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Went to Cannock Chase yesterday with 4 other fellows riders from the Mountain Bike Rider (mbr) forum. These ride are nothing to do with mbr other than the fact that those riders that go on them are members of the mbr forum. All the ride are organised by fellow riders, it is normally a case of who want to ride at X on Y put your names below. Sometimes they are one days events (like yesterday) sometimes they are camping events. This is the second such ride I have been on but they do several over the course of the year at various location but to be honest mainly in the midlands and north of the country (there was one today at Hamsterley).

We arrived at Cannock at about 10:45am after our sat nav decided that we wanted to go to the local power station at Cannock, once we corrected that little error we were soon in the car park. Just on 11am we left the car park and headed to the woods. Its fair to say that this is probably the biggest forest trail centre I have been to so was a little unsure what to expect. One thing I was not expecting was how unfit I felt, any sniff of uphill and I was a wheezing gasping heap. Anybody that has been to Cannock will know there is a lot of ups so that did not bode well.

One thing I hate about new places is that they show you up so badly (well at least for me they do), I guess because there are no real trail centres around my ways I don’t get to practice on the narrow twist trails or the rock gardens. It is not that I find difficult but more frustrating when I don’t clear a particular obstacle and unfortunately there were a few of those.

About half way round the trail, my trail enemy turned up, cramps. Now I had filled my 3ltr Camelbak with plain water and had a 1ltr water bottle with SIS Energy drink in it. By the time I had got to 3/4 of the way round I ran out of all drink and the cramps were hitting me really badly. Thankfully one of my fellow riders gave me some of his drink he had left. At one stage the pain in my calf’s was so bad from the cramp that I could not stand up on the pedals. Despite all this, I was enjoying the ride but the cramps and the uphills were killing it for me. I was not alone in the cramps department, a fellow riders was suffering with cramps in the thighs.

I must thank my fellow riders, despite my slowness they were there waiting for me at the end of every section and allowed me time to recuperate before heading off to the next section. This made it a bloody long day and we only just got back with enough light to see where we were going, the last section in the tree was very dark.

Despite my discomfort it was a very enjoyable days riding with some very nice fellow riders.

Ready and eager for the off, yours truly 2nd from left

I have been looking into my cramping problem, I am a person that perspires a lot anyway so normally drink a lot, on one of my normal rides which is flat compared to Cannock I don’t normally have a problem. But when I do rides like Cannock, ride in a group (I do a lot of solo riding) or an organised ride I tend to push that bit harder, thus I sweat a bit more thus losing those vital electrolytes quicker (at least that is what I think is happening). I was hoping that I could keep my Camelbak just for plain water, but now it looks like I will be adding some form of energy drink to my Camelbak to help resolve my cramping problem.

One other problem I had which I did not mention was I was having chain suck problem, this did not hold me up to much as I found it was best to leave it in a low gear anyway. I had a play with the front mech on the bike a couple of rides ago so I think it might be to do with that. I had to fit a new chain to day as the other one had reached its limit so I will be doing a little adjust later in the week, it started to rain so had to pack up.

Finally Clive over at MassiveMTBer put me onto this this new blog , have a read and let me know what you think.

And absolutely finally because I told him I would, here is dear son doing what he does best

Drinking hot Chocolate

No single thread to this blog today, just lot of little of snip-its and pictures

Here a picture of what I have been working on at work

Servers & Sans

Two new servers (the green lights) and two new San units (only read if you like reading geek) above the servers. A total of 36 disks, 18 in each San unit which is small fry to large corporation style sans but for a small business, it is a lot.

Took the camera out and took some pictures for the first time in months. Only went down to the local beach on a windy day but it was fun.

Here is a kite surfer about to launch their kite.

Kite launch

The shot was taken looking towards the sun which is why everything look so dull apart from the bright blue kite.

Here a shot looking out toward France (it is over the horizon a bit!!)

Breaking waves

Finally from the camera a dog and ball leaving the water, I had a bit of fun with this one

Dog, ball and water

On the bike riding front, I was intending to go on a club ride this afternoon, but thing got in the way and ended up going shopping this morning when I wanted to do a couple of bits on my bike. So I did the work on the bike this afternoon, including bleeding the rear brake as it was a little soft and every intention of going out tomorrow morning.

I have had an up and down weeks. Had to wait till Friday afternoon to get an appointment at the dentist and when got there he was unable to say what was wrong with my tooth so I am now on a course of anti biotic’s which seem to be working.

I was going to write a lot more about my roller coaster week but just can’t seem to get the right words out at the moment, so I will leave with a picture.

Long and not quite so winding path

Yesterday I headed out to ride a new trail I had not ridden before Haldon Forest. I have been past the forest lots of times on my way down to the Devon office for work, so I decided that I would pop in and see what it was like.

Now I have only ever ridden one purpose built forest trail and that was Gisburn. When I rode there I was with a group who knew all the trails and routes so it was very much follow the leader and you were warned about the next major obstacle coming up. Well I was riding this one on my own and after a couple of laps around the skills park I was feeling decidedly uncomfortable. I am not sure why, I had no problem riding each obstacle but I felt so clunky rather than flowing, I left the skills park and headed for the red “Ridge Ride Trail”. The start of this trail is also the start for the, green Discovery and blue Challenge trails and part of the walking trail so the first few 100 meters is a bit of a dodgems.

Once out on to the red trail proper you start to descent down the the side of the valley and I just could not get comfortable, I don’t know if it was because it was all new to me or what but I could seem to ride smoothly. I was happy with the challenges that the trails was offering me and did not feel out of my depth but I was just so unsettled that I could not get into a nice flow.

I got to black trail “Ridge Ride Extreme”, it is only 0.6mile long and after a short break I had a go at it and made a total mess of things, I did not fall off (well not on the main sections anyway), but my unsettledness just seemed worse. When I did fall off was when I stopped to have a breather, I put my foot down only to find I was on uneven ground and keeled over sideways. Once at the bottom of the black trail, it was a climb back to the top, only a couple hundred meters but I walked most of it.

Once at the top of the black trail I took refuge in the shade, today was hotting up to be the hottest day of the year. After a suitable rest I started on up the red trail, up as it was now a fire road climb back up the valley, not sure of the distance but I guess about half a mile, again in the full glare of the baking sun. At the top it was across the road and then into some more single track back towards the visitor centre.

Back in the car park I took time to cool down in the shade by my vehicle and refuel myself. I study the cycle map (Adobe Acrobat required) for my next challenge. I opted to both the short and long loops on the Challenge Trails. Now I thoroughly enjoyed the short loop, very similar to the red route but less aggressive humps but lovely flowing dodge in between the trees as the trail ran down the valley. Once at the bottom of the run it was time to ride back up but not on a fire road but on single track (OK the first 100meters or so is fire road) which seem to make it easier than the earlier red climb. Once back up you rejoin part of the blue trail you have already travelled and then take a turning off for the long loop. The long loop is a completely different to the short loop as it more XC type trail fairly flat but with some little dodgem section in between the trees and the occasional cow, yes there are some cows to dodge as well.

All in all and enjoyable day, just a little puzzled as to why I could not get comfortable on the red route, as for the black, I found it short and uninteresting, the blue short loop was certainly the best and yes I would certainly go a gain if only to try and get comfortable of the red trail.

A little picture of me trying to look like and mountain bike rider

Practising on the north shore in the skills park

As Sunday moved to Monday I became more unsure about sorting out the blocked drain, not because of the job itself but the fact I had made a bad assumption. I believed that outlet of the drain (the bit that goes from the drain to the sewer) was a straight section of pipe from the drain. The problem I saw (wrongly as it turned out) was that from the top of the man hole to the bottom was about 5ft, If I was to stick rods down the manhole and into the sewer pipe that was going to be one hell of a bend in the rods and my concern the rods could break and\or get jammed.

In the end I opted to contact the local council and see if they would help as some of the house that connect to the drain are council house while others are privately owned (all were council at one time). Well they past me from one department to another before I landed at environmental health who were helpful but could not do anything unless I refused to clear the drain (had I gone down that route it would take several day to resolve by which time sewage would seeping from the drains and our toilets out of action). So I contacted the local water company and they said they understood my problem but if I called them out and they had to use a high pressure hose to clear the blockage it was down to me to pay and then recoup the money from my neighbours. So I opted for one of their engineers to come out and make an assessment of the problem before deciding what to do next.

The guy turned up within the hour and let just say he was there for 5 minutes and all my problems drained away. Apparently on the outlet side of the drain there is a U bend (like you have on the back of a toilet). This is to stop sewage from coming back up the pipe if the main sewer floods. So the actual outlet pipe is at about 45degree downwards to the main pipe so there no chance of having a severe bend in the rods when you use the rods to clear the blockage.

One thing that did come to light is that from October 1st, the water company will be responsible for all the drains from the point of leaving the building. So had this of happened after the 1st October it would of been a simple call to the water company.

As I had been sorting out the drains I never got to go for the planned morning ride. I had planned a ride with the wife for Tuesday, she has been out of the saddle for over 12 months following a knee injury and then hayfever induced asthma. So we decided to do the ride in the afternoon. I spent the rest of the morning checking her bike over and fitted a new padded seat cover. In the end all the bike required was air in the tyres, not bad for a bike that has not been used for over 12 month.

I had decided on a simple flat route along the river down to Throop round to Merritown and back to Throop and along the river. Number one son was coming with us as well so not only did I have to ensure the wife would not do anything to injure her knee again and I had to make sure number one son did not ride into the river. Turned out to quite an uneventful 7.8 mile ride, the wife rode of into the distance as I sat back and guided number one son, even he never complained about the distance. He made up for it later that night, he woke up screaming as he had cramp in both his calf muscles….

Last night was weigh-in night and I can happily (if a little bemused) report another 2lb loss. I thought thing were going to be a bit iffy after a meeting with several packets of biscuits last week. I am once again back into the 16st arena and this time I intend to stay in the there unlike the last couple of visits.

Tomorrow I off to somewhere new for a ride and more usually it is a trail centre, after my last trip to new riding area was followed by a visit to A&E I have dug out my knee pads just encase, won’t help my shoulder if I come off but at least my knees will be a bit safer!! More of my road trip tomorrow if I make it back in one piece.