Biking in the Real World

I haven’t really been out on my bike in the ‘Real World’ for a while. I’ve been on the turbo trainer quite a bit recently and I’ve had one or two little rides in the snow, but nothing proper and nothing on my Commencal Meta 5.5 since replacing lots of bits on it. I wanted to give it a bit of a shale down and as the snow and ice seemed to have mainly metled I decided to do a circuit of the ClimachX Trail.

So off I set up the first climb with my new drive-chain, new rear wheel and new bottom bracket. All felt OK, although it did feel like quite a slog. The recent snow-melt had made conditions pretty claggy under-tyre and I was soon a little too hot thanks to having to wear a Buff to keep protect my ‘surfer’s ear‘.

Once onto the singletrack it wasn’t any easier. Claggy and hard work with some snow and ice here and there. It then started pouring with rain and as I got higher there was some areas of slippery ice on some of the fire-roads. Nothing too bad and all very rideable, except for the sharp turn onto the rocky climb up to ‘Better Late than Never’. I had to dismount here and shuffle across the ice.

The top of the final descent was a little difficult too as it still had quite a bit of snow on it so I took it fairly easy, although I think it would have been OK. The final descent after the rock garden was really good though.

I was a little disappointed with my time of 1 hour 10 minutes (my record is 56:17 – Click here for a report from that day.). Especially seeing as it felt quite hard and my average Heart Rate was 151 bpm. I’m not sure if it was the bike, the conditions or me. Most likely a combination of the latter two. The conditions would certainly have slowed me down quite a bit but maybe not by a whole 14 minutes. I’m probably not quite up to speed either, and the fact that I’ve done quite a bit of training this week probably means that I could do with a rest.

I’ve just looked it up and so far this week I’ve done 6 turbo trainer sessions, a circuit training session, 2 swims and 2 mountain bike rides. Time for a couple of rest days.

I haven’t posted a ride report for a while or any route guides. Mainly because I had a few months off the bike after being in hospital and the rides I’ve done over the past few weeks whilst trying to get back into it have been pretty hard work and not that enjoyable.

Last nights ride felt much better though. I’d done some sessions on the turbo trainer this week – 50 minutes fairly hard on Monday, 35 minutes on Tuesday and then an easy 30 minutes earlier in the day yesterday – and I think it must be paying dividends. Right from the start I felt much better on the bike.

It was a fairly chilly, windy night, so not that inviting out there but Dave, John and I met at the ClimachX trailhead at 6.30pm. After the initial pfaff as we got ready we set off up the long climb along the fire-road. I didn’t feel that fast but made it to the top within 12 minutes which isn’t too bad for me. We then did the first couple of sections of singletrack before heading off the marked trail and down the Builth Descent. This descent was a little washed out after all the rain we’ve had lately and there was a large Hazel tree down across the trail at the top so it was a little slower than usual.

Then it was up the long climb back to the top. We were treated to a bit of a lightning show on the way up and we hoped it would remain off in the distance. I’m not sure if Dave and John were taking it easy, but I was keeping up OK and felt quite good on the climb. Certainly a lot better than I had on previous weeks night rides. We then rejoined the ClimachX Trail and followed it around. The little climb after the section known as ‘Va Va Voom’ feels pretty different after the forestry work that has been going on there, but at least some of the deeper puddle have disappeared.

As we came out of ‘Better Late Than Never’ we were hit by a huge hailstorm, that hurt to ride through. We stopped for shelter under a tree just as the storm abated. Dave did think about doing the ‘Elephant’ descent and then climbing back up, but I was feeling a little cold by then and John wasn’t too keen to doing anything extra either so we missed out the section across the top (Where’s my Ball) and continued along the fire-road to the final descent. Despite all of the rain this was in pretty good condition.

Overall it was a good night ride. I felt much better than I had done the last few weeks and the 11 miles passed by pretty quickly.

Here’s a plot of the topography (blue shaded area) and my heart rate (red line). – Click for larger image

You can download a Google Earth file of the route here: ClimachX & Builth

This weeks Ystwyth-MTB night ride was in the Dyfi Forest. Just Dave, Jon and myself this week and as Dave and Jon are pretty fast I had a pretty hard ride doing my best to keep up.

It was a good ride in lovely conditions, hot and sunny. A little too hot really but we shouldn’t complain about that. We started out along the ClimachX trail, up the long climb and then along the first two bits of singletrack, then up the next little climb, by which time Dave and Jon were starting to leave me behind and I was struggling at the back. We stayed on the ClimachX Trail for the next two bits of singletrack before leaving it and heading off down the steep, muddy but lots of fun 3 in 1 descent.

From here it was a long climb to the top, back onto the ClimachX Trail and some more singletrack. Then on the rocky climb, instead of turning left and onto the singletrack across the top, we carried on up before heading down a steep descent into the next valley. From here it was a traverse around the valley to the first climb of the Dyfi Enduro. By now I’d come alive a bit and actually climbed this really well, overtaking Dave in the process and doing my best to keep up with Jon. I did of course know that it was the last climb of the evening so did put in quite a bit of effort.

All down hill from here on the final descent which was really good. It changes everytime I do it and tonight was no exception but I did manage to stay in touch with Dave and Jon and had a really good ride.

Click here for a Google Earth file of the ride.

I took my new camera along for the ride as well, getting a photo in before the ride an one halfway down the final descent.

MBR are doing a report on the trails around Machynlleth for an upcoming issue so were out riding at ClimachX yesterday.

They’ve posted a video of it so here’s the video of ‘Andy and Roo from MBR riding the Cli-Machx trail at Machynlleth, North Wales on a rainy day in May’.

Cli-Machx Trail – Machynlleth from Mountain Bike Rider on Vimeo.

I’d planned to go for a ride on my own yesterday anbd as i’d been singing the praises of my Garmin Forerunner 305 and some of the features on it I thought I should put the Virtual Training Partner feature to the test.

I hadn’t used this particular feature before which allows you to record a particular course and then race yourself around the course next time you do it. Whilst doing so the Garmin Forerunner will tell you how far you have to go to the end, how far ahead or behind your time you are, as well as all of the normal readings such as speed, time, distance, heart rate etc etc.

I headed off to ClimachX with my Mountain Bike and started my first lap of the Trail. The weather was perfect, still quite cool as it was early in the morning, but gorgeously sunny. The trails were still wet though. I didn’t go too hard as I was intending to go around a second time, but I was feeling good and did keep up a nice steady pace that wasn’t too shabby. My first lap was completed in a time of 58 mins 22 seconds, which isn’t bad for me and probably only the second time I’ve been under the hour (My best ever until this point was 56 mins 58 seconds).

I had rest in the car park for a while which gave me time to save the route I’d just done as a ‘Course’ which I could then use to compare against my next attempt at the trail. I got chatting to Ian as well and we decided to head off around the course again. I pressed the ‘Do Course’ button and off we went.

I’m never too good at getting going again once I’ve stopped and halfway up the first climb my Garmin was showing me that I was 100 feet behind my previous attempt. By the time I’d got to the top of the hill though I was 100 feet ahead and that’s when the challenge started. It’s really good, because once you’re ahead you just don’t want to drop back behind your virtual training partner so it provides a really good incentive to keep pushing a little harder. I was winning so there was no time to stop!

After the first two bits of singletrack I was up to around 300 feet ahead, and then by the halfway point I was around 0.15 miles ahead. My legs were beginning to feel it now though but I only had 4 miles or so left to go so had to keep pushing on. Just before the last singletrack climb I was just over .3 miles ahead, but this dropped back down to about 0.15 miles ahead at the top of the final descent. Only one thing for it, I was going to have to go for it on the descent. It worked, at the bottom I was still ahead and I even went hard down the last bit of fire0road and into the car park.

Stopped the watch and I’d beaten my Virtual Training Partner by 0.45 miles.. I was the winner! My actual time was 56 mins 17 seconds as well which was a record for me.

All in all it is a great training feature. I need to tweak what I can see on the screen at a glance as I’d like to be able to see the distance to the end, the time that I’m ahead or behind, my heart rate and total time but the screens are customisable so that should be easy to do. I also don’t think I’d use it if I was dropping too far behind myself. It’s all well and good to use it as a tool to motivate yourself, but if you’re having a bad day and are being beaten by your virtual training partner then it will only make you feel worse. At least, that’s the case for me. Other people well well find the opposite is true but I tend to try harder when I’m going well and just give up a bit if I’ve no chance of winning! Probably not quite the right attitude but its just the way I am.

If you have Garmin Forerunner or one of their other devices with a Virtual Training Partner feature, give it a go.

Sunday morning dawned bright and clear with a little bit of surf, so rather than waste the morning watching the Grand Prix and to give Jay a little rest before the second ride of the weekend we went for a nice little Stand-up-Paddle board session at Ynyslas.

Jay couldn’t quite stand-up so had a knee-down paddle board session, but we both caught some nice little waves. Jay did manage to loose his wedding ring though which wasn’t a great start to the day for him.

After catching up with the events of the Grand Prix whilst Anna, Morgan and Pat were ‘working’ in the garden, Jay and I headed off (Jay somewhat reluctantly!) to ClimachX for another mountain-bike ride.

Jay was suffering from yesterdays ride so we took it easy. Jay took it really easy and was actually overtaken on the first climb by someone walking their dog! Tch tch tch, come on Jay, you can do better than that. He did make it all the way around the ClimachX Trail though, although he was off and pushing quite a bit. I think he enjoyed the final descent and I had a nice leisurely ride around in the sunshine.

All in all a good weekend, probably good for me to have a couple of easy rides as I’m still recovering from illness, and although it was painful I think Jay enjoyed it and will hopefully be back soon for some more!

[caption id="attachment_1433" align="alignleft" width="120" caption="View from the top of the first climb"][/caption]