The ride wasn’t rubbish, it was rather pleasant. But there was no view on the way up Holme Moss this morning, so there wasn’t much to look at besides the various pieces of detritus on the edge of the road. Here are some statistics concerning the litter observed on the verge whilst grinding up the hill at 7.30am.
Gel wrappers: 4.
Fag packets: 2.
Lager cans: 3.
Red Bull cans: 6.
Soft drink cans: lost count, but there was one fully embedded in a shoddy pothole repair.
Energy gels outnumber cigarette packaging. Times have changed.

The sun was shining over the other side in Derbyshire.

Riding down a favourite local descent, on my way home, feeling fantastic because the weather was splendid, zooming along faster than ever over dry, dusty trails. Brilliant. Then my front wheel skipped unexpectedly sideways.

I slammed into the ground and heard the “Bang!” as my head walloped the floor and the impact jarred my teeth. The first thing I noticed as I picked myself up was the surprisingly large amount of water from my left eye that had splashed onto the inside of my glasses. I sat up, the bike still on top of me, breathing deeply and awash with adrenaline. Messages were still coming into my brain from bits of my body, and I was unsure if anything had been properly damaged yet, so I deliberately focused on breathing to calm myself down. I took my glasses off and wiped them so I could see again. My hands were fine, I could sit up, nothing was screaming pain at me yet. “Phew. I think I got away with it this time.”

Throwing the bike off I noticed that my head ached and I was seeing stars, tiny flashes of light in my peripheral vision. The colours of things momentarily went a bit funny. Concussion? “It is ok, this will pass,” I told myself. “Any blood anywhere? No, you’ve landed on dust, not rocks this time, excellent. Breathe. Breathing hurts, why is that?” I prodded my ribcage experimentally. Yes, something was definitely wrong there on the left hand side, but probably not too bad.

I stood up, slowly, carefully. “It is ok, adrenal gland, you can come down from DEFCON 1 now, death is not imminent.” I was still a bit winded. I looked around. “Nobody saw me crash then. Why does nobody ever see it when I crash?” I took off my helmet and examined it. There was no obvious damage at all, which I thought odd as I had landed quite hard right on top of my head. “I should probably get a new one to be on the safe side. I wonder what’s good in helmets at the moment?” I checked my pockets, all my stuff was still there. “Not that big then, stop making a fuss. You’ve had worse.”

I sat back down for a little bit longer. The evening was warm, the sun had dropped behind the hill, a motorbike was making a right racket on the main road. My chain had come off. I pulled it back over the chainrings, checked nothing was damaged on the bike, and got back on. I rode the rest of the hill more carefully now my ribs were sore and my left arm was a bit dead. That night’s sleep was fitful, and I ached badly the morning after. My chest is still hurting quite a bit on the left side, four days later, but it’ll mend in time.

I did three of the four Hope XC Series rounds at Lee Quarry last year. I have no idea why I enjoy these events so much, it really doesn’t make sense. I’m not fast at all. At best I place mid-table in the ‘Weekend Warrior’ sports class, and the real racers go past me like I’m standing still, both up and down the hills. This in spite of the fact that I have a really quite fancy bicycle and silly skin-tight shorts and everything.

I suspect that much of my enjoyment comes from riding around the excellent trails of Lee Quarry with a bunch of similarly-minded lunatics, all trying to go as fast as possible. I definitely give it more beans when I’ve got a number safety-pinned to my back, and when things come together properly after a few laps of trying my damnedest to keep up with some proper riders I can almost start to imagine that I might finally be approaching a basic level of competence on the bicycle. The illusion is shattered when a fast lad blasts through, making me look like an uncoordinated donkey on a trike, but even this part of it is fun; it is always worth watching good riders ride, and it’s usually worth trying to follow them too.  Most of the time (discounting the sensations that my respiratory tract is full of particularly pissed-off fire-ants and that my legs are being smashed to bits by hammers) I feel really good riding these races.

So I came back for another go this year. I’m signed up for all four rounds this time, and the first one was last Sunday. It was sunny and dry and warm; pre-riding the course revealed a dusty and fast quarry. The route was the usual selection of some of the best bits of the marked trails with a couple of regular Brownbacks off-piste sections, including that nadgery little mud-chute that always catches people out when it’s wet.

At 10.30 we lined up for the start. From a few rows back we watched the proper BC point-scoring racers blast off into the distance, and a few minutes later it was our turn. The race always sets off up the access track into the quarry, a wide, steep, and loose ramp, and typically I ended up scrabbling about on rubble, losing places and trying to find a space on some more solid ground. Damn those guys are fast, I remember thinking, I must be twenty-odd places behind already. I pulled a few back further up the hill before the first section of singletrack, but it was clear already that I hadn’t somehow magically got 20% faster over last winter. As soon as I’d cleared the first few technical sections I got my breathing back in order, and my breakfast stopped threatening to kill me from the inside out. The possibility of enjoying myself became a plausible concept again.

Half-way round the course there was a flattish section up a track, a nice wide space perfect for overtaking people, if you have anything in your legs. To my amazement in the first lap I found that I did, and overtook three riders before the next wiggly, bermy bit of trail. Even more amazingly, I was able to keep that lead on the downhill and build on it. I started to feel good. A couple of near misses on the steppy bits coming back down put paid to that, and by lap two the fast veterans were passing me. I shouted encouragement to stop myself from swearing at them instead. I twanged the front tyre off a pointy rock with a bang loud enough to make me think I’d punctured, but fortunately the air stayed where it should be and I pressed on. I pulled back another couple of places on the same flat bit, and coming back down began to feel a bit less like I was simply holding on to the bike, and more like I was riding the thing in the direction I wanted it to go.

Halfway round lap three and the front wheel went Boom! off the very same pointy rock. I’ve definitely popped a tyre this time, I thought, but there was a short, bubbly hiss as the sealant did its thing. Hooray! A few bumps further along though and it came unstuck again. I found myself riding along to a soundtrack of intermittent hisses, sprayed occasionally by tiny droplets of Stan’s finest as the hole sealed and unsealed over and over. I stopped to look for the damage, and whilst hunched over the bike one, no, two racers in my category passed me. I couldn’t see anything to fix, and the tyre seemed to have started holding air again, so I carried on, aiming to regain my lost place if at all possible.

Laps four and five were positively fun, I had people to chase now, and I even managed to catch them before too long. I started popping the bike off lips and kickers, enjoying the little drops on the way down from the top. A guy on a Specialized full suss passed me on the horrible loose climb where I always end up pushing. I chased him too, even though I was pretty sure he wasn’t in my category. I was able to haul myself up to him over the course of the next lap, but when we got to the loose climb again he was away and I was off the bike once more. I tried my best to chase him down again, but he kept the gap all the way to the finish. After crossing the line I tracked him down to shake his hand; he was one of the racers, and I’d almost been able to hold my own with him. That was definitely among the best races I’ve ever done, I thought to myself, brilliant fun.

I couldn’t hang around for the ceremony at the end because of family commitments, so I didn’t find out how I did for a couple of days until the results were published. I came 11th, which is annoying because I wanted to get in the top ten, but any disappointment is tempered by the fact that had I raced with the big boys in the proper fast category I would have been 10th with my time – clearly there are some riders in with the Weekend Warriors who really should stop sandbagging. Lessons learned this time include: don’t stop for punctures unless your tyre is actually flat; learn to ride up loose, scrabbly, rocky climbs; learn cyclocross remounts for when you do have to get off; don’t go to a barbecue the day before a race.

Up at 5:40 and on the road at 6:15 to make the most of a morning’s freedom in the sunshine. The Peak District in sunny weather is as brilliant as it is rare, you don’t pass up a chance to do this sort of ride. We dumped the cars in Hope and took the Broken Road up towards Mam Nick because I’d never actually ridden up that way before. It’s a bizarre landscape, ancient A-road markings and cats-eyes melting off the hillside on the smashed tarmac.

The broken road below Mam Tor

From Hollins Cross we dropped down Backtor to cross Edale, and then climbed up to Hope Cross via Jaggers Clough. I felt pretty awful coming down Backtor, my legs were like old wire coathangers, flexing and wobbling feebly over every last bump or wrinkle in the path. This was presumably due to my inadequate breakfast arrangements of a banana and some Dr. Pepper. The best part of a bag of Jelly Babies sorted me out in time for the next descent, the long rattly river of baby-head rocks down from Blackley Clough known colloquially as Potato Alley. The only way to ride this stuff is to hit it as hard and as fast as you can manage and try to skip over the top of the shifting, sliding mayhem under your wheels. Speed is your friend – pedal, damn it! Brilliant fun, if you’ve got the requisite energy. The next winch up past Rowlee Farm and over Lockerbrook was well worth it for the splendidly fast swoop down to Derwent reservoir, as ever. One of my favourite descents anywhere, ever, this – smooth enough to get some speed up on a hardtail, but with just enough skittery bits and line options to still be interesting.

This snap really doesn’t do the Lockerbrook descent justice.

We skipped a break at Fairholmes to make the most of the available time and headed onwards towards Whinstone Lee Tor. Even in perfect conditions I couldn’t quite clean the last section of slabs below the barn on the way up – one day, I swear. The path down to Cutthroat Bridge was covered in that magical Peak District gritstone dust that is my favourite riding surface ever: it’s grippy, it’s fast, it’s sparkly and it even smells nice. Tragically we only see this stuff dry a couple of times a year, it’s more usually suspended in water, making that abrasive paste peculiar to the Peak which is so very good at killing bike parts.

We had to call it a day at this point and head back to the cars or risk incurring the wrath of our families. I have to admit that it was a wrench to make myself go home, I could have stayed out and played all day.

(Bonus panorama thing from WLT, works best in Chrome.)

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.