Weekend of biking 23rd-24th April '16

April 24, 2016

Weekend of biking 23rd-24th April '16

So....this weekend I made the effort to finally try this mountain biking thing that people seem to like so much....

Saturday morning and a reasonably early start didn't exactly have me fired up for this...but in actual fact, it was freaking awesome! We arrived at like 10 for a 1030 start at Glentress, and spent the day going just... all over the hill!!

Initially when we were on the uphill, I was pleasantly surprised to find that my fitness has really paid off, and really shows! I didn't find the uphills that hard to be honest, sounds awful but it was genuinely kinda ok! I think that we rode up to the kills area first, did a few laps, got me used to what a small jump would feel like and not to lean forward and how to rill the bike about over stones and all that good stuff. Its been such a long time I was fairly nervous to be fair. After that we went straight up to spooky wood with a short stop off at the top for pork pies of course, we made a special stop at WTS Forsyth in Peebles village for this...#worthit - so good! Spooky wood is awesome, I knew there was a compulsory jump in there but was told it was nose-diveable which was fine, so when I hit it, i reacted ok and then had to stop straight after as there were folks walking up the downhill....morons. But the rest of the run, was amazing. I came out buzzing even though I was the slowest person there. From there we went down a new red run that had just opened, which turned out to be a hell of a lot of loose stuff, I was pretty dam slow on that, and then we realised we'd missed out a route called berm baby berm, so we sessioned that for a bit up the slog track and I even got a shot on Martin's full sus Lapier bike which was so, SO smooth and springy in the berms (apparently thats the term for a banked bit) ...makes me think that maybe buying Tanya's full sus bike isn't such a bad shout after all....! We did a red/blue through the go-ape centre, and went down the blue to the bottom, my only regret is not trying the jumps on the last bit as I didn't have the faith that it wasn't going to turn into something more serious like it had been on the previous red runs, I forgot that when its green/blue graded you can just go for it...I wont be forgetting again!

We reconvened in the cafe at the bottom for cake, coffee and chat, and bumping into Ed apparently, before driving back to Strathaven for a nice meal and a pint of Strathaven beer! Good times.

Sunday, well, I had borrowed the bike by this point so it seemed rude to not use it so Dave and I went for a shot at Cathkin Braes - its not got a patch on Glentress in terms of it being tiny in comparison but I tell you what, its got all the technical elements and is a tricky little circuit! We did 2 laps, and I got a bit frustrated as the uphill steep bits are far steeper than Glentress and I had to really think about gear changes and stuff to keep going uphill and not coming off. I also fell off in a river :S stylish. Second lap I did far better and made it over the river - win! After bumping into a lot of fluffy dogs at the top retired home and that was my introduction to biking! I went for a casual 10k run when i got in as well....may have been an error! Ate my face off when I got in!

So in summary... ICH LIEBE MOUNTAIN BIKING!