Rick and I went for a couple of easy, early hours out on the mountain bikes on Sunday morning instead of the usual road ride, because some of the other Sunday roadies were laid up with man flu, or some other symptom of a general lack of backbone and grit. The weather was dry, but the ground wasn’t and we came home fairly well covered with mud, although the ride was very enjoyable overall.  We did a little exploration and found a couple of interesting new cheeky trails; unfortunately, upon emerging from the empty, bleak moorland that the second one ran across we were asked “Do you know that’s a footpath?” by a farmer in a pick-up. Obviously we plead ignorance and apologised (this despite the fact that the path was steep and slippy so we’d walked all the way up, and clearly no cycling whatsoever was being done by anyone right then). We’ll be back when there’s no-one around, that footpath looked like serious fun in the other direction. Bollocks to our stupid, mediaeval access laws, and bollocks to stupid, mardy farmers.

Rode out from Snake Pass over Lockerbrook to Derwent reservoir to watch a Lancaster bomber, a Spitfire and a couple of Tornadoes fly over the dam to mark the 70th anniversary of the Dambusters raid on Thursday.  Very impressive.

Sunday was the Colne Valley Mountain Bike Challenge. It’s one of those relatively informal “not a race” events where they give you a time and a ranking place at the end, but have to call it a “challenge” because they use bridleways and racing on bridleways is illegal. The event is in aid of a cricket club and a local scout troop, and it’s very well run. There are lots of marshals holding gates open and doing a good job of stopping motorists from flattening you at the various junctions. Three feed stops are laid on for anyone who runs out of juice, and you usually get freebies of some sort at the start line if you don’t turn up too late. The course is probably 50/50 on and off road, with a lot of the descending being done on tarmac, presumably for the sake of not scaring the red-sock-and-walking-pole brigade. There are some fierce hills in there, and your legs certainly let you know you’ve done it at the end.

This was my third year, and I enjoyed it more than the two previous ones, mostly because I got round quicker than ever. I finished over ten minutes faster than last year’s attempt, in spite of a minor mechanical mishap half-way round. The results are here.  I came in with a time of 2:48:41, putting me 36th out of 250 finishers, which I think is respectable. The fastest rider got round in two hours and three minutes, which is very fast indeed.

Hup! There’s literally inches of air under those wheels, look.

Not as easy as they make it look on TV…

I’ve bought some rollers. I got them because I’m supposed to be doing some (XC mountain bike) races this summer, and I thought I should probably do some training for that in order to realise my aim of a top-ten finish (out of the twenty or so riders in the sport category, achievable goals and all that).

Riding on rollers is highly entertaining. If you’re bored of idly prodding the internet or vegetating in front of the telly, I can heartily recommend learning to ride a bike on rollers as a diverting alternative for an hour or so. Some describe the sensation as being like riding on ice, but this is inaccurate. Riding on ice is horrible, because all it involves is slamming down onto the floor incredibly fast and hard, generally at speed, and then sliding along in a stream of slush and wintery road gunk for a few hundred yards. Riding on rollers feels very unstable, yes, but there the similarity ends, I’ve done it for a good hour now and not once did I smash my hip into the ground so badly that I’ll limp for a week, which is what happened last time I rode on some ice. And the time before that, too.

To learn to ride on rollers it is advisable to set yourself up in a doorway (see picture), which has the added benefit of giving anyone sharing your home with you something to laugh at. The first problem encountered is that the bike is higher up than usual, so you have to winch yourself up into the saddle by hanging off the door frame. You clip in, try to get comfy, and turn an experimental pedal. The bike veers off rapidly to one side, you push back to correct it and the wheels fly off the end of the rollers. You try again. The same thing happens. Clearly initial stability is the problem, so you grab the architrave and try to get some revs up. This works a bit better, and after a while you slowly release your deathgrip on the woodwork. After five minutes wobbling about you discover that you can apparently now ride the rollers, and no handed too! “I’ve cracked it!” you think, and reach forwards for the bars, at which point the bike immediately develops the tankslapper from hell and fishtails off the side of the rapidly spinning drums in a matter of milliseconds. Through some innate sense of self-preservation you are able to stop pedalling at this point and you don’t go blasting into the opposite wall or down the stairs at thirty miles an hour, by means of which action your life is preserved.

It is fittingly bizarre for such a strange activity as pedalling a bike indoors on aluminium cylinders that riding no-handed on rollers is actually easier than controlling the thing in the more customary manner, with the bars. You get back on and try again, building up courage to reach forward a few times, and wobbling off in the same manner again and again. You lower the saddle to see if that enables you to maintain a more optimal centre of gravity, or at least shift your weight a little bit without veering off into the radiator. Eventually you give up and resort to grabbing the fixtures and fittings again, one hand on the bars, the other grasping something predictable and solid. This works better, and after a few more minutes you are able to let go, and even start to think about putting both hands on the bars. There is some serious wobbling at this point, but you manage to regain equilibrium after the initial manoeuvre, and finally you are riding the rollers. A few triumphal minutes spent (mostly) centred on the newly mastered spinning contraption, and you feel that your evening has been most productively spent. Next time I’m going to try to figure out getting on and off the bike without the assistance of cosmetic joinery, that should keep me occupied for a good hour at least.

Rick and Simon admiring the sunset.

A short ride out on Monday night, because the weather was so good it would have been rude not to. Everything was dry and dusty and fast, there was barely a breath of wind and hardly a cloud in the sky, this must be what it’s like to live in California or somewhere like that. Shot down the Packhorse for the third time in three weeks, then headed to the pub for a few pints. Splendid.

Spent the afternoon in Greno Woods watching the Steel City Mini-downhill race with Wilf. The weather was lovely so there were masses of specators, quite a few of whom were dressed up as Star Wars characters in honour of the date. Steve Peat, one of the main movers and shakers behind the event, did his race runs in a special stormtrooper outfit.

We didn’t stay till the end but I’m pretty sure Peaty won, he was three seconds faster than everyone else at the end of the first round of runs. Everyone seemed to be having a smashing time and I bumped into a couple of people I know (including the joiner who just installed our new floor, randomly enough). The course looked fun and not totally impossible for mortals to ride – I might even think about having a go myself next year.

Took the new Soul out this morning to investigate some possible new-to-me tracks over towards Denshaw, little scrappy rights of way and back-lanes that I’ve never bothered to incorporate into my rides for one reason or another. This one was quite unpleasant going up, but looks like it could be smashing fun to rattle down, I’ll have to try it the other way round next time. This one was a boring flat farm track. This one is one of those bridleways-from-hell that’s covered in bits of rotting farm machinery and cow shit, rutted to death by tractors and has about five gates every hundred metres, none of which open or close properly. But one out of three is a fairly good hit rate for these expeditions, usually you try four or five new paths and spend an hour hacking through brambles and swamps without finding anything worth riding at all, and the rest of the ride was lovely.

Rider 312 peruses the route card.

Any cyclist familiar with the terrain of the Huddersfield area will be able to see that the route of the Brian Robinson Challenge hits quite a few noticeable bumps on the way round. At 75 miles with 2,500 metres of climbing the 2013 route is about the hardest road ride I’ve attempted since I was a teenager. Add to that a hefty buffeting from a lively sou’wester that really picked up speed over the tops, and last Sunday’s loop was quite a proposition. The previous year’s outing was rerouted away from the biggest hills due to adverse weather conditions, and I was told by one rider that this year’s wind was just as bad (it lacked the torrential rain of 2012, so the organisers kept the route unchanged).

After being officially started by Brian Robinson himself (and some bloke in a ceremonial chain), several hundred riders rolled the couple of miles to the bottom of the first climb, Wessenden Head Road. It was a pleasant change to ride most of this hill in the shelter of a bunch, normally it’s just me on my own battling it out on a local loop. The sharp left at the top put the wind firmly behind us and the blast down into Holmfirth was excitingly rapid. Holme Moss was as difficult as you’d expect under the conditions. It was hard going all the way up until a tiny respite from the blustery gale below the crest of the hill, before we were almost blown backwards out of Derbyshire at the top. Here I am in an official event photo – I look like I’m throwing the bike about a little bit, but I’m actually just leaning into the wind to avoid falling off:

Note the seasoned roadie sheltering from the hurricane-force headwind behind the clueless newbie rider.

I barely noticed Woodhead Pass after the last two little numbers, particularly with the gale behind us, and the roads down to Clayton West shot by in another tailwind-propelled blur. The next section of the ride over the undulating grimness of Emley and Grange Moor pointed us back towards the elements and weaved its way in fits and starts around the top of Huddersfield, towards the main spine of the Pennines and the relentless slog over the A640, head on into the wind. Here I befriended a big chap who looked like he knew what he was doing, but made the mistake of trying to share pulls on the front up past Nont Sarah’s. My legs weren’t as good as I had thought, and I clung on for as long as I could, but blew up shortly before the summit, and had to make my solitary way up and over at a much slower rate. After descending to Delph tagged onto the back of another group, I twiddled back over Standedge at a snail’s pace. Dragging myself past home was a bit of a wrench, but I felt a bit better up the last climb out of Marsden and I almost sprinted the last few kilometres to the finish. Clocking in at 5 hours 40 minutes officially (5h37 on the GPS, there was a queue) I was knackered, but pleased at getting back well inside the six hour target I had set myself. Apparently the fastest guy got round in four hours, solo. Incredible.

This was the first ‘sportive’ type ride I’ve ever done on the road; it was fun to ride out in a really big group for the first time in a couple of decades (I’m not in a club or anything like that). The marshalling was good, the course is certainly challenging, and the atmosphere was friendly. Very enjoyable, I’ll probably be back next year (but I hope it’s a bit less blowy).

Wine, music, bike bits and tools, ingredients for a relaxing evening in.

Last week the joiner who has taken over our entire house of late was off sick, so I temporarily reclaimed the garage and built up the new Mk 3 Soul frame I’ve had stashed in a box for the past couple of months. Friday was the shake-down ride, and I headed out to do a figure-of-eight over towards Windy Hill and back via Readycon Dean and the Packhorse Trail into Marsden.

New Old Soul. New frame, seatpost and drivetrain, old wheels, forks, brakes and whatnot.

This bike is brilliant. I would happily have stuck with my old Mk 2 Soul if I had had to, it was the best bike I’ve ever owned, but when Cotic released the new version with a Reverb-sized seat tube (and in That Green) I was hit with terminal upgraditis. I know it’s a terrible indulgence, but I honestly didn’t stand a chance. Anyway, the new one rides as well as the old one (that is: very well indeed), but with the added benefit of an uppy-downy post that works better than my old X-Fusion Hi-Lo, and with a shiny new 2×10 XT transmission. It’s brilliant. If I could only have one bike, this would be it.

There’s been some resurfacing work done on Windy Hill and whilst I’m no expert I suspect it’s not quite up to the required standard for a bridleway, given that they’ve basically just dropped a demolished building on it. There’s loads of broken glass in the mixed rubble and bricks, which is really not good for bikes or horses; having ridden over a few hundred metres of it before taking a closer look, I can now say with some authority that Hans Dampfs are impressively puncture resistant. The work has been reported to Rochdale council, let’s see what happens.

A Cotic Soul, yesterday

Andy, Ben, Bob, Gareth, Mark, Rick and I rode up and down Snowdon yesterday morning via the Llanberis path. The weather was spectacular, blue skies, almost no wind, I’ve never seen the Welsh mountains looking so friendly. The few small patches of snow and ice were no problem, and most of the hundreds of walkers who started to appear towards the end of the descent were friendly and happy to let us past.

After a six-thirty start to avoid the crowds as far as possible the ascent took nearly three hours, we were definitely taking it easy and admiring the views. The Isle Of Man was just about visible on the horizon. That bit above Clogwyn station hadn’t got any easier.

We decided to stick to the Llanberis path for the descent rather than doing the Ranger again because we were bringing a few relatively less confident riders (one of whom, realistically, was me – having properly smashed myself up off-road twice in the past six months I determined to take it very easy). I was very happy to get up and down a full-grown mountain without any incident. The Llanberis descent is less challenging than the alternatives, but still has a few sections that can make you think, especially when it’s been freeze-thawed to bits by an extended winter’s worth of ice and snow and rain.

Half an hour or so after leaving the summit we were down, and soon ordering breakfast in Pete’s Eats, the first part of our big day out completed. After refuelling we set off for Penmachno, did a leisurely circuit of loop one. Mostly dry, possibly even dusty in places, the trails were lovely. I’ve not been on a mountain bike in conditions like that for at least a year. We headed off home thoroughly knackered, very happy.

More days like this, please.