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This cold has been a pig, Friday night it kicked in with a vengeance, laid me low all weekend, but I am left feeling a little better today (certainly better than the weekend). Unusually for me I took some medication in the form of Day and Night Nurse capsule, certainly stopped the worst of my nose and I got a couple of good nights sleeps after Friday nights restlessness. Hopefully it will be cleared up enough by the weekend and I can get out on the bike again.

Back on the 31st December I mentioned the ride (or should that be slide) around Badbury Rings and one particularly narrow section that had been cleared back but still only had a narrow trail down the middle of it. Well I found a picture of the path I took earlier last year.

wide lane narrow trail

As you can see it is a very narrow trail down the centre of the path, as it is only April it is not that overgrown yet, but it gets to the point in the summer where you can’t see the path for the long grass and you have to duck to avoid the overhanging thorny bushes.

The wife went to her interviews to day, she seemed positive about both but it is now down to the waiting game. She is off to another agency tomorrow to see about the possibility of another couple of jobs, still crossing my anatomy.

…for the control of my body, there is a microbiological battle going on in my body, the man flu has kicked in vengeance. I am moving from room to room accompanied by a box of tissues. Wife bought me a box of normal soft tissue yesterday, by mid morning today I had a lovely glowing nose so I am now the proud owner of a box of Kleenex Balsam Tissue which contain a protective balm. Certainly made my nose feel better, done nothing for the man flu though.

Well there won’t be any riding this weekend for sure which is a shame as it will be clear and sunny if a bit cold and frost for the next few days. Might try and sort my front gears out if I don’t fill to bad tomorrow.

The wife has two interviews on Monday which is a good, fingers and other part of my anatomy crossed for a positive outcome.

Just thought I would pop on here and talk to myself for 5 minutes. Thankfully the pains in my calf muscle from the weekend cramps has now gone, only to be replaced by headaches, snotty nose and sore throat, yes I have the onset of man flu, oh joy.

The wife has been told her last day will be the 31st Jan, not what we really wanted to hear but we needed to know so that we can start to sort a few things out. She had an interview last week and was told that she was second pick if the first girl declined the offer. For some reason I would prefer not to know, knowing you were second just make you feel worse.

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

Not a good start to the new year as I never got out for my ride yesterday, lets just say new years eve is not a good time for me (it is a long story don’t ask) and that resulted in me being in no frame of mind to ride on Sunday morning (and starting the new year in a grump).

Looking at the weather my only chance of getting a ride in before returning to work was going to be Monday. I was deciding in my mind what to do when one of the club members (Dorset Rough Riders) posted on the clubs Facebook page if anybody wanted to go for a ride on Monday. Before long a small group answered and the venue was chosen Wareham Forest. Normally the club grade their rides, Easy, Medium and Hard which are all self explanatory. Now I normally do the easy rides as I am a slow riders so I enquired about the grade of the ride and was told it was open to all as they would wait at the end each section. So I signed up and made my way to the pub car park for 10:30am this morning. Eight riders left the car park and met up with a further 5 riders about half a mile down the trail.

It soon became apparent that even on the flats there was a big speed different between me and the rest of the group, on the climbs even more so. I did what I normally do in those situation and tried to keep up and it soon became apparent that it did not matter how much I tried I would not be able to keep up with them. They were honest to their word waiting for me after each section or climb and giving me time to catch my breath and I guess these guys could of gone a lot faster if they wanted to. So I opted to take the ride at my pace otherwise there was no way I was going to finish. I must admit I was not happy at the thought of everybody waiting for me, I felt under pressure.

I had not ridden in Wareham forest for over 12 months so I was glad to be back there and the opportunity to learn some of the single track trails, some of them were quite challenging but as I was always pushing on I never had time to think about whether I could ride it it was more how do I get down the trail without falling off. Only on one downhill section did I look along with several other riders and I decided I would take the chicken run, simply because I was exhausted at this stage and to prove my point where the main run and chicken run joined back up I got got caught by a clump of long grass ended up in the grass losing the front wheel and going over the bars. Fortunately I was not hurt, just exhausted. At least I now I know I am a long way from a medium level ride, while my fitness has improved there is still along way to go.

Here is a link to a video that one of the riders made of the Wareham Forest ride . There none of me in it as I was always at the back.

Tomorrow I will be servicing the bike ready for the weekend, I don’t go back to work until Wednesday.