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Some rides… just don’t work out the way you planned.

Being a long weekend, a bunch of us decided to hit the You Yangs for a spot of MTBing.

One of my first ever MTB experiences was at the You Yangs and I was absolutely terrified. Steep drop offs, abrasive granite boulders, wooden boardwalks and huge berms. Scary stuff for a newbie and in fact, some bits are still pretty scary. None the less, I was determined this time to ride more stuff and walk less.

You know what? I think it’s working.

I did manage to ride pretty much everything I set out to do on this ride. So much so that for the first time, I actually put my rear derailleur into threat riding through a rock garden. I also managed to ride straight up to a fairly sizable drop off on Cressy’s Climb and commit to it before realising how big it was. I somehow managed to roll off safely, but twinged my left quad in the process.

Of course, it wasn’t all good. To offset my generally good technical riding, I was having an annoying day with all things beginning with C.

First up was my cranks. Can I just say that having a crank fall off while you’re riding is quite scary. Thank goodness for external BB cranks which can be put back on with basic tools.

Then there was my camera – I was having a generally useless day with it. I actually spent the first hour of the ride with the camera taking stills, rather than video. Then, once I’d switched it to video, it was in super macro, so the next 10 mins or so was slightly blurry. Once I’d figured that out, the handlebar mount came loose. Then the tripod bolt started to unscrew. And once ALL of those problems had been sorted out, I ran out of batteries. None the less, I did save some of the footage.

Thankfully, I didn’t get to the third C – crashing. I left that up to my brother, which you can see in the first video.

Despite all this, it was still an enjoyable day in the saddle. I think I’m actually starting to enjoy riding rocks.

So I took the rigid for a ride around Lysterfield on the weekend. What was meant to be a nice, easy ride with HPG, turned out to be a bit more serious when we bumped into Anthony & Victor in the carpark. Victor was busy refueling in true Asian style, with a bowl of instant noodles.

The guys put me in front because they wanted to see me fall. Of course, there wasn’t much chance of that because I’d discovered the week before that the bike actually has plenty of grip. No worries at all. Unfortunately, the top end of Lysterfield is rather hilly, so it wasn’t long before they got sick of going at my pathetic pace and Victor and Anthony shot off. I was however mostly able to keep pace with HPG. At this point, I was realising that 60 gear inches is fine for a CX bike (if maybe a little bit low), but it’s massive for a MTB ride around Lysterfield.

None the less, I plugged on.

Some of the smoother, more open bits, I was able to keep up pretty well, but any time the trail turned up or bumpy, I was off the back again.

By halfway through the lap, I was a broken man. Lower back was sore. Shoulders and arms tired.

Suffering.

Despite all of this, I did actually manage to do the final climb up to the carpark without putting a foot down. It required a large amount of standing on the pedals, but I did eventually get there.

So there are still a few things to play with on the rigid, but all up, I’m pretty sure it’s not a Lysterfield bike at the moment.

So this weekend saw me hit the MTB trails twice, both for relatively short rides.

Saturday was a relatively slow ride around Westerfolds with HPG on a new-old bike (more on that another time) and Sunday was a solo smash of Lysterfield.

One thing that surprised me is that I wasn’t really unfit and unco as I expected. Sure I was slow, but I hadn’t really lost any of my flow. In fact, I reckon I was hooking up better through some of the corners and flowing pretty well, despite riding my skinniest set of knobblies.

The thing that got me though was my arms and shoulders. Aside from the fact that my OUrys were slipping, my forearms and shoulders were killing me by the end of the ride. This made lifting speakers quite difficult on Sunday.

But that didn’t stop me hitting Lysterfield on the Jamis…

Now I don’t MTB solo very often, mainly because of the safety factor. However, it was a Sunday afternoon and the weather was spot on, so I knew that I wouldn’t be alone on the trails. One interesting thing about riding solo is that because I have no one to chat to, I just don’t stop riding. At most, a rest stop is 15 seconds to take a drink and adjust the straps on my hydro pack, then I’m off again.

I think this is where the lack of fitness really shows up, especially since I was riding two days in a row. Usually, I ride Lysterfield entirely in the middle ring, except for a couple of longer big ring descents. This time. The sad part about this ride was the numbers of times I reached for the granny gear while doing pretty simple climbs.

Quite depressing really.

Oh well. Only one thing to do about it…

Get back on the bike and keep pedalling.

One of the things that has generally let me down in most of my physical persuits has been my lack of flexibility. This has been a result of a number of things, but the two main ones would be injuries (shoulder & calf) and lack of effort.

Whether it be reaching that shuttle which is just a bit too far away, hiking up a hill or getting into a truly aero tuck, my general lack of flexibility has always impeded me.

So last night, I decided to address the effort part of it. While watching a couple of old House episodes, I started going through all of those things my badminton coach used to get me to do.

You know what?

I reckon I feel more tired today after doing an hour of stretches than after 100km on the roadie. Heck. I was feeling less tired after riding up Lake Mountain.

It is also somewhat reassuring, since it’s the kind which makes me know that I’ve done some hard work.

Now.

All I need to do is draw up some kind of plan and hopefully I’ll be able to stick to it. Although, I think I need to find more stuff to watch on TV, since that appears to be the only time I sit still for long enough to do this kind of stuff.