May Massive

So, what have I been up to since my last post on the 8th ?  Well basically I’ve been forcing myself to ride as often and as far as I possibly could.  This ended up being about 70 miles in 4 rides. 2 rides at Bedgebury and 2 rides along the seafront near Hastings.

Pausing for a photo at Normans Bay

I’ve ridden much, much further, faster and more regularly than I have in years over the past couple of months and for the first time in years I’m noticing myself getting fitter and stronger on the bike. For years I’ve regularly found myself feeling like I’m riding through treacle as my legs start telling me they’ve had enough, the onset of this used to be around 4 or 5 miles, recently I’ve still felt fairly strong up to about 25 miles.

I wish my calves were as lively as these…

It’s not as if this is some kind of revelation, you ride more, you get fitter, everyone knows that, but when it actually happens it’s a very pleasant surprise.  I’ve been riding an extended version of my “seafront” rides this month.  My “normal” route is about 14 miles from Hastings to Bexhill and back.  I decided to push on further, out to Normans bay (where I took the photo of the cows above) and managed to push the distance to a little over 25 miles on the first ride and around 21 on the 2nd.  In both cases I rode out into a strong headwind, but rode back extremely quickly with the help of a tailwind.

A glorious May day, by the sea in Hastings

My 2nd jaunt along the seafront was like an Autumn ride.  A gale was blowing very cold rain in off the sea, my feet were numb with cold, typical English seaside weather really…

Last night I set off to Bedgebury around teatime, knowing that the trail conditions would have deteriorated a fair bit since I went there 9 days ago and found it to be a mud-free zone.  I certainly didn’t come back with a dusty bike last night, myself and the bike were caked in mud at the end of the ride.  Most of the trails are dealing with the rain pretty well but the fire-roads linking the singletrack sections have turned from dusty & fast to boggy and slow.  The few bits that aren’t shaded by the trees and get plenty of sun are holding up well, but there are a lot of trees at Bedgebury and there is plenty of shade for the mud to lurk in.

Bluebells anyone ?

I rode very quickly last night (by my standards) set several personal best times and finished the ride feeling pretty pleased with my progress. There’s a lot to be said for riding at the same place regularly.  Yes it can be a bit dull and predictable, but it does also give you  the chance to learn every twist and turn and bump and root and push yourself harder and harder.  Because I know Bedgebury so well I ride there with no fear, so I corner much much faster than I would do on a trail I don’t know so well. I really enjoy the feeling of confidence I get from going into a bend fast and knowing where the next two or three twists in the trail are ahead of me and knowing exactly where I need the bike to be and how fast I can let it roll.

Socks, mountain bike style…

So I racked up 13 miles last night which put me on 154 miles in the past 28 days.  Even peeling off soaking wet, filthy riding clothes and squelching shoes couldn’t wipe the smile off my face last night.

Bye-bye dusty trails

As I’m typing this the rain is rattling off the skylight window above my head.  It’s pissing down and has been for some time. I can almost feel the baked, dusty trails turning to sloppy, slippery crap.

Fortunately I managed to get out to Bedgebury last night at teatime for one last fast & dusty ride.  There was just no mud at Bedgebury at all last night.  Visiting Bedgebury and not finding any mud is like listening to a politician and not hearing any lies.  It’s pleasant, it’s refreshing, but it feels weird and you wonder if you’ve made some kind of mistake. I did actually find a bit of mud about 5 miles out.  It was huddled together under the shade of some trees, sheltering from the glare of the sun. By now it will have a lot of company because it’s pissing down with rain again here and has been for hours.

Dusty bike in sun-drenched woods.

It’s amazing how much easier everything is when the trails are dry.  Not just the riding, not just maintaining your speed, but stupid things like getting the kit back in the car.  Finishing the ride and not having to peel off layers of soaking, mud-caked clothing is such a relief.  Even my shoes just had dust on them, in the winter, a spare pair of shoes is essential as the ones I ride in will inevitably end the ride carrying a lovely, thick layer of clay. It’s so easy just to chuck a dusty bike in the back of the car, drive it home then wheel it into the shed.  No sitting out in the garden in the rain cleaning all the crap off the drivetrain.  No having to hose off all my riding kit in the shower before it’s allowed in the washing machine. No abuse from my wife about walking mud through the house.  I could get used to this dry weather riding you know.

So we got about a week or so of dry, dusty, fast woodland riding before the weather rolled in and spoiled it.  More rain forecast for the weekend.  Great.

May Massive, Day 2

Managed another 14 miles today, but this time on tarmac along a hideously windy seafront.  Rode to Cooden and back, with the tide out and the wind behind me, riding out was quite pleasant and picturesque, by the time I’d turned the bike round to head home with the wind howling into my face it was a little bit more of a slog…

This whole concept of seeing how far I can ride in May reminded me that I’d posted in January a list of things I wanted to achieve during 2013.  One was to lose a stone (HAH !) another was to ride 3 new venues (Well, I’ve ridden at Cannock and a secret set of cheeky trails in Sussex so well on my way to doing that one) get back to Wales (did that) and ride 1,000km in total.  At the time I thought that was ridiculous, but I’ve already managed 385km and that should be at least 500 by the end of May.  Less than half a year and in Jan and Feb probably the two worst months of the year for riding, so I might well manage 1,000km under my wheels this year.  Blimey.

Cooden Beach, Blue Pig

I’ve spent the last couple of hours putting together some snippets of my ride at Friston shot with my Go Pro on a chest harness. Just in case anyone reading this has never been and wonders what it’s like, well wonder no more…

Mud ? Didn’t they have a hit in the 70′s ?

Finally, a ride with no mud.  For the first time in 8 or 9 months, my bike came home dusty yesterday.  Dusty.  It’s a wonderful word.

I recently signed up to the “May Massive” challenge on ride-tracking website Strava.  Basically you’re dared to ride as many miles as you can during may and compare yourself to other riders.  The top people on there will be finishing May with over 1,000 miles racked up no doubt, for me, my target is 150 miles. Yesterday, I managed 10% of that total over at Friston Forest. 150 miles is the sort of ride that many people would see as a big deal to cover in a day rather than a month, it’s fairly easy to hit that sort of target in a week for your average commuter, but for me, with fitness, work and family restricting my time on the bike, 150 miles in a month will be a decent total.

Bike at rest on top of a massive lump of chalk.

Friston was in ridiculously good condition yesterday, if you’ve got any inkling that you’d like to have a ride at Friston Forest, go now, before it rains.  In the Winter it’s like the Somme, heavy rain makes huge parts of this place unridable or at the very least impossible to enjoy.  I still end up going there though, in the vain hope that a small section of trail will have dried out and offer a solid surface to ride on. When you get there on a warm, sunny Spring day with the trails bone dry then you remember why you keep getting on a bike all through the winter.  All those rides with numb fingers, frozen nipples, coming home coated like a chocolate hob-nob in a crusty layer of mud, all that winter slogging suddenly makes sense when you ride the first, dry, sunny trails in Spring.

Springtime Single Track

Without staying active on the bike over the Winter, you’re just not ready to take advantage when nature finally does you a favour. I rode just over 15 miles yesterday and managed to set Personal Record times on almost every trail I rode which was very satisfying. The mud that turns into a slippery, claggy, ride ruining mess in February was baked into the perfect trail surface. I could go on for ages about the flow of the trails, the beauty of the woods, but this post would turn into a novel. Suffice to say I let the ribbons of single track lead me around the forest, as ever at Friston, I found new bits I’d never ridden before.  Some of these were good, some of these were very good.

I had one near crash where my saddle slipped as I went over a root and I lost my balance.  Managed to pull it round and avoided coming off the bike.  I also rode one trail for the first time and cornered hard into a berm which turned out not to be a berm but a pile of leaves at the side of the trail.  That was interesting, but again I managed to get my foot down and avoid going face first into the dirt.

On my last climb back up the seemingly never ending fire road at Friston I was feeling very tired, but this was the best ride of the year so far. Yes, I enjoyed this more than I enjoyed Coed Y Brenin.  I think it’s down to the terrain, it just suits me better.  Riding over the harsh, rocky trails in Wales I felt as if  the landscape there was battering me, trying to knock me off the bike. The soft, undulating curves of the South Downs are just more my thing, natural trails, fast, twisty ribbons of rooty mud, that’s my MTB Nirvana.

Ring of fire-road

Visited Bedgebury in desperation on Sunday.  I say desperation because I wasn’t expecting the place to be in good condition but I really didn’t have enough time to go anywhere else.  This was a Sunday morning ride, my Mrs needed the car back by about half eleven and, as I wasn’t going to get up with dawns crack, the only place within easy striking distance was Kents finest Red Route.

Bits of it were dry and fast rolling, but these were the exceptions to the rule.  A good half of the trails are closed for repair currently and a high proportion of what’s left open was very muddy.  Overall the ride was pretty dull, felt like at least half of it was on fire road, the only places I managed to set fast times were the two longest climbs.  I’m almost embarrassed to be in the top half of the leader board on the hardest climb there.

Keeping my bike slow since 1992…

All in, I managed 8.8 miles at Bedgebury and went home feeling very unsatisfied.  Went out for another ride Tuesday, a training/fitness ride along my 13 and a bit mile seafront tarmac route.  Rode a couple of sections quite hard, hit 36mph down a hill, managed to average 19mph along a long, flat section with peaks of about 23mph and this left me with little twinges in my hamstrings Tuesday night.

I’ve also started to worry about endangering other people riding along this route. To ride it fast enough to get a proper work out I am taking the odd risk with other people’s safety which isn’t fair.  I’ve even looked at road bikes and wondered if I need to get one and find some quiet roads to ride on.  I think this may be some sort of illness that’s affecting me.

Back offroad tomorrow night, investigating some “secret” local trails, hopefully this will cure my roadieitis.

Windswept and uninteresting

Today and yesterday I rode my little 13 and a half mile seafront leg-stretching ride.  About 80% of this ride is along the seafront between Hastings and Bexhill.

I’m getting a bit good at it now.  Today I averaged almost 12mph, which considering that includes getting stuck at traffic lights, cautiously creeping through traffic for a couple of miles and avoiding loose dogs/walkers I reckon is not too bad.  Well, not too bad for a Lardy old man anyway.  I’m gradually forcing myself to ride hard up the hills.  For years I’ve looked at a hill, thought “Nope” popped the bike onto the granny ring and plodded up while taking in the view.

Welsh Mud, Sussex Beach

Probably the biggest influence on my attitude towards hills is Strava.  Being able to map my rides and compete against my own best times has made it interesting.  Seeing the little “PR” pop up at the end of the ride telling me I’ve climbed a hill faster than ever before.  Doesn’t matter if 90 other people have climbed the hill faster than me, I’ve beaten my own best time and I’m getting quicker.

So, I rode today and yesterday, almost exactly the same route.  I was faster overall today by almost 8 minutes (and the ride was 13.7 miles today, not 13.5 cause I pootled around at Bexhill adding on a tiny bit) I set lots of personal records on these two rides but there was one big difference between yesterdays ride and todays.  The big thing about yesterday was the wind.

To a mountain biker, wind is often something that’s happening to tree branches 30ft above your head while you’re bombing around singletrack. In thick woods like Friston, even in midwinter with no leaves on the trees, you’re pretty much totally sheltered from the wind.  This is not the case riding a cycle path along a Sussex seafront.  Riding out to Bexhill I was battling a fierce headwind.  All my westward times were fairly slow, on the ride out I thought this was due to me being a bit tired.  Turn the bike around for the return leg and there was a big difference.  I was flying, only some really annoying dog walkers causing me to slow to a crawl prevented me from setting a blistering time along Bexhill seafront.

Today I thought I could beat some of my times, I knew exactly the sections I wanted to ride hard and try to creep up those Strava leaderboards by a few places.  I rode them as hard as I could, but I just couldn’t match yeasterdays times.  I’m pretty sure that’s down to the wind being almost non existant today rather than pushing me along gently yesterday.  I did however pick up some personal best times on other sections and did the total ride quicker than I’ve ever done, so I’m generally chuffed.  27 miles on tarmac in two days, better get back on some mud soon or I’ll have forgotten what it tastes like.

Also had an interesting exchange of views with a dog owner today.  She’d let her little darling take a dump on the walking/cycle path and as I rode past I said “Are you going to pop back and pick that up ?”  she said “Why ?”  and I said “Because it’s dogshit”  Surely that’s obvious ?

Hell is other people.  I’m sure I irritated more than one person by riding past them at 25mph today…

Urban Cycling

I was in London last week, just for a couple of days, and I got to see first hand a lot of “Urban Cyclists”.

I would guess that out of every 10 bikes I saw in London, 4 would have been functional machines, the sort of thing that looked efficient for the job it was being asked to do.  A hybrid, a commuter, a folding bike.  The other 60% seemed to be ludicrous fashion statements.  Odd shapes, oddly narrow bars, vintage bikes that probably weighed about a tonne.  There’s a lot of poncing about on bikes going on up there.

The most typically “London” bit of cycling I saw though was a chap (Probably a courier) bombing along the road, he comes upon a car, caught between two lanes, stuck in traffic.  This is going to slow him down slightly as he has to weave around it rather than maintaining his arrow-straight trajectory between the stationary cars.  ”OH LOOK AT THIS FAHKIN CAAAANT!” he bellows loudly as he swerves around the car.

The cyclist was wearing no helmet and immediately after weaving around the car which had upset him, he rode straight through two sets of red lights.

There’s a scandinavian proverb that goes something like “Man likes the smell of his own farts” which I think rings true here…