Sessioning a trail 18th May

Dan, Gary and I rode through the winter (as did Jonnie on his road bike). We rode through mud, ice, snow, torrential rain, gales and the biting cold. Days like today must be considered our reward. Because we've maintained our fitness, we now have the legs to fully benefit from warm temperatures, bright sunshine and dry trails.

Gary and Dan were stripped down to one layer but I still ride with two. I'd rather be too warm than too cold even though I soon realised that the two layers were totally unnecessary today.

We made our way up to the new trail that Nick de Pinna showed us the week before. [Shall we name it Minnaar's Mate? What do you think guys?] The idea was to ride down it a few times, getting used to it, finding out where we could increase the speed, seeing which corners were manageable without braking etc. I'd never done anything like this before and was not sure how much fun it would be...

It was a lot of fun! I rode the trail 7 times in total, and I timed myself for six of them. Each time I went down I tried a different gear, tried to brake a little later and went into the jumps a little faster. It got easier each time because I knew what to expect. It was a fairly friendly trail with some smooth corners, berms and only two jumps. However, when I found myself in the air, I wasn't coming down very well and my landings were shocking: I was coming down on the nose every time. Something to work on in the future.
Anyhoo, the results are as follows:

2nd run:     1 minute 26 seconds
3rd run:    1:22
4th run:    1:18
5th run:     1:16
6th run:     1:12
last run:    1:09

Riding a trail over and over like this is certainly something I'd like to do more of, especially with the 'local' trails in the Lickey Hills.

Cycling back from the Lickey Hills. Photo by Deadly Dan

After a tea break, on the way back to base, Gary took us over some cross country trails, none of which I'd ridden before. We had to hike-a-bike over stiles every now and then, but the glorious views were worth it.

I'll gladly ride all winter just for a handful of days like today.