Using my days

I generally don't do badly at getting the miles in, despite an increasingly demanding job (hell, I have two Indy Fabs, it's worth it). Even in the middle of winter, I look across at the expensive HID lights and the warm gear and usually that's enough to prod me into action.

What really saps the motivation, though, is mud in Spring. Work has left me overweight and underfit recently. Nothing a few decent rides won't sort out, mind. But out in the woods yesterday, I almost found myself wondering whether it'd just be worth accepting defeat and getting some road miles in instead. This is spring, beautiful spring in the Chilterns, and the best stuff is still soaking wet.

But a bit of perspective is required. Okay, it's still muddy in places, but plenty of the singletrack is dry, especially out of the woods. The bike still comes back plastered in mud, but it's chunks of sticky stuff rather than evil component-eating slime, and it brushes off easily. And then a lovely sunset last night really made me think.

These, though, are all small things. On Sunday I heard some news that was truly awful. A member of our club posted on the forum on Sunday that his fifteen year old daughter had been killed in a car crash the previous evening. The whole story is on Toni's blog - http://tertl.blogspot.com. I've never experienced anything close to what Toni, Chris, Ben, Dan, and all their close friends and family must be going through.

When you see something as truly dreadful as that, a bit of mud, the odd puncture, a lack of motivation... it's all nothing. I've not made the best of my days lately. I've watched weekend days, or sunny evenings, slide by. I could have been out on the bike, or visiting friends, or seeing somewhere new.

If my luck holds I will continue to be healthy and relatively fit. I have been with a lovely girlfriend for nearly eight years. My bad knee, operated on in 2002, has behaved itself for months now. I am relatively wealthy, have a good if time consuming job, and most of all I am fortunate enough to live a peaceful life, with few worries. I have three lovely bikes... and the hills are only a few miles away.

I will use my days much better this summer because I am very fortunate to have been gifted that chance.

No snow

6am this morning saw a very heavy snow shower in Reading which looked like it might even start to settle. A well-earned lie-in was swiftly abandoned to see if the hills had caught any proper snowfall.

Sadly not. I've seen mornings where the small hills west of Caversham have had a few inches of snow despite the lower parts of the town having nothing more than slushy puddles (dodgy camera-phone photos here), but this morning they had a soggy dusting at best. The trails themselves weren't too bad, for which I was grateful having ventured out on the geared bike due to time constraints. Just not snowy. Oh well.

On an unrelated note, two weeks eating American food portions and doing no riding doesn't half eat into your fitness...

Starting points - The Warren, Caversham

Firstly, I've noticed that Streetmap have messed around with their site somewhat, which has stopped most of my previous links going to 1:50,000 Ordnance Survey scale. This is annoying. To rectify this, click on the zoom scale (not on the "+" symbol) to resize the view. I'll try to run through and update the links.

Anyway...

In the post entitled Starting points, I described The Warren in Caversham as the most useful starting point for mountain biking from Reading. Now I'm going into a bit more detail.

As mentioned before, things start here (Streetmap link) on St Peter's Hill:


As you turn down here, passing the church on your left, you have two options: to carry on down to the right hand bend at the bottom of the slope, by the Canoe club, or to take the first right:


If you've opted for the former option, you just need to follow the road until it runs out. Taking the right turn, however, is a tad more interesting. There's a sharp climb, followed by a flat bit, then a turnoff here:


This has brought you to an unsurfaced road, which drops from the Upper Warren to the main Warren road, pictured here from the bottom:


The right hand rut on this road actually has a little drop and some loose rocks, to get you in the mood. The road is quite a challenge on the way back into town - it's short and steep, and quite tough on a singlespeed.

Turn right at the bottom of this track, or keep following the Warren road if you've gone straight down and past the canoe club. You'll eventually arrive at a gate:


This spot is the start of the offroad trails proper (and is very popular at night for other forms of... erm... outdoor pursuits). You can keep following the track until you emerge from the trees here. This photo looks back towards the Warren from this spot:


On the way to this spot, however, you'll see a gate on the right:


A curious path, this. For years the classification of this track was pretty much non-existent. An ambiguous marking on the Streetmap map still remains. Everyone used the path, because it's a good link to another important bridleway, as we'll see in a moment. Then, last spring, notices appeared to say the path was being classified as a bridleway, with another new footpath down to the gate at the end of the Warren (see above). Great... until Reading's right-of-way people (the path is just inside the Reading district... Oxfordshire is about three feet to the West) marked it with yellow footpath signs. Only about a month ago did it get blue bridleway signs. As the photograph shows, both sets of signs are still in place - the yellow footpath arrow on the wooden post on the left, and the blue bridleway arrow on the tree. So that's cleared that up then.

This always-dry trail climbs sharply until it emerges on the Upper Warren here. The trail is the one curving round to the right as we look back at it in this photograph (the new footpath is straight on and leftish, over the grass):


The trail emerges to the right of the new house in this photo. It's a fun little descent ridden from this end, in fact.


Now, you'll be wanting to carry on past the white house...


...to pick up "Jackson's Lane", the singletrack across the golf course starting here. The entrance is to the left of the cars:


With either of these options, you are now out in the open country and ready to explore some cracking trails. More on some of those very shortly.

Oh, for people into night-riding, these trails are teeming with wildlife. Badgers frequent the Warren itself, and the track off it. Late on summer nights you see them almost every ride. They tend to mind their own business if you do too. And on the footpath-bridleway-unclassified-whatever, I've spooked owls out of the tree canopy above on more than one occasion. It's quite something watching one of these creatures fly along a few feet ahead of you.

There are full size photos at http://jonhall.fotopic.net/c400023.html. Please excuse the lack of sharpness in many of them - the light conditions were very poor as it was nearly dark. Bring on spring.

By the way, it's muddy out there...

Trailbreak accounce more Fat Tyre Navigator race dates

After I mentioned these superb events on a recent post, Trailbreak emailed me to say that more dates were going up shortly.

These are the Sunday series dates:

Winter Series - Remaining Date
Princes Risbrough - 13th January 2005

Spring Series
Wantage (Ridgeway/Lambourn Downs) - 13th March 2005
Bramley (North Downs) - 10th April 2005
Carhampton (Exmoor) - 8th May 2005

Summer Series
Hogs Back Brewery (Surrey Heath / North Downs) - 12th June 2005
Ockley (North Downs) - 3rd July 2005
Checkendon (Berkshire Downs - very close to Reading) - 7th August 2005


And the evening dates so far:

Woolhampton - 19th January 2005
To be confirmed - 23rd February 2005
To be confirmed - 30th March
To be confirmed - 20th April
To be confirmed - 18th May
To be confirmed - 22nd June
To be confirmed - 13th July
RATZ MTB Course - Checkendon - 6th August

I strongly recommend that you CHECK THESE DATES on the relevantTrailbreak page before turning up. Entry can also be bought in advance on their site.



Is the 6th August date at Checkendon an indication that the Ride for a Flight event will be taking place this weekend? More... much more, in fact, about that later (as anyone who put up with my incessant plugging on the Singletrack forum last year will tell you. Regardless of whether you're interested in the Navigator races, keep this weekend pencilled into the diary.

The Dark Side of the Dark Side...

Yes... not just road bikes, but road bikes on a TRACK! Please bear with me on this...

I was hoping to get to Watlington tonight for a night ride with the Chilterns 1XV (a very welcoming, only vaguely formal club with all sorts of abilities... just register for the forum for details of the very regular activities). Work overran so "Plan B" was enacted:

During the off-season, (September to March) Tuesday and Thursdays nights between 8pm and 10pm the Palmer Park track is used for open training sessions. Come down on your mountain, road or fixed wheel bike; we even get tandems and recumbents in the chain gangs of 50+ riders. (Once again check with PP management for times or just ask me nearer the time)
http://www.readingcyclingclub.com/features/maxtrack.html



At this time of year, with salt-splattered,pitch-dark roads full of myopic drivers, this is a nice, relaxed way to get a workout. With hub deep mud covering many of the trails, it's nice to have a reminder of what riding a bike fast feels like. It's good fun and, particularly if you try to hang on in a fast group, can provide a half decent adrenaline rush too (that's what riding inches from the wheel in front at 25mph on a tight inside line does... especially if you know you'd take out the twenty riders behind you if you mess up!).

You don't need any track experience. There is very little banking compared to indoor velodromes - virtually none at all, in fact. On paying your £2.95 a session, you have the option to take a sheet with a few simple rules - I got the hang of things very quickly when I first went along in December.

Not everyone's cup of tea I'm sure, but a good option for keeping up a bit of fitness without having to plug through the mud or dodge incompetent drivers on country lanes.

Dusk Dawdle

Well, I did get out, eventually. Didn't feel so great - not sure whether the main factor was the lack of food or the drinks in the bar after last night's excellent radio recording (very funny, and free, courtesy of the BBC audience tickets page. A nice slow amble, was the order of the day, albeit taking in a climb or two.

Conditions are strange out there. Some of the trails seem to be holding together better than I ever remember in winter, such as the western Right of Way of the pair on Whitchurch Hill:


Meanwhile the other Right of Way, right next door, has been hammered...


There are eight photos here - my digital camera is as cheap as my technique with it is crap, but these came out okay.

Oh, and mind yourself on Jackson's Lane, the single(ish)track across the golf course to the west of Caversham. There's a bit of storm damage. This path falls into Oxfordshire, which unfortunately means it's right at the boundary of their area of responsibility, and last time this happened the tree was down for quite a while.

Back to work then...

Inspiration?

Since I started this blog, all of two days ago, a few people have emailed me, to thank me for providing a little bit of inspiration in these months when, let's face it, it's in short supply. I'm chuffed to bits if that's the case. Riding bikes, as we all know, is brilliant. But sometimes, getting out of the house is very, very hard.

Back in May, I posted this article on Singletrack. I don't really know what came over me to be honest... I'm not normally the wordiest of people but it was such a good night, and the computer was free when I got home... It just poured out.

The trails were pretty dry then, but it's still all out there, it's all free to ride, and... well, for the first time I'll post it with a few Streetmap links, just to give some pointers. Thanks for indulging me...


If it wasn't for an astonishingly clear drive home from work tonight, I wouldn't even have bothered. Having told Clare I was going to be home "hopefully by eight o'clock", I'm astonished to find that the suspiciously clear M4 has whisked me home almost an hour sooner than that. And the sun was coming out for one last effort. And my bike is gleaming and clean.

She sees the look in my eye. "Go on then." The dithering commences. A phantom pain in the bad knee. Those eighty miles covered over the past four days. I don't need to ride. I've had a good few days. The sofa is comfy. It's nearly dark.

But then tomorrow's day out at a tricky client springs to mind. And the three days of flat-out work to follow if I actually want to have some sort of bank holiday. And... ahh what the hell.

The Camelbak is still holding the remnants of yesterday's energy drink... an underhand but effective cheat when riding with the keener, fitter members of my club, this, which at least keeps me in their dust cloud, if not their slipstream. A bit of faffing later, and my lovely boutique frame is sporting a badly colour-matched, defiantly cheap bottle cage. My supply of excuses and deliberate delays pretty much exhaused, I'm off.

"Just a gentle one, Jon", my inner voice says. "Eighty miles in four days, remember. Think of what the physio said about that knee. Call it 'active recovery'... that's really good for you, you know". It's remarkably persistent, that inner voice. Coasting out of Reading, onto the Caversham Warren, I muse that the voice, for once, ought not be ignored.

Until the first hill. The ache in my legs from the long commutes last week, and from yesterday's hilly jaunt around Hambleden... well, it's there, but it's not really unpleasantly bad. In fact, I feel really strong...

The planned trip onto the granny ring never materialises. Forks locked down, I mash up the loose slope through the trees, round the road, and onto the singletrack across the golf course. Hammer down, and I'm flying now. The ground is packed solid, the nettles on each side of the trail aren't quite touching, and... my word I'm feeling good tonight.

Round the corner, down the concrete track, and up Lilley Farm hill... a beast of a farm road, pretty much straight up the side of a hill, modest in height but not in gradient. It's easy today. Onto the nose of the saddle... a fast spin in a midding gear, and I'm up.

The time passes in a blur. Perfect forest trails, in top-notch condition for the first time in months and months. Dust and gravel flying, my bike and I feeling like a single unit as the corners are railed. A quick stop is made at the top of a track to look down over the town and laugh silently at the sheep sitting in front of their soap operas. The longer it goes on, the more I am grinning, and as I pull a ludicrous two-wheel drift round the off-camber chalk hairpin at the bottom of the Hardwick Farm descent, scattering a group of utterly disbelieving deer, I'm laughing out loud now. This is damn near perfect.

Back over the hill I go, and back along the golf course singletrack, the quick way this time. As I rush along, two, then three, then four birds fly along in front of me. For ten, twenty, thirty... a hundred yards, they swoop and whirl and spin just ahead of me. Martins... swallows... I have no idea, and I've never seen anything like it before. It's the last bit of singletrack now, and as I wonder whether I'll get the chance to wave at the doggers I passed on the way up here an hour or so before, I notice the fox charging down the track ahead of me. I yell at it to startle it off the trail, and am suddenly faced with not a fox, but a bloody great big badger. They're sharp, those things. And growly, and huge. Fortunately, it's not interested, and strolls off indifferently.

As I cruise back into Reading, the same three words keep going through my thoughts. "The perfect ride... the perfect ride!". Bike, rider, rails, wildlife, and weather... all coming together for the ultimate few hours of enjoyment. It all felt so right... so damn good... so perfect.

It's the home stretch now, and as I trundle along the river front, I come across the first puddle of the ride. Easy. I crouch down, launch...

THUD. I land the back wheel at a ridiculous angle, and hard. The tyre compresses, slides, then holds, narrowly preventing me from hitting the gravelly deck in front of an audience of bemused swans. A few pedal strokes later, and it's clear that the tube is toast.

It's a little reminder. "Jon...", something out there is saying. "The perfect ride doesn't start and end in bloody Reading. Grow up. Go to the Peaks or something."

Fair point. And as puncture stops go, a park bench by the Thames, with swans swimming around, and the sun disappearing over the distant trees in a beautiful red sunset... now that IS perfect.


After a promising start to the year I had a lapse yesterday... getting home from work planning to get out, but the weather was bad and I dithered, and, well, it didn't happen. Tomorrow I'm working from home all day... a great excuse for a few hours out at lunchtime... paid for in the evening with extra work, but what the heck. I WILL go out, and if I don't then you can shout at me.