Fearingout is ten...

Excellent weekend up in Glentress and great to be back out on the bike again after a sustained period of injury, which has dogged me since the start of 2006.

The down hill track at Innerleithen is by far the best track I have ever ridden, for me it just had everything and was pitched at exactly the right level, although sometimes I did think that perhaps I would been better off with a full suspension and a full face helmet. I don’t know about killing myself on the downhill part, I thought that I was going to die of exhaustion just pushing my bike up to the top of the run, four months without exercise has really shown and my fitness levels were dire. I was pretty happy with my riding though and despite not pushing myself to be as full on as normal, I was still covering the distance at reasonable speed and getting some good air over those jumps. I loved every second of the DH course and dispite being absolutely knackered once I reached the bottom after a short break I was more than happy to push the bike to the top again for another go.

With the success of the Innerleithen ride I was eager to get out on the fabled red route at Glentress. The ride didn’t start off too well with Chris wiping out on the first section. It cause a pretty nasty cut and knocked the general moral of all of us, it’s certainly not fun seeing one of your mates mashed up and bleeding all over the place. After dispatching him off to hospital the ride continued things started to pick up again. The current level of my fitness was evident again, but this was no surprise, anyway in this game, its not how fast you get up the hills, its how fast you get down. I though the red run was ace and would have been my best course to date, if I hadn’t have been to Innerleithen the day before.
Watching Ste and the other guys on the ‘Mountain Bike UK’ event certainly made me realise that there was a long way for me to go before I was anywhere near that type of standard, but it was certainly a good incentive for me to keep raising my own bar.