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!
Jay About to be overtaken by a dog-walker
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Jay on some ClimachX Singletrack
I had another action packed weekend here in Wales.
Now that I have a new bike, my brother Jay came to visit so that he could borrow my old bike and come out for a couple of mountain-bike rides with me. He used to be a fairly handy cyclist, racing on and off the road, but hadn’t been on a bike for a few years. I didn’t expect that to hold him back too much as it wasn’t that long ago that I hadn’t been on a bike for around 10 years, so I thought I’d know how he felt. My first ride back on a bike was around the northern half of the Syfyddrin Trail, but I thought I’d make it easy for Jay and start with the Pendam Trail on Saturday.
We started off OK, a nice easy ride along the first few bits of single track from Pendam and then up the first small climb. Jay was lagging behind and puffing and panting a bit but looked OK. Next up was another little bit of single-track followed by a short steep rocky climb. Jay lost traction on this bit and had to get off, and then at the next junction, just short of two miles into the ride he had to stop to throw-up! Nice one Jay, I think you may have lost some fitness!
In all fairness, he did get back on the bike afterwards and finished the ride, albeit at quite a slow pace. Only 6.5 miles in total, but at least he got around in one piece!
Just goes to show how quickly you can loose some fitness though.. Use it or Lose it! It doesn’t take that much to keep it though, I hadn’t been on a bike for over 10 years but obviously keep relatively fit from windsurfing, surfing, and even gardening. It took Jay 1hr 24 to get around the Pendam Trail whereas my first attempt a couple of weeks after getting back on a bike took 42 minutes. Just goes to show, you don’t need to do that much to maintain some fitness, but stop altogether and its a slippery slope.
Jay re-visits his breakfast
