Getting the Miles in

My big challenge this year is the Brontrager 24/12 in July, a 12 hour solo Mountain Bike Ride in Plymouth. I’m not aiming to be fast or do particularly well, but I would like to at least try to keep going for pretty much the whole 12 hours and at least do as many laps as I can possibly do.

It isn’t going to be easy though as most of my Mountain Bike rides at the moment are usually around 2 hours or less, so staying in the saddle for 12 hours is gong to be painful. With this in mind I thought it was time to start doing some longer rides at the weekend when I can fit them in. So, yesterday, fuelled up with coffee and porridge and with a rucksack full of energy bars and energy drink I headed off into the hills of Wales.

From our house I headed out to Tre-Ddol where I was overtaken by the Ystwyth CC boys out on their Sunday morning Club Run. They turned right towards Taliesin whereas I went straight across and onto the brutal climb behind Tre Ddol. I made it up the climb and started enjoying my surroundings with the signs of Spring everywhere. Daffodils were in flower along the roadsides, the birch trees were covered in catkins, there were Jays flying all over the place, squirrels scampering around and some lambs in the fields.

I headed off across the tracks to the forest road that goes all the way up through Artists Valley towards Angler’s Retreat. This is pretty much a 6 mile climb that seems to drag on forever. There had been some forestry work going on in places so it was wet and claggy here and there, turning it into a very long 6 mile climb, not helped by it being into the wind today as well.

At the top things were looking a little greyer with mist and murk all around so I stopped for an energy bar and to put my jacket on. I went down the MX trials which were riding well, and off towards Nant y Moch. The ruts up above the road were a little deeper than usual due to MX activities so a little difficult to ride and I was nearly caught out by one particularly deep puddle. It was then onto the Conti Trail and through the Conti Ponds – One of these was very deep too. Next up was the Sidewinder section where I saw lots of MX bikes and then off towards Llyn Syfyddrin and around the back to Hippity Hop.

I was now on the Trails at Nant yr Arian so did the Summit Trail, up over the moorland, down Mark of Zorro and then up the long Leg-burner climb. I saw a couple of other people out on Mountain Bikes here and got held up behind some people on High as a Kite, so went back up the hill after the Visitor Centre and did it again before heading off down the Italian Job and back around to Hippity Hop. The sun was making a bit of an appearance now and then which was nice, but I’d now been in the saddle for quite a while and covered about 30 miles so keeping going was my main priority rather than enjoying the sunshine.

The nice thing about riding from home and up to Nant yr Arian is that it’s virtually downhill all the way home. So from here it was the fast descent into Penrhyncoch before heading home along the flat via Bow Street, Llandre and Borth.

Over 4 and half hours in the saddle and 43.67 miles under my belt… It’s still a very long way to 12 hours though and yesterdays ride was uncomfortable enough! 5 hours next week and closer to 50 miles I suppose.

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Alan Cole

Alan is a Freelance Website Designer, Sports & Exercise Science Lab Technician and full time Dad & husband with far too many hobbies: Triathlete, Swimming, Cycling, Running, MTBing, Surfing, Windsurfing, SUPing, Gardening, Photography.... The list goes on.

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