After work mega-blast

Last night I thought that I would go for a bit of a blast on my mountain bike after work. I'd chosen one out of my new book...

A rode out of Sheffield via my new-found offroad route and did the loop round Stanage Moor. It felt awful. The bike was going so slowly on the roads and it was taking so much effort that I actually stopped at one point to make sure the brakes weren't rubbing! I carried on, thinking that I might start to feel better soon. It was a real grind with some huge hills.

The rewards were great though! There are some seriously good downhills that actually made my three end fingers ache terribly on each hand from gripping the bars (first fingers were on the brakes). Absolutely brilliant fun!

Half way round I stopped for a while to check my route and a couple of riders went past me at a fair pace (joining me from a different route - not overtaking me!) while I was flicking through the pages of the guidebook. After a couple of minutes I put away the book and started off again, my bike feeling like hard work. Anyway, after this things began to come clear.

I very quickly passed these two riders on a steep hill, "hello mate, this is a bit steep isn't it?" and was pleased to hear, "walk in the park for you though!" and left them far behind me on the next hill.

I just about made it home while it was still light (borderline, though - I really didn't want to pass a police car) and had a look in my book.

The ride I had ridden out to was 27.5km and was one of the longer rides in the section of the book called "Enduros" - it said, "These are proper rides: pack your sarnies and your chain lube - you're going to be out all day.." So I'd done this ride plus 11km of the Sheffield off-road link (5.5.km each way) plus the 6k (3k each way) to get to there from my house. So that was 44.5km of mountain biking in 2.5 hours. No wonder everything had been so difficult!

I think the reason I went so fast was that I'm so used to the speed of a road bike. You can cruise along so fast compared with the the fat tired drag of a mountain bike and I just felt paranoid that I was going slow!

Needless to say I was tired last night. Today my fingers are hurting.