Sherwood Pines Mudbath

A group of four of us rode the trails at Sherwood Pines in Nottinghamshire yesterday. The temperature was mild for this time of year (9-10 degrees c) but it had been raining all week, so it was extremely muddy. Here's what my MTB looked like afterwards:

It was great fun, but the sucking of the mud made it so much harder than usual that I was exhausted by the end. The character of the course changes a lot when it's wet. Even on the harder and less muddy parts of the trail your speed is affected, as there are lots of puddles that could have tree roots at the bottom, so you can't safely splash through them.

Annoyingly we had to stop after the first quarter of the course to get one of the hire bikes changed, as it had bad brakes, gears and wheels. Another Sherwood Pines Cycles classic. The hire bikes are cheap, but we've had so many problems over the years that it's hard to avoid the conclusion that you get what you pay for!

Some more pics from the day:

Summer riding roundup

I've been training for a half-marathon, so haven't been cycling much!

During a difficult period at work my colleagues and I did manage to get out on our bikes on two of the hottest days of the year, for just about the same route; the first one on the Brompton:


And the second on the recumbent:



Plus we managed to get around to visiting Cannock Chase on the MTB. Was really not doing well on this route, needed a lot more cycling fitness:



As soon as the half marathon is over (28th Sept) I'll need to start training for my winter riding again!

Sherwood Pines: The Revenge

Made it back to Sherwood.

Two laps with neither illness nor injury this time. My legs felt very fatigued towards the end, but I felt pretty good.

Managed a complete lap almost without stopping as well:

Sherwood Pines - worst possible start to the MTB season

By season I mean riding season, not racing or anything fancy!

My colleague JM and I drove up to Sherwood for the first trail ride this year. It started fairly well. I think my lower weight made the climbs and balancing the bike a touch easier, but I think I'm significantly weaker from the diet as well. They've started to add rock gardens to the first quarter of The Kitchener Trail!

About a third of the way around the route I noticed that I was really struggling on the hills and while I felt like I was pedaling flat-out, I was just crawling along. About two thirds around I felt a lot worse, called it quits and went slowly and fecklessly (going kilometres out of the way) back to the trail centre via the fire roads.

No appetite to eat anything, I drank a Lucozade and headed home. Turns out I'd picked up a cold virus, and lost the rest of the day to lying in bed with a fever. Brilliant. What a great way to start the year.

Never mind though, I'll get back into it soon. I've tried to embed the Strava widget here, which isn't showing up in the preview, hopefully it will when I publish:

Carry Freedom Y-Frame Large

After various recommendations and a demo by David Gardiner, I decided to try using a trailer instead of pannier racks this year. Also, I had to return something large to someone on the other side of town, so enter the Carry Freedom Y Frame with its large capacity and superb build quality (which you do pay for, at circa £200 delivered).

That's a 100*80*50cm chest of drawers and fairly heavy. Thoughts on the trip after the break...

Bleeding all over the shop

The rear brake on my Boardman was playing up, so I ordered a cheap bleed kit from a company I'd never heard of called Cyclonix. It was about a tenner, compared to £40 SRP for the official Avid kit or £20 a brake to have them bled/adjusted by Evans (having decided to try myself, I didn't check my other local shops).

Cannock Chase failure & bike stand

I paid a visit to Cannock Chase today with among others the evil blogger of Gecko Cycling. My arm is still recovering so I lent my MTB to a colleague for the day and went out myself on the blue trail with my Fuego.

En route to where I was going to be picked up I noticed (late, as usual) that my left cleat had become twisted on the shoe and had twisted the angle from a nice comfortable toe-out to slightly toe-in. I guess this was due to my exclusively putting my left foot down when I stop, on that long ride with Andy the previous week. I cannot believe I didn't notice this at the time, it explains the knee pain perfectly, as that completely vanished when I reseated the cleat.

Hills are pretty tough. Gravelly hills are magnitudes worse, especially as I wasn't properly set up for off-road. The front tyre is still the Schwalbe Kojak that David had fitted when he owned it. I think it would have gripped better if I had a Marathon Plus or a Marathon Supreme fitted (like I have the rear). I've read that Fuegos are pretty decent off the road, but I'll not try it again for a while myself.

I couldn't manage the entire loop and in fact gave up when I slipped on some gravel and landed again on my bad arm. I switched to the roads after that and played around a bit before I returned to the cafe. There are some nice hills around there.

I took the seat off of the Fuego to fit it back in Stan's car and when I got home tried to fit it in my Park Tools PCS-9 without the seat on. It just about works, which is good. The seat isn't hard to remove really and having the bike in a stand is brilliant for working with wheels and the drive train.

Bad year for trail riding

About a year ago I was riding The Kitchener Trail at Sherwood Pines and had an unlucky fall onto my elbow, which broke on impact. A couple of hours later I was having this swanky accessory fitted to hold the tip of my olecranon onto the rest of the bone:

This put me out of commission entirely for six weeks and prevented me from riding the trails again for months afterwards; though this was partly because I felt strong enough to go out around January time and the weather was hideous for months after! I have been to Sherwood since and suffered no accidents.

Bikes and Storage

I live in a small city-centre flat and have three bikes. They (and their storage) are pictured below (apologies for the poor lighting, took the picture on my phone):

It's a little hard to see but they comprise a Boardman full-sus mountain bike that I use on trails when I can get to them; a Brompton for commuting to work and journeys involving public transport and finally a recumbent that I hope to use for long journeys and weekend riding.

My flat has two bedrooms one of which I either let or keep for guests and no other storage, so all of these bikes hang up in my bedroom.

If you're interested, the 'bent is on a standard wall hook that you can get from most bike shops (it's a Delta Leonardo I think, ~£10). The stand is a Topeak Dual Touch that I got from Wiggle (~£125) and is mounted against one of my roof beams. This setup works well as my ceilings are pretty high, about 3.15 metres and I'm strong enough to lift the top bike in and out. On that note, the recumbent is the hardest to lift in and out as it weighs at least 17kg. Ouch!

I'll go into further detail about the bikes themselves eventually.