Went to Cannock this morning to introduce Andy (Clanchy) to Follow The Dog.
In keeping with the rest of the week the weather was abysmal, and as I drove through the third torrential downpour on my way over I did wonder why the hell I was bothering.
Anyway, having forded the floods en route I met up with Andy at around 11:15 in a rather damp car park and we set off into the drizzle.
I've only ridden the dog in the dry, and it was hard work then. In the wet it can only be described as treacherous, with 6inch deep lakes in the bottom of every dip, and only mud and wet roots and pebbles to ride on - none of which are great in the grip or traction department. This made some of the tighter bends and steeper hills quite an interesting experience.
I was further hindered by the fact that my rear brakes pretty much gave up about half way round, which made stopping at the bottom of hills and slowing up for bends even more tricky than it would usually have been. Oh how I long for disc brakes, but alas while my new forks will allow front discs to be fitted, my frame is from a pre-disc era and lacks the required mounting brackets :(
Having survived most of the trail without major incident (although some very near misses had the adrenaline flowing) I finally managed my first major off of the year.
Section 16 of the trail (see here for the map) has been closed for maintenance on my previous visits, but reopened some time in August. On my inaugural run through this section of tree lined single track I managed to shoulder charge a tree at around 15mph after my front wheel lost all grip and through me sideways into the scenery.
My left shoulder took the brunt of the impact and is now bruised and has a bit of a graze on it. The force of the impact means I now have shooting pains across my back, mostly in my right shoulder which theoretically escaped the unharmed, but I obviously twisted something in the impact. As you can see in the picture above I also shredded my right calf on my pedal as I went down.
Despite the weather and the off, it was really quite a decent mornings riding, although I may need to invest in some new brake blocks for the back end before I go out again!
Labels: biking
Read Full Post...
Whatever you do, there is always somebody who has to go one better. While we were out at Sherwood earlier John manage this rather impressive clawing while stood still...
