Well that was really good fun, I’m not quite sure why I bother taking a bike to these sort of things it just seems a quite unnecessary intrusion on the intrinsically more essential activities of drinking alchohol and socialising with dear friends.

So Mountain Mayhem highs in no particular order

Spending two days with really lovely people
Getting quite drunk
Nearly buying an IF frame, although I suspect it’s only a matter of time before I buy one…

Thanks again everyone it was ace, I’d write more but I’m still a bit tired….

It seems like a strange question, and certainly for me nothing could be further from the truth, nothing gives me a greater thrill than spending a few hours testing myself against my friends and what the trails throw at me. Sadly this excitement is somewhat missing in the four main magazines in the UK that cater for cross country riders, the formulaic and repetitive contents of these magazines is as follows.

Intro - The editor writes about what a hard life it is writing the same dross month in, month out, how it’s an incredibly hard job flying to all expense covered press launches and / or riding new bikes, invariably ending with “it’s a hard job but somebody has to do it!” Oh this section will usually have a pretentious portrait of said individual either deep in thought or looking “gnarly” on his bike.

Inspirational Riding Pictures - Pictures of people riding cross country and looking a bit slow and dull, usually in exotic locations, see how handy those overseas press launches are!

New Products and Bling Bits Section - Generally a section for manufacturers press releases about their new products, that will invariably make you faster, more technically gifted and just ace. Sometimes a product from an artisan producer that the staff writers will rave about because it’s made by some beardy weirdy halfway up a mountain, with one leg living in a cave, off a diet of scavenged fruit, it invariably works half as well and and costs three times as much as a product made by one of the main stream manufacturers. Obviously this makes the product hugely desirable and your riding will suffer if you don’t own one.

Bike Test - Generally a review of three bikes often of a similar cost or design, each one will be ridden and rated by an elite army of staff writers.  An elite of testers will ride bikes and decide which is best so all you need to do is part with your cash. This detailed evaluation of a complex product, that uses quite tricky engineering and often costs thousands of pounds can usually be summed up in about five hundred words, of course if that’s too onerous then you can go to the inane rating system of stars or the like at the bottom of the page.

Grouptest - Usually an eight page spread of a variety of the same product produced by a variety of brands, almost certainly something mind numbingly dull like inner tube valve adaptors, that are tested and rated to within an inch of their lives and scored using a similar system to the bike test.

Travel Section - Where we went on our holidays, look at the pictures it was fab, oh we forgot to say it was paid for by the holiday company, more of an infomercial than travel writing sadly.

Repeat for every issue forever, and you’ve made the most incredible sport seem about as stale as four day old economy bread….

My riding this weekend was like the first riding I used to do, just taking an Ordnance Survey map and riding the back roads and bridleways in a specific area in no particular order.  No real singletrack to speak of although I did remember one bit of Box Hill cheek which was a really nice reward for the climb of Box Hill.

I seem to be going better than I have been in the past year as I managed the climb quite comfortably, (er well I cleaned it and only needed to catch my breath for thirty seconds) which is the first time I’ve manged it. I just need to get some mid week road rides in to help boost my fitness a bit further. Hopefully I’ll manage it this week as I’ve not got any plans and I feel a bit more positive about riding than I did last week.

The riding I did yesterday would have been perfect on a Cross bike as I’d have had a bit more speed on the road and it would have made the trails more exciting. I’ve got some time off coming fairly soon so I may see if I can manage a fairly long Cross ride if I manage to get the Voodoo built up.

I keep finding more speedvagen goodness online, I suspect I should set fire to my credit cards and pray that Sacha White has sold them all, I’m guessing he has I daren’t email him just in case……………

More info here if your interested
http://race.cx/2007/04/10/speedvagen/#comments