- Gazlar
- The Northern Monkey
- Ste_T
- Bails87
- projectsome
It would have helped if we’d checked the event schedule at the Forest of Dean and made sure they weren't holding their biggest event of the year on the same day as our first training ride!
Never mind, we all enjoy a thirty-minute reverse down a forest track due to it being completely full of cars with nowhere to turn round....
Not the most auspicious of starts to the day, but the five of us that were riding soon gathered at the next visitor centre and got on our way out with bikes beneath us.
The idea of the first ride was not to punish ourselves mercilessly, but more to compare fitness levels with each other and get used to riding in a group and at a pace that suited everyone. The faintest of snow flurries started coming down as we set off down the family trail in search of the blue graded Verderers trail we planned to do laps of.
On the way to the start Gaz discovered that last minute repairs he did to the bike the night before was not the greatest idea, as he found very little power in his back brake... this was going to make the day interesting.
Soon we arrived at the trailhead and keenly headed straight on to it.
Before we knew it we had finished or first lap and we're straight into lap two.
For lap two we upped the pace a little as it was getting cold, the trail had already started cutting up, but on a positive note Gaz’s back brake was now working again....... weird.
The increased pace started to take it's toll on Sherome at this point and as we hit a left hand switchback the power in his legs just went and clipped into his pedals he lazily keeled over into a heap of and machine. He was fine a quick breather and he was up and running again, but we were soon hit by or next disaster.
Following a fun descent, Mark’s suspension fork had become bouncier than kangaroo on a pogo stick. After trying to re-inflate the forks, there was a loud pop as the air pressure pushed out the seal.
Mark pushed on with his new super soft suspension setup clattering around like a shopping trolley until we had to take five again to deal with Gaz’s swiftly deflating front tyre.
The issues we had encountered in this lap had cost us almost an hour of riding and added to the time we lost trying to find a park in the morning, there was only one sensible course of action........ Cake.
We had not covered the mileage we had hoped, but the day had been useful in many other ways.
We found a comfortable pace that we were all happy with, saw what kind of impact mechanical difficulties may have on our progress and most importantly enjoyed each others company.
Fitness and finesse can be worked on in the 6 months we have until we start and it's in no doubt going to be tough, but we are going to be having one hell of a laugh through the sweat and tears.
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