Hey all,
Went riding with my brother in the Peak District of England on Sunday.
We were attempting to ride a 45 mile loop and for those of you that are
not familiar with the terrain in this part of the country the general
saying is "if you don;t like hills or rocks, don;t go to the peak
district". If you aint going down you are going up, there is no flat!
For me this seemed a tad overambitious, but my brother being on the
verge of the GB rowing team insisted he had to do his training so we set
off.
The weather was warm but was raining lightly on and off which made me
cold and first but was imperceptible after a while and not ata ll
unpleasant. The ride started off with a climb of about 200m in the first
2 miles and then became slightly easier going. This led into a nice
relatively easy descent that led into another uphill where we came
across a couple of women who were doing much the same circuit as us
except that they were further along. Theyw ere also on full sussers
whereas we were on hardtails so our riding pattern was slightly out. For
this reason we didn't ride with them but they caught us up on the
downhills and vice versa on the ups. After about 4 miles I realised that
my suspension was set up way hard for the type of terrain we were
riding. I was running 40psi on an 80mm travel fork while my brother was
running 25 on a 100mm fork and was therefore a lot plusher. On every
descent the bike was rattling hard and I was struggling to keep it under
control. I was also having major problems with my front disk as the
rotor kept coming loose and this caused massive juddering at the front end.
15miles in, we were on a section which had a lot of gates so one of us
was opening the gate for the other to ride through and get the next one
ready. I had just closed the gate and was chasing after my bro pretty
hard across undulating cross country terrain which the fork should have
soaked up but didn't and I was getting quite badly out of shape. This
then banked sharply into a steep downhill which I went for but didn't
get the line quite right and was braking quite hard to try and regain
control which caused the front to judder and the back end to slide
(hardtails slide remember!). The downhill section had a switchback in it
which I realised I wasn;t going to make and tried to bail out into the
runoff/ make the bend/ stop al; at the same time. This had the effect of
me not going for the turn or going straight on and grabbing a whole heap
of front brake. The front hit a rock and I was gone, bye-bye, face first
into a muddy bank strewn with rocks.
Fortunately I had a lid on which absorbed the shock and I am quite
surprised it didn;t crack open as it was quite an impact. The bike was
fine apart from a slightly bent v brake lever (disk up front, vees out
back) and I was ok apart from a bloodied knee and quite shaken up.
We managed another 4 or so miles until I realised that given the time we
had allowed ourselves we (I) would be struggling to make it round to the
end and that we needed to chop around 10 miles off the loop before my
legs packed in totally. (I thinm tiredness was also partly to blame for
the crash as I wasn't using my legs as shock absorbers properly due to
fatigue) We couldn;t shave 10miles off, but we decided to stick to minor
roads and made it back to the car with time to spare, out of fluids but
reasonably in one piece. (he managed to ride into a hedge at one point!,
rider and bike both fine)
In total we rode about 40miles, 20 or so of which were off road on
pretty technical (for my ability anyway) cross country trails. We have
already decided that if I get out a fair bit and build up my fitness we
will have another go at the same trail later in the summer and give
ourselves a lot longer to do it by starting out early in the morning
rather than at lunchtime. Overall a good day just a shame that I crashed.
The helmet is a 2 year old giro animas and will shortly be consigned to
the bin, although I am tempted to see what giros crash replacement
policy is like. Although the lid is still in one piece it has a fair few
dings and must be compromised internally after that impact.
Unfortunately I want to switch to MET helmets as they do the parachute
which I think would suit me nicely.