I've come up with a theory. I think the less hair you have the faster you go......well it seems that way as Dave and Troy get stronger each ride, especially the muddy ones, ok all the rides recently.
Thetford round 2 next weekend will reveal all.

Speaking of our polished friends, did you see the clip of old Malverns action on TV burp this week, classic bike carnage location long before the easy access to good digital cameras, I've got some superb crash photos from there somewhere, will have to find them and scan them in.

Another month glides by, 600 miles on the clocks but a few too many cakes in the tank and not enough real training, especially on the weights, means could do better. At least the kit is handling all this crap, the Blur LT is a revelation, it keeps astounding me just how good this bike is, the Intense would have chewed up and spat out a set of bearings by now. I have just taken off the RP2 shock, pressed in another bottom bush (800 miles) when will that slight wear part be sorted?

This was literally a 5 min job and no great hassle with engineering stock DU bushes, the enginnering on the BLT, titanium chuncky fastners, and everything lined up spot on, superb.
Whilst the shock was off I cycled the swinger through all its travel, still fluid and lush, looks like its possible the yanks have finally discovered seals at last.
The Intense would have needed a hammer to do the same task after some winter abuse!

Why the Peaks?

Thats why.......smiles all round.

Great weekend with a crowd of guys not generally from a biking background. Just having fun getting covered in crap as it rained quite a lot.

The riding was good, and the BLT was blindingly Leechlike up the Trails. I cleaned more tracks around Hope than ever before, totally staggering and I just cannot believe how good the bike was their, either that or I had so much energy to spare because the raceheads wern't there.

The Post title question is because after 2 days of riding we had to cancel the third, 4 out of 4 bikes totally shredded their brake pads, I had spares but others didn't so we called time and left the hordes of ant like trailquesters to fill the hills on sunday.
Finally found a use for those Superstar components cheapo pads now, fit for a day then throw away in the peaks, perfect.

What tyres for....Swamps

Tuesday Night ride and 17 of us set out attempting to avoid the bad bits for our sanity.

This led us to head down "Gerald", bit of Downhill ski-ing (nice save Brownie) for some gravel track laps of Stanwick lakes.

Me and Troy heading the train and we see puddles, riding into them they cover the wheels....the track disappears and we are riding between the reeds. It gets deeper.....and deeper, its getting harder to pedal as the water hits Knee level on the downstoke, we look back and everyone is following, insane laughing ensues.

In the end we did over half a mile of river riding, not really knowing where the banks or edges of the trails were, it was bonkers and how no-one fell in totally I'll never know, the side currents at times were pretty killer, the bikes were covered in drifting debris we were picking up.

Guess a few wheel and crank bearings will be siezed this morning ;-)

Great weekends Riding

While most of the Country seemed to fight with the weather, I had two nice days riding that could not have been anymore different, except it was dry all round.

SAT:- A nice 3 hours to meet Smiffy and then we did the plumz loop, very low level and chatting most of the way round, just how a winter base road ride should be; we still were faster than any tuesday time too.

SUN:- Thetford Winter series, fast swoopy dry singletrack that had so much grip it was insane. Legs are crying with pain today but you could not stop pushing it was superb, guess the Nitrous is good for something after all ;-)

Hope Joolze dosent mind me knicking that photo, check more out on her link on Right.

Inspiration for Perspiration

Life's a bit messed up at the moment, not in any bad way just has no real direction. I'm a lazy slob fighting to get out of an athletes body, yeah right ;-) I need targets and goals to stop me going off the rails! My Work situation is up in the air so any long term plans are a bit hard too.

Biking Inspiration can come in many forms, a good event, a great ride with mates, a new bike, a sunny holiday biking, or a challenge.

I'm hoping that Thetford this weekend might kickstart the racing bug in me. There's a weekend in the peaks with good riding and boozing in the off, a holiday in the sun to plan and a still fresh BLT to find the limits on.

The whole challenge think is cool, petrols down in price, the mortgage is shrinking and there's alot of trails out there to explore, time to spread the mud around before I become a full fledged homer which has been delayed untill June.

Robs pretty busy on this front, I like the idea of his latest jaunt, all the Afan trails one after the other without stopping - 6hrs plus of ride time with attitude, sounds better than riding round in circles. Fancy it Rich?

30 in 30

Last Month of the year with 30 days - 1 hr each day at least on a bike lets roll.

Day 1. Kona 40Km - Starts poor with 14 hr work day but real enthusism as I get on the I-magic and stick in a fun 40km in just over the hour, reckons I'm doing 230 wattts average, might use this as a test ride to check my progress from here.

Day 2. BLT - 25ml. 3hr
Dave and Stew and a shedload of water, great skills morning playing at laps in the woods and quarries. Stumbled on a moto-x trials event and even had a go at a few stages. Superb old skool day out, bikes are ace. If you spent sunday on the couch staring out at the rain, get off your arse and sharpen thoses skills up!