Muddy rides and a couple of videos

Earlier today I saw this article on what British Cycling is doing for mountain biking, it's interesting that it appears to be entirely focused on Cross-Country with only one photo of Downhill. In terms of text it only has one line that mentions that Downhill and FourCross (4X to you and me), this seems rather disproportionate with the number of medal winners in the World Cup series and the  World Championships, as I talked about in my previous post.

Okay I guess it’s looking at grass roots and there’s only Cross-Country mountain biking in the Olympics and most people getting into the sport aren’t going to be throwing themselves down a mountainside or competing head to head against three of their mates straight away. So I see where they are coming from in those terms, however surely showing our success in these disciplines is a way to encourage new riders and make existing riders try something new, never mind to get them to pay money to join British Cycling. I know following this year’s Downhill and 4X World Cup series' has certainly inspired me to push my limits and ride more often.

If you want something to inspire you to get out here’s two homemade videos for you, one from me which is pretty damn rubbish and one filmed by and starring Mike Martin up in Scotland which is pretty damn good. 

The video I put together is from Ashton Court last weekend, finally got there with a couple of friends and my cameras, unfortunately it was very wet and pretty chilly so hanging around trying to get good photos and video was dropped from my main priorities. Instead I opted for getting a couple of shots and having a lot of fun in the mud.

The first ride round we took things pretty easy not knowing how slippy the rocky sections would be, however they seemed to grip fine it was some of the muddier sections where we could feel the tyres sliding from under us. It made for an interesting run with a couple of close calls for me and one crash where my front wheel slipped and I was thrown out the front door, somehow I managed to jump over my handle bars landing on my feet and running out while keeping hold of my bike and being able to pull the front brake to swing the back end out of the following riders way.

Despite the weather it was a cracking day out and there’s something fun about getting coated head to toe in mud, and although the cloying mud made it hard to pedal in places most of the trails are barely different in the wet from the dry. On the last ride of the day one of the lads tried a drop off and unfortunately stacked it, buckling his front wheel quite badly however after a trail repair of standing on it, it was rideable so we departed to the pub for a well deserved pint. One thing I noticed on the ride was the amount of 661 gear we had between us, whether it’s the price or the quality, or both (as it is for me) it seems to be the make of choice at this level.