March 25 .......... It's officially British Summertime and what a way to start it ...

A few of us decided on an pre-Alps training loop (the word training to be used very loosely!)

Basically we wanted to get a decent ride in with a bit of droppy/jumpy sessioning stuff thrown in for good measure .....

The weather was perfect, it hadn't rained for a while and the trails were mostly dry (there were still some bl**dy big puddles around though!) Started off with a climb to the first singletrack run through the woods. A few nice drops were included and as I swooped through the trees thinking how great life was ....... someone put a tree stump in the way and i did a pretty good impression of superman! After what seemed a good half hour in flight, I gracefully touched down on the trail using my new arm pads as skis. Feeling quite impressed with myself having had my biggest off for a very long time, I got up to see what caused my dismount and noticed my leg had made contact with the stem ..... but I would live ... so I carried on smiling..

The next 2 hours were spent looping around and sessioning things ..... my favourite being the drop/jump from 2 weeks ago that I looked at for over half an hour! This time, a couple of run ups .... then go for it ..... ooh it felt good ..... so I did it 3 more times ;-)

A bit more looping and jump/droppy stuff and it was way over time to go home ....

A fine start to British Summer time .................

Apart from Friday I managed to commute all week and get a couple of decent urban blasts in on the way home ;-)
Plenty of wheeleeing onto stuff and wheeeleeeing off again ... a bit of skatepark stuff ... much fun ...

Getting lighter in the evenings now and even better after the 25th as the clocks go forward ...

Sunday 18th March ..............
3 of us decided on the local Castle loops as 1 rider hadn't been out for a while so would probably peel off after a while.

Was expecting an easy ride but we thought it would be a good idea to session some of the local jumps while looping around .................. Oh what fun !!! ....... we found a couple of jumps on a trail we rarely ride and managed a good hour of skills practice. My confidence on the jumpy bits had increased dramatically over the past month (after the cwmcarn middle ladder was conquered) although not being a youth anymore allows me to realise my limits and act accordingly (I hope ;-))

So .......... what I though was going to be a little pootle around, ended up being a good workout with a fair bit of air time ;-) ... big grin ....

March 11 Sunday ................

Just me today so I decided to have a few loops around the castle with a bit of sessioning jumpy bits.........

Started off with 10 runs of the nice rock drop/jump ..... the ground had drained nicely so mud was scarce.

Off for some singletrack fun then the "rocky streambed" descent at a nice flowing speed ...

Decided to pop over to the area with a few jump bits. As they're in the trees the ground hadn't dried out and the run ups were a bit soft and gloopy/slidey so I made a pass on the bigger one and the bigbish drop and flew off down the descent. Almost too much fun was had so I looped round for another go. I had another look at the jump and decided that I could handle it if it went a bit squirrelly!! A couple of run ups and then went for it ..... It wasn't that bad after all so I had a few more goes then made for the next drop ....... It's not as bad as the ones I did at Cwmcarn but after numerous run ups I decided today was not the day ............ It'll still be there next time though ;-)

Not a great deal of riding lately ........... although a number of commutes have resulted in a few plays in the skatepark (when the bmx chappies arn't there!) and a new path descent through some trees with steps made out of railway sleepers! great fun to see how fast you can go and a small amount of air can be had on some steps .... a nice way to end the run home ;-) and you can either loop it which takes 10 mins ... good for the ale credits ..... or just push back top the top for another go ........