this was a section I knew well – flowing, undulating and fast it was a blast all the way back to the sanctuary of the trail head café and a well deserved bacon roll. There seems to be an unusual amount left in my legs today and as I click down a couple of cogs on the cassette and the bike picks up speed I’m feeling pretty strong, and for the first time in a long time confident on the bike. The trail drops from an exposed traverse across the welsh hillside back into the woods and as the trees envelop me shielding me from the wind my eyes squint a bit as the light levels drop but taking a brave pill the fingers stay off the brakes and when the trail drops away from me steeply downhill I tuck down and let the speed build towards the righthand berm at the bottom. Managing to hold my nerve I carve into the first turn letting the bike run and knowing without thinking about it that my front tyre is going to find enough grip under the carpet of fresh pine needles to stop me sliding out and having an unscheduled and probably face altering close encounter with a tree trunk.

As the trail straightens out through the embrace of the trees I’m carrying decent speed for once, enough speed to feel the bike go light underneath me as I pop over the top of a small rise and this time I remember to straighten my legs and arms pushing the bike into the downslope actually managing to ‘pump’ the terrain for some more free velocity in the process. This sort of move might be second nature to some riders but that’s not usually me, ‘hang on and hope for the best’ is more my regular vibe, but today there’s a flow to my riding I haven’t felt for a long time. I seem to be suddenly able to do all the right things for once without much conscious thought, I’m looking further down the trail, anticipating the turns, picking a line and carrying better than usual speed over the ground. The bike’s feeling great, responding to my touch and inspiring more confidence than I think I’ve ever felt on it, all in all I’m feeling pretty damn chuffed with myself when its time to press the ‘end ride’ button on my Wahoo a few minutes later.

Now I’ve waxed so semi-lyrically about my awesome riding prowess lets burst that bubble a little by putting in a smidgen of cold hard context. This was the end of the blue graded trail at Llandegla Trail Centre I’ve been describing, not the World Cup Downhill track at Fort William in Scotland, and looking at my recorded Strava times for the ride I was pretty average around most of the trail compared to the other riders that day who recorded their times. I’m not expecting a call from Red Bull anytime soon offering me sponsorship and bucket loads of free stuff off the back of my new found riding performance gains.

The fact that I’m still so crushingly average though doesn’t matter, its how a ride makes you feel – and this ride for the first time made me feel good when I got off my MTB, not frustrated, annoyed or downbeat which for too long have been my default settings when I’m packing my kit back into the car post ride. This was the ride where I could feel the first real stirrings of tangible improvement, so to what miracle am I subscribing my sudden improvement to?

Well there’s a couple of factor’s in play here I think, firstly the weight I’ve dropped since cleaning up my life style in an effort to reverse my recent Type 2 Diabetes diagnosis is helping me get up the hills faster, and more time spent on the dirt instead of the tarmac is helping all the other areas I was struggling with. Back at the start of the year I said that the most important thing I could do to improve my off road game was actually ride my MTB more, and funnily enough doing just that seems to be paying dividends ….. who would have thought it ! The increased off road saddle time means my lower back isn’t killing me anymore after the first 15 minutes of every ride and at the end of every rocky descent there’s I’ve still got enough grip strength left to hold onto the bars and modulate the brakes effectively, so basically my off road riding fitness is getting back to where it needs to be to stop being one of the limiting factors on my rides.

The other big reason I was quite a bit quicker than normal this time is that I actually had a bit of company for once. A day on the Mountain Bike is more often than not a solo endeavour for me because the vagaries of shift work mean I’m often riding mid week when most other people are at work. When I do get a rare free weekend in my roster these are pretty sacrosanct and reserved for my long suffering family and not cycling of any form. Riding on your own does have the odd downside and my finely honed sense of self preservation means that I instinctively dial the risk back a few notches and ride more within what I think my limits are, because if you have a big high consequence crash on your own miles from anywhere half way up a mountain with patchy or no phone signal things can get serious pretty fast. This is especially true on a weekday when the trails are quieter than at the weekend, and there’s no way I’m heroic or hard enough to be one of those people you read about who self rescues themselves from the wilderness by dragging their broken legs behind them for miles after applying a tourniquet with their teeth.

I’d persuaded my wheel building friend Ian to take a day off work and join me today so I had the rare opportunity (for me) to see how my riding would stack up against another rider over a whole lap. Now Ian without blowing too much smoke up his derriere is a pretty strong rider around these trails, he rides them far more than me and knows them extremely well and trying to keep him in sight was going to stretch my meagre skills especially around the more technical stuff. In the end I was pleasantly surprised with how long I was able to hang onto his back wheel, and riding with somebody gave me the confidence to push the limit that bit further than I’d usually dare to if I was riding on my own.

So all in all it was a pretty darn satisfactory day out on the recently much maligned Cotic for once, lets hope this is the first spring like shoots of a off road riding renaissance for me, hell next time I ‘might’ try that Black trail that humbled me so badly at the start of the year again…..