A Personal best – The Pendam Trail
Nant yr Arian MTB Trails
The last time I did a timed circuit of the Pendam Trail at Nant yr Arian was about a month ago and it took me 41 minutes and 5 seconds. I was pretty disappointed with this as it was very slow compard to my personal best of 37:22.
I’ve been feeling a bit slow on my mountain bike lately so on Saturday I changed the tyres on it to make it a little faster and easier rolling ready for the Dyfi Enduro. I went from a 2.4″ Mountain King on the rear and a 2.35″ Maxxis High Roller on the front to 2.2″ Mountain Kings front and back. Still not the fastest rolling tyres around but hopefully a nice compromise between easy rolling and grip.
Whilst at it I cleaned my bike in the sunshine and found that the seatpost was half full of solid mud. I cleaned this out then thought to myself if the seatpost is like that then maybe the seat tube is as well. It was, so I cleaned that out too. I’d been carrying around extra weight in the form of mud inside my frame for a while!
Yesterday the conditions were perfect for a MTB ride so I headed off up to Nant yr Arian and starting from the Pendam car park rode around the Pendam Trail to the visitor centre. I wasn’t pushing hard and hadn’t intended on doing a timed circuit but depsite getting a little held up on ‘High as a Kite’ I got to the visitor centre in under 15 minutes which I thought could be good for a record. I therefore upped the pace a little and decided to do a full circuit of the Pendam Trail before heading off elsewhere.
After the Italian Job I was chasing another guy in front of me who was going along at a fair lick. I later found out that it was David, but having him in front of me and catching him slowly made me push just that little bit harder. He missed out the singletrack section at ‘Spaghetti Junction’ so once again I was chasing him down along the tarmac around Llyn Blaenmelindwr. He then took the shortcut to Hippity Hop whilst I went round the back and pushed hard on the final climb, overtaking a couple of other people before hurtling down Hippity Hop to finish in a time of 36:55, a new personal best and 27 seconds faster than my previous best. I was happy with that.
I then stopped and had a chat with David who came down Hippity Hop just behind me and we headed off for a circuit of the Summit Trail as well. Not a bad day out in the hills.
Topo & Heart Rate
