Today I are been mainly riding off road. Since I got my new road bike I'd changed my old mtb back to
an off road bike by taking off the rack and full mudguards, refitting the 2" knobblies that were on
it when I bought it but hadn't seen a single day's use since and putting some crud catchers on.
Today I went riding with a group in the Surrey hills (Leith/Holmbury hill area). I had to travel
through sarf London to do it - normally I don't do sarf London as it is a dark and mysterious place
that takes a long time to get to and even longer to travel through it, and even the tube hardly
bothers to go there, which is not surprising as it is a dark and mysterious place (I can't think why
anybody would want to live there either, but it seems a lot of people do). But anyway it was worth
it. I don't normally do off road either, the local canal towpath being the only off road I have done
in the past, which doesn't offer much either in the way of workout or adrenalin, but today, hey,
wow! Road riding is just hard work - the most 'fun' you can have is to go further faster, but you
really have to work at it to do that which takes a lot of the fun out of it. At least, there's not a
lot of adrenalin in it, and you're knackered afterwards even if you have gone a long way quickly.
Off road, with a little bit of peddling uphill, which isn't really much effort (at least not
compared to sustained fast road riding), you can start screaming down slippery-sliddy scary muddy
single track at insane speeds through the trees, and really get the adrenalin flowing! And you don't
have to go very far or use a lot of energy to do it. Help! I think I'm hooked!
Rich